Clever Dog: Understand What Your Dog is Telling You. Sarah Whitehead

of carefully controlled socialisation with other puppies and kind, gentle training.

      » Even very young puppies can sometimes show problem behaviours. Don’t be fooled into thinking that he or she will grow out of it. Seek help early if you need it.

      » Puppies and children are a wonderful, if sometimes wild, combination. Make sure that both have ‘calm down’ periods and that your puppy has somewhere he can go and rest undisturbed. Never leave your puppy unsupervised with children.

      » Pups of eight weeks old can learn basic manners and training, such as ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘come when called’ and multitudes of simple tricks such as ‘spin’, ‘rollover’ and ‘give a paw’. Learning is easy and fun when you are young.

      » Puppies often go through a ‘fear period’, characterised by being confident one day and then being scared of something commonplace the next. Don’t reinforce the fear by giving attention; instead, pretend nothing has happened, wait until your pup recovers, then reward him for being brave the next time he encounters the same thing.

      » Introduce your puppy to good-natured adult dogs as soon as you can. A ‘telling off’ from an older dog may be perfectly appropriate if your pup is too bumptious. This is distinguishable from aggression as it is all noise and bluster with no risk of damage. Don’t panic if it happens, as it’s likely to do you a favour.

      » Two puppies from the same litter need to be walked, trained and socialised separately if they are to develop as individuals in their own right, and not many owners have the time or dedication needed for this. Pups that are over-dependent on each other or an older dog in the same household run the risk of lacking real-world experience and may have problems later.

      Amber’s story is not uncommon. Her initial inability to cope with life outside a very small, protected world was caused by a complete lack of experience in those precious, formative weeks. This gives clues as to how pups should be raised once they are in a new home, but also what should happen while they are still with their breeder, their litter mates and their mum. Pups need a balance of protection and stimulation, of security and gentle exposure. Such a tightrope cannot be carefully negotiated if the pup is over-protected, shielded from everyone and everything.

      For those that are born in a barn, surrounded by the barking of other dogs, with only the warmth of a heat lamp and the feel of shredded newspaper for stimulation, the outcome is strangely similar. Sadly, puppy farms are still common in the UK, with enough prospective owners willing to take on dogs that have been bred and raised in social deprivation, despite all the problems that we know this can cause.

      A pup’s early experience can make or break its chances of becoming a family member. Of course, it’s hard to turn down the kids’ pleas and say no to a pup, even if you know it hasn’t been reared in the right way. Sometimes it is precisely because you know that the conditions are poor that you want to ‘rescue’ the pup and offer it a home. Dogs have a way of getting into our hearts like no other animal. They compel us to take them, to care for them and to spend inordinate amounts of time and money on them. All those songs are right: love makes us crazy – and it can make our dogs a little bit daft too.

      Case history: Sam, the besotted Springer Spaniel

      Going out to work if you keep dogs has always been controversial. Clearly, it’s not feasible to keep a dog if you are out for eight or ten hours a day. Dogs are social animals, and even if they are given food, water and shelter, their emotional welfare demands that they have exercise, company and stimulation during the day. However, it’s an ironic fact that in order to keep pets, most of us have to go out to work to be able to buy their food, pay their vet bills and buy them all the many beds, treats and little extras that make them (and us) happy.

      Like most things in life, achieving harmony is all about balance. It should be perfectly reasonable to leave your dog at home for a realistic period of time. Of course, what is a realistic period of time will depend on both dog and owner. For example, a puppy of only twelve weeks cannot be expected to go more than two hours without needing to go out to the toilet and have some meaningful interaction. Dogs over the age of a year who know the routine and have had exercise and stimulation may be OK left for four or even five hours, especially if their owner is savvy and leaves them with plenty of things to do in their absence. In fact, I have treated some dogs for behavioural problems that have been caused by owner over-obsession. Some of them would probably have paid me themselves if I could have persuaded their owners to go out and leave them in peace for a couple of hours! It’s when the balance goes wrong that I sometimes find my phone ringing, as I did with Sam.