Last week we went and visited a friend and her dogs. When I arrived we took the dogs for a short walk together and rewarded the dogs for moving with us and not being too curious about each other. We were able to quickly have the dogs walking quite close together. When we went inside we were able to soon have the dogs loose together, but we did direct them to chewing or playing with toys rather than playing with each other. It went quite well – there were many factors that worked to our advantage.
The resident dogs have many friends. Dogs with many friends are more likely to do well with new dogs. Just because a dog plays well with dogs he lives with, it does not mean he will do well with new dogs.
The resident dogs are used to visiting dogs. Some dogs do well with other dogs, but not as well in their home. These dogs were used to having different visiting dogs.
The visiting dogs could be re-directed to other activities. Griffin was the most curious of the group (and the youngest by several years!). If he was being too insistent about play or interaction, we would encourage him to go and chew on something appropriate.
The visiting dogs have been around many dogs. My dogs are not used to being loose or playing with many dogs, but they do spend a lot of time in classes and places with other dogs. They are not uncomfortable around other dogs and they are not too excited to listen to me.
None of the dogs resource guard in problematic ways. This allowed us to leave out many chew items and to feed the dogs treats even when they were sitting near each other (photos!). When dogs are not comfortable sharing, it can be more challenging to redirect dogs to other activities.
All the dogs have some amount of training. We could call any of the dogs over. All of the dogs would listen to the people – not just their owners. We could ask them to come to us, we could get their attention, we could get them to stay for short periods if we needed to.
If things were different… we would have to be more careful. But in this circumstance, it was appropriate and safe for the dogs to be together. When I have to integrate a dog into my household, it can sometimes take weeks to get to this point, depending on the dogs involved. Because we had a group of trained, adult, comfortable dogs we were able to progress quickly with this group.