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At almost every session I ran in the early years, somebody would come up to me halfway through and say: I brought my dog all this way and he is not socialising. I would ask what they meant. He is not playing with anyone, they would say. He is not going up to the other dogs. He is just lying there near me, watching.

At a session the dog lies calmly at his person's feet watching the other dogs, while she gestures at him, puzzled, to a bearded man who smiles quietly. — He is not socialising, she said. He was lying near her, watching everything, and he was the best socialised dog on the ground.

I had to tell them, as kindly as I could, that they had the word wrong, and that the dog lying there watching was the best socialised dog on the ground.

What the word means

Go to a park on a Sunday evening. There are fifty people in it. Do you go up and greet every one of them? You do not. You sit on a bench with your phone or your newspaper, and people walk past, and children shriek, and a cricket ball lands near you, and none of it moves you. Nobody would say you are unsocialised. The unsocialised person in that park is the one shouting at strangers, picking fights, unable to sit still because of what the others are doing.

A dog is the same. A well socialised dog is a dog in whose environment a great deal is happening, other dogs, children, bikes, a stranger's hand, a cafe, a car, somebody else's house, and he is calm, and he is not made uncomfortable by it, and he does not meet it with aggression. He may not play. He may not go up to anyone. That is his choice, and it is a perfectly good one. What he does not do is react. Reaction is the measure, not friendliness.

Two panels of the same park. The dog charges at a boy with a cricket bat while a cyclist wobbles. In the other panel the same dog lies calmly on the grass in the middle of it all, watching, while the woman sits on a bench with her phone and a brown dog sniffs the grass nearby. — The same dog, the same park, two ways to be in it. Rushing every dog and every child is not social. Lying in the middle of all of it, watching, unmoved, is. Socialised does not mean he plays with everyone. It means the park does not move him.

And so the question for your dog is not how many dogs he has met. It is: where is he uncomfortable? If it is somewhere that is part of his daily life, the walk, the gate, the lift, a guest, that is where you work. If it is the vet, most dogs are uneasy there, and I would not make it your first project. People touch him there without asking, the room smells of a hundred stressed dogs, and nobody has time. You can say to him, I know, you are scared, and it is all right, and we are still going in. But handle his ears, his paws and his mouth for a minute every day at home, and teach him the muzzle as a game, so that the day he is hurt the vet can help him. Then pick the fights that are in his day.

Four panels on a living room floor. The woman calmly looks inside the dog's ear, holds a paw, lifts his lip to see his teeth, and holds out a basket muzzle with food inside while he pushes his nose into it. — A minute a day at home, so the vet can help him the day he is hurt. His ears, his paws, his mouth, handled calmly. And the muzzle as a game: food in the basket, and he puts his own nose in.

Why does it matter so much? Because of what happens when you do not. A dog who reacts on the walk makes the walk unpleasant, and a human avoids what is unpleasant, so the walks get shorter and fewer, and the dog gets worse. A dog who cannot sit in a cafe stops being taken to cafes. A dog who cannot be in a car stays home. His world shrinks to the size of your flat, one avoided place at a time. Turn it around. A dog who is calm in a restaurant, calm in the car, calm on the walk, calm in a friend's house, where will you not take him? Socialising is what buys him a life.

Socialising: the window and the ritual

What the word means

The rest of chapter 16 is in the book