The Company Your Dog Keeps
A woman brought me a papillon. Ten months old, just rehomed from a breeder.
She had been told he was brilliant with other dogs. He had grown up with about fifty of them. On paper that sounds like the best possible start.
He was struggling badly.
Every one of those fifty dogs was also a papillon. He had never seen a dog bigger than himself. Never seen a squishy face. Never seen a dog that wasn’t black and white.
He had spent his whole life speaking a tiny dialect that almost no other dog speaks.
Fifty dogs. Almost no useful social experience.
The company you keep
There is an old idea that you become like the people you spend the most time with. It holds up reasonably well for humans.
It holds up for dogs too.
The dogs your dog spends time with shape how your dog behaves. Not just around those specific dogs. Around all dogs.
Whatever they practise most is what they get good at. If the only thing they ever practise is one style of interaction, that becomes the only thing they know how to do.
The wild friend
A lot of owners ask me about a specific dog. Usually a friend’s dog.
This dog is a relentless player. Wild, nonstop, cannot regulate themselves, does not know how to stop. The owner worries their dog is picking up bad habits.
It is a fair worry. But it is usually the wrong question.
One wild friend is rarely the problem on its own. The problem is when that friend is the only social experience your dog gets.
If that is the whole picture, ask what else your dog is learning.
Where are they practising calm?
Where are they learning not to be the loudest one in the room?
Where are they learning that being near another dog does not have to mean anything at all?
If the answer is nowhere, that is worth fixing. Usually not by cutting the friendship off. By widening everything around it.
Socialisation is not just play
This is where a lot of people get stuck. They hear socialisation and think play.
Play is one thing dogs do together. It is not the only thing, and it is not the most useful thing.
Not every meeting needs to be a playdate. Sometimes it should be a trail walk, two dogs moving in the same direction with no interaction required. Sometimes it should be lying down in each other’s company and doing nothing at all.
Sometimes it should be learning to share space around something valuable, safely and calmly.
Each of these teaches something different. A dog who has only ever played has practised one narrow skill. A dog who has walked, rested, shared space, and played has a range.
The range is the point.
Think of the dog who talks at everyone
Think about the person who approaches everyone, talks at them, and never checks whether they want the conversation.
Their intentions might be fine. It is still rude.
A dog who charges into every other dog’s face demanding play is doing the same thing. Good intentions, poor manners. And I am never surprised when another dog eventually tells them off for it.
Minding your own business is a genuine social skill. So is noticing that someone does not want company right now.
Reading and adapting
Good social skills come down to two things. Can your dog read what another dog is saying? And can they change what they are doing based on the answer?
Reading means picking up the quiet signals, not just the loud ones. A head turned away. Eye contact offered or withheld. A dog moving off to sniff. A dog going stiff and still.
Some dogs communicate loudly and obviously. Others are extremely subtle. A dog who has only ever met loud communicators will miss the subtle ones entirely.
Adapting is the second half. Your dog goes in expecting one thing and gets another.
Can they pivot? Do you want to play? No. Fine. Do you want to share this toy? No. Do you want to sniff together? Yes, but not this close. Further away? That works.
That is a dog with options. When one approach does not land, they have others to try.
Dogs like that get liked. Not because they are the most fun, but because they are receptive. They are trying to make the interaction work for both dogs rather than running their own show.
Quality matters as much as quantity
Numbers are the part everyone counts. How many dogs has your dog met? How many puppy classes? How many park visits?
Numbers are not nothing. But the papillon met fifty dogs and came out of it barely able to function socially.
What matters alongside the number is the breadth and the quality.
Breadth means different sizes, different shapes, different faces, different play styles, different energy levels, different communication styles. A dog who has met fifty versions of the same dog has met one dog fifty times.
Quality means the state your dog was actually in during those experiences.
Calm and happy dogs learn. Stressed, fearful, anxious, or hyper-aroused dogs do not. If your dog spent the whole interaction over-aroused, they were not learning anything useful. They were just having an experience.
Arousal is not the same as happiness
This is the one people misread most often.
A dog going absolutely wild looks like a dog having a brilliant time. Sometimes they are. Often they are simply over-stimulated and past the point where they can think.
An over-charged nervous system is not automatically good or bad. Context decides that. But it is worth being honest about which one you are looking at, because the two need different responses.
A useful question after any interaction: can my dog come back down? How long does it take? Are they able to settle afterwards, or are they wired for hours?
The friendship that goes wrong
There is a specific pattern I see often, and it usually ends badly.
Two dogs who go absolutely wild every time they meet. Every single time, full intensity, no calm moments, no downtime. The owners describe them as best friends.
They may well be. But I have only known a handful of relationships like that survive long term.
It often starts in puppyhood, when both dogs are playful and everything goes well. Then they hit adolescence at roughly the same time. That is usually when it breaks. One dog becomes distant. Or one dog becomes aggressive.
It is sad when it happens, partly because by that point the owners are convinced the dogs adore each other.
Sometimes that was true. Sometimes one dog had been tolerating the other for a very long time and nobody noticed.
What it looks like when a dog wants out
I went through this recently with a client. Her dog was the full-throttle one.
I showed her what the other dog was doing. Turning her head away. Looping back around to her owner. Leaving the game to sniff. Taking herself off to chew something. Coming back toward the humans rather than the play. Disengaging, over and over.
That dog had been asking for space for a long time.
The next time they met, my client saw all of it. She also saw that her own dog was missing every single signal.
What she did next was excellent. She stepped in quietly and asked her dog to slow down. Put him on lead for a bit. Let his heart rate come down. No telling off, no punishment. Just help.
Once he had regulated, something changed. He could suddenly read the other dog clearly. The signals had been there the whole time. He had been too over-stimulated to receive them.
She repeated it a few times. Within a handful of interactions, those two went from frantic play to genuinely relaxed together.
I think it saved the friendship. The other dog was close to telling him off properly, and I do not think my client’s dog would have handled that well.
Now that dog is his closest friend. He is still learning to play. He is also learning soft skills from her that no amount of wrestling would have taught him.
Where to start
If you have a dog who only knows one way to be around other dogs, the fix is rarely to remove that one relationship.
It is to add everything else. Different dogs. Different sizes and shapes. Different types of interaction. Time spent near dogs where nothing is expected to happen.
And within the relationships you already have, look for the calm moments. Slow the game down early, before anyone is past the point of thinking. Check in occasionally: are these two actually listening to each other?
It is hard work at first, particularly with the dog who has never done it any other way. It is worth it.
Because a dog who can manage themselves around the hardest friend they have can manage themselves around almost anyone.
