How to Socializing A Pit Bull APBT

There are many ways to socialize your Pit Bull.  The age of your dog as well as his/her individual personality will help you determine which methods are appropriate for socializing your dog.

Pit Bulls under six months of age should be enrolled in a puppy class.  Many obedience training facilities have classes specifically for puppies, and often part of the class time is devoted to off-leash play with other puppies.  When seeking out a training facility, it is often helpful to observe the classes prior to attending so you can get a feel for how class will be conducted and see if it is a good match for you and your dog.  Off-leash play can be an important feature of a puppy class, but it should be done properly (i.e., does the instructor factor in age, size and play style of puppies when organizing play groups?).

To socialize adult dogs, owners should first carefully introduce their Pit Bulls to other adult dogs.  A great way to introduce adult dogs is to take a nice long walk on leash together.

Some ways that adult dogs can interact with other dogs are:

• Taking long leash walks with appropriately matched dogs of good temperament and good social skills and with known, responsible owners.
• Organized play dates with friends' dogs in a fenced area.
• Taking an obedience or agility class, where your dog will learn to focus on you in the presence of other dogs, and may also receive positive reinforcement in the presence of other dogs.

We do not recommend dog parks or dog daycare providers:

• While dogs can learn good social skills at a daycare or park, they can just as easily learn poor social skills in these largely unsupervised situations. 
• Dogs in a pack act very differently than they do individually; even a well-socialized dog of good temperament can be drawn into "pack behavior."
• There's no way to predict or know the behavior of the other dogs in the group at a park or daycare; many people take their dogs to daycare providers or dog parks with little understanding of their own dogs' tolerance for other dogs; there is often an expectation that "dogs will work it out" however this can occur in a way that results in injury.
• Dogs playing together for long periods of time in large groups with unstructured time or activities can result in inappropriate behavior.
• Dog playgrounds need to be carefully selected by competent readers of dog body language and with an understanding of social canine behavior; there are many people well-intentioned, operating dog day care with very little experience with dogs and, in particular, with very little Pit Bull experience.
• If something does go wrong, whether or not the Pit Bull instigates it, the Pit Bull is usually blamed; every negative incident can result in future problems during dog-dog interactions.