Episode 47 - Introducing Your New Puppy to Your Adult Dog: Looking at the Bigger Picture

5/11/2026

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This episode answers a question we get on almost a weekly basis:

How do I introduce my puppy to my adult dog?

This podcast looks at:

Questions to ask about your dog and your puppy that can help you craft a good introduction
Guidelines for puppy-dog introductions.
Honoring normal social behavior and protecting the interests of your dog and your puppy.

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

Transcript - Episode 47

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist., and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

Today I'm going to address the question that we get probably weekly, which is how do I introduce my puppy to my existing adult dog or dogs in my household?

This question makes me a little nutty because of the advice that's usually flung around in response to the question. Things like - meet on a neutral territory, protected contact through a fence, on leash, off leash. I mean, the number one problem with all this advice is it may or may not be good, because the first thing you have to know is who is the adult dog?

Who is the puppy? What are they like? Has the adult dog ever played with puppies before? Is the adult dog friendly or is he reactive? Does the adult dog have any resource guarding from other dogs? Does he resource guard food or objects? Space? People? You? Does the adult dog have barrier frustration or on leash reactivity? If it's a young adult dog and that young adult does regularly play with other dogs, what's their play style?

Are they over the top or are they good at gauging their interaction according to their playmate? I'm going to come back to that. But let me give you some overriding principles first. We do cover this in Puppy Culture: The Original Film, and also in the puppy course, With Open Arms. But we cover it in the context of setting up good socialization sessions and really, you, in intro to another dog, it's a socialization session, so there are certain universals that I can say, assuming that it's a stable, friendly adult dog and a stable, well socialized puppy.

Number one, dogs regulate the temperature of their interactions with space. So wherever you do this intro, make sure that there's plenty of space for moving around and retreating. Right? So not in your living room where maybe the two dogs might break out into play, but then one of them sort of hits their back against the wall and then bounces back a little aggressive, and then it's all spiraling downhill from there.

So you want to do it in an open area, either a big open building or a backyard, or just someplace way open. That's number one. And number two, both the adult dog and the puppy should have a way to escape. So the adult dog should have a high platform, table chair, something they can get up on and get away from that puppy.

And the puppy should have something low or tight that they can crawl through and get away from the adult. In Puppy Culture, we used a, an agility paws table for our puppies when they met the Newfoundland. That's our go to in our backyard. If you have puppy culture, it's the chapter called running with the Big Dogs. But if you don't have puppy culture and you're interested in a video example of this, I put up a video on the puppy culture fan page on Facebook.

It's also on our Vimeo and YouTube channels, and I posted it on Instagram as well. So wherever you get your social media videos, it's there. And it's a video of an intro of one of our puppies to one of my friends, Newfoundlands, where I let the puppy out of my, sliding door. The Newfoundland was in the backyard, but I left just a crack open in the sliding door so the puppy could go back through if she wanted to, but the Newfoundland couldn't fit through.

And then also there was an arrangement of of large, flower, you know, planters like terracotta planters in, in a circle that the puppy could squeeze through and the dog couldn't get to. So those are just some ideas. You need space and retreat. Those are the two big things that you have to set up for. Now, beyond that, we really do cover it in our courses and it is a course level conversation.

But. Let me just say that you have to do sort of a behavior analysis of the two individuals involved. You know, meeting at home is better than meeting outside of the home. If the adult dog in the house is afraid of new places. Not only is the adult dog not going to be able to form good associations with the puppy if they're terrified in public spaces, the puppy potentially is going to be modeling that fear, and you don't want that.

But if you have a dog that's very territorial and protective of their home, then yeah, you want to meet in a neutral place, do some nice parallel walking. But then that brings up the other point. If you have a dog who has no on leash reactivity and no barrier frustration, protected contact, on leash parallel walking. These are great intros with an adult dog that is not reactive in any way, but it's deadly if your dog has on leash reactivity or barrier frustration. You also have to consider the puppy. Does the puppy have some kind of butting, barrier and leash? Frustration? In my observation, most pet owners who have not at one time or another, been through way through a training process with a reactive dog and done all the high level stuff.

They're not going to be really good at doing leash walks in such a way that they're not creating, unwittingly, some leash frustration. They're going to be tugging on that leash. There's going to be pressure. It, normally, I would say it's it's a pretty high level thing to be able to do a good parallel walk that truly is neutral.

But again, sometimes if you have a really neutral dog and a not very rambunctious puppy that has had some leash training, this can work.

At my house. We have a lot of puppies coming in and out of here because my breeder friends and I are always swapping, you know, bringing adults over to each other's houses, bringing puppies over to each other's houses, socializing puppies and introductions between my dogs and my breeder friends puppies or a puppy that I bring home literally consists of putting the puppy in the backyard with the household adults.

But my dogs are very experienced puppy raisers and I trust them implicitly to do the right thing. But again, I always do still do them outdoors, where there's plenty of space for the dogs to regulate the temperature of their interaction and I always do give both the adult and the puppy an escape route low things for the puppy to hide under, and I'm ready at the gate to let the adults back in the house if they're done with the puppy.

So if you have a good adult dog that's good with puppies, experienced puppy raiser. It's not rocket science. You put them out in the backyard together and give everyone an escape route. If you have a dog that in any way is reactive, I mean, then you really have to treat this like you're dealing with a reactive dog. And that's a whole thing in itself.

I mean, there are things you can do, but there's no magic that's going to make a reactive dog not be reactive. When you bring a puppy home.

Now there's a huge continuum between my dogs that basically I could rent out to socialize. Puppies and the reactive dog that hates puppies. There's dogs that maybe are cranky with puppies, you know, would ignore puppies if the puppies ignore them. There are dogs that like puppies up to a certain point, but then have had enough. There are dogs that are horrified by puppies, at least at first, but not aggressive.

It is not unusual for your adult dog to want to hide when a puppy comes into your house. It is not unusual for that dog to go upstairs and hide for two weeks and not want to come down. They can really become, the adults that is, sullen when you bring a puppy home. Those situations usually have a pretty good prognosis because it's just an adjustment period. But again, we're not talking about a dog that's truly reactive.

Another universal that I can give you is always protect the interests of both the puppy and the big dog. Okay, so in these interactions, especially the first interactions, always let the big dog know that you have their back, that you're not going to let them be mauled by that puppy, that you're there to rescue them if the puppy gets over the top.

That way the adult dog won't feel that they have to resort to correcting the puppy themselves. They're like, okay, this puppy is out of control, I need help, I need to get out of here. You let them out there, that becomes their behavior, okay? Their behavior becomes escape. If you leave them in the pit with the puppy, they're like, well, I got no choice.

I have to correct this puppy. And you really don't want that. I know a lot of people think that that's a natural part of the puppy adult relationship, but you really don't want to put them in a position of conflict, especially not with the initial, introductions.

The final universal that I can give you is that nobody ever regretted taking it slowly, but many people have regretted pushing it too fast. You know, car rides together, dogs crated side by side to someplace fun, even if they're not together when they get there. This is forming good associations and giving them that sort of ability to obliquely take each other in.

This is really important. Being in the same house but not in the same room, just existing, allowing them to take in each other at their own pace, whatever that is, is never a bad thing. I placed a puppy with a good friend who had an adult female, an adult male, a biddy female, an old girl, and you know, she really did not think that the old girl was ever going to be able to get along with that puppy.

Well, the old cranky bitch, who in fact was a little dog reactive, just walked up to the crate and banged on it and said, let her out, I want her and they were best friends immediately, but her male, who she didn't think would be a problem at all, who was soft and sweet, hated the puppy, hated her. But you know, my friend had the patience to just keep them apart, you know?

So they both knew the other one was there, but there was no direct interaction between those dogs for 18 months. And literally one day at 18 months, her adult male walked over to the crate and said, Will you please let her out? I love her. You can never go wrong by taking it slow. I have had friends who brought a puppy home and their adult dog went upstairs for two months and would not come down, would not look at the puppy, wouldn't come down.

But then, you know, at the end of two months the dog said, oh, I guess I guess the puppy's here. Oh, well. And they were friends. It's not unusual. And if my friend had forced the issue and put her adult dog in proximity to that puppy, if my friend had been like, no, no, I want them to meet the if they got to meet, they got to meet.

It is very likely that there could have been an incident where the adult dog, snarked at the puppy. Then you know the puppy’s scared. The puppy doesn't like the adult dog. Now the adult dog double doesn't like the puppy because they've been forced into this sort of position of conflict with the puppy. And let me tell you something.

Unfortunately, dogs tend to be one trial learners when it comes to bad things. It's probably some sort of evolutionary adaptation. But puppies in general and adult dogs as well. If something bad happens between two dogs, it can. It's really hard for them to unlearn that, especially when it's in the initial phase of meeting before they have money in the relationship bank. So again, just a really long way of saying whatever you do, whatever integration plan you come up with based on the personality of your two dogs, take it slow. You'll never regret it.

If you like this podcast, you'll love Puppy Culture: The original film that started it all, available at puppyculture.com. And while you're there, check out our puppy course With Open Arms and a Level Head. How to Welcome a Puppy into Your Life, available at puppyculture.com. Breeders. Do you want to get your puppy started out on the right foot? Check out our breeder bulk discounts for our puppy course at puppyculture.com.

Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.