Can you oversocialise a dog?
Jed Mitchell
2025-07-19 10:05:09
Count answers
: 14
Socialization is habituation to the environment through exposure. Overwhelming stressful exposure is harmful. Lots of good exposure is not. You definitely need to be attuned to your own dog and cultivate experiences where your pup feels safe. Your puppy needs a lot of rest so you don't want to exhaust and burn them out. But continuous social exposure to sensory stimuli will, if anything, lead to habituation and satiation. In other words people/places become old news and less interesting to your dog so they focus on you more. If your dog lacks impulse control and wants to run and greet every dog and human they see, and becomes frustrated and acts out if they can't, this is a training issue, not a socialization issue.
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