Successful Integration!

Over the weekend I worked on introducing Maggie to my dogs.  We started out with small baby steps but I am so pleased at how quickly I was able to let her run free with my dogs.

We started with her in the crate and my dogs just smelling her through it.  Saturday afternoon I went and got a baby gate and started letting Maggie loose in part of the house and my dogs loose in the other half.  This allowed them to get more of a feel for each other but still kept them separated.  I also took them on long walks (my dogs and then Maggie alone) so that they could burn off their nervous energy.

By Sunday it was very clear that my dogs wanted to play with Maggie and Maggie desperately wanted to play with them.  I started small, letting Maggie loose with my dogs for just a few minutes at a time before putting her back on the other side of the baby gate.  I wanted to make sure that all of their interactions ended on a positive note which thankfully they did.

By last night I felt that we were ready to try a group walk and it went great!  I leashed them all up and we headed out.  I could tell a huge improvement in Maggie’s confidence with having the other dogs around.  She was much less jumpy when loud cars drove by and it was clear that she was much more relaxed.

We will continue to take things slow but all in all Maggie has very successfully been intregrated into my little “pack”!