Socialization & Early Development

Chihuahua and Chinese Crested puppies from Western Kentucky Chihuahuas & Chinese Cresteds are given lots of daily tender loving care from day one. They are raised in our home by our family, along with other animals, puppies, children and adults. This helps them develop positive and friendly behaviors towards others, ensuring they grow up to be well-adjusted and sociable pets. By exposing them to various social situations, these puppies learn to interact and communicate effectively, building confidence and reducing anxiety. Socialization also helps them become comfortable with different stimuli, environments, noises, and experiences, making them adaptable and less prone to fear or aggressive fear reactions. 

Early socialization permanently shapes puppies future personalities and how they will react to their environment as an adult dog. Gently exposing them to a variety of stimuli makes a huge difference in their temperament. Gentile handling in their first weeks of life is key to the development of a friendly confident dog. Positive experiences with people shapes a puppies adult behavior. Having a dog who is well adjusted and confident can even go as far as to save a life one day. 

To continue the socialization process, as soon as your puppy has completed it's vaccinations to protect its health, start taking it to public places small doses at first, steadily increasing so as not to over stimulate your puppy. Taking puppy with you, they will learn how to behave in a variety of situations and enjoy interacting with other people. To a puppy the whole world is new, strange, and unusual, so think of everything they encounter as an opportunity to make a new, positive association. Try to come up with as many different types of people, places, noises, and textures as you can and expose your puppy to them. That means, for instance, having them walk on carpet, hardwood, tile, and linoleum floors, meet a young person and an old person, someone in a wheelchair, or using a cane, a person with a beard, wearing sunglasses or a hood, and using an umbrella. Always always always make the interaction positive!! Make sure to give puppy lots of praise while introducing new experiences. As a result, your puppy will associate what they are being exposed to with the feeling of seeing something new as a fun experience. When doing any type of training remain calm, dogs can read our emotions. If you are nervous your puppy will be too.