We're getting our 2nd cavalier in a week. How do we introduce her to other dog?

I'm super excited because we're going to pick up our 2nd cavalier next week! We get to pick from 2 ruby girls- Laura has sent pictures but I still haven't decided which one we'll take. We already have a 9 month old tri-color male and I want to make the introduction as smooth as possible between the two of them. One question I have is, Cooper sleeps in our room on the floor in his own bed. I was planning on crating the new puppy for the first few months, but I'm not sure how to do that while keeping her crate in our room and Cooper not bothering her or the other way around. Any suggestions?

There are a range of links in a thread on introducing a second dog in the Library section that should be of help. There are no hard and fast rules on what you do regarding crating etc. I think Cooper will just sleep in his bed at night; I doubt he will fuss much over a puppy in a crate.

A little bit different because of the age difference but our Mindy (11) sleeps in our bed and Max (now five months) sleeps in a crate in our room. Mindy essentially ignores him in the crate as it's her only real "Max free" time. Max still wakes up at between 3 and 4 a.m. but I now tell him "It's not morning yet" and he settles right down again.

Growing up we crated one of our dogs that was younger for the first time. the Older dog didn't really care much, but the younger dog loved her crate till she crossed the bridge :lotsaluv:. It made her feel safe and secure to be in her crate while our older dog just wanted to lay next to the bed. If your going to do it though, just stick to it.

Both mine are crated--however, 8 yr. old Casey has always gone to bed at 7 p.m.-- like he has a clock in his head. 8 mo. old Alfie is a night owl - he wants to stay up as long as we do. This was the hardest part of bringing in a puppy. Casey wanted to stay up 'cause the pup was up, but he really also wanted to go to bed. This resulted in "in and out" of the crate a half dozen times between 7 and 11 p.m. Finally, after 4 mo. of this, Casey now goes into his crate about 8 p.m., and Alfie stays on the sofa with me till we go to bed. Note: both crates are beside each other in our rec room.

Maggie was 6 months old when we got Roxie. For the first couple of weeks Roxie slept in her own crate next to Maggies. Then Maggie would cry until we put Roxie in with her. We watched them real closely but Maggie was so gentle with her and just loves her. But now they both sleep in the bed with us. It took a couple of weeks of Maggie pretty much ignoring her, but they were soon best of friends. It sounds like you had the same reaction to Cavaliers as we did. A friend that has them warned me that they were like potato chips: You cant have just one, and she was right !!

Good luck with the new puppy, exciting times! Harry our tri was definatly not impressed when Charlie (ruby) arrived & wanted nothing to do with the annoying new arrival. But now 3 weeks on they are definatly bonding & starting to play together which is lovely to see.We just make sure Harry dosn't miss out on his cuddles, its like having kids all over again!

We had Sam 4 months when we got Charlie, Sam is full of energy so when we went to the breeders to pick another dog we had the choice of two and we picked Charlie because he was full of energy too and was running around the breeders house!!

Sam was upgraded to sleep on the sofa and Charlie was put into the doggie play pen in the sitting room, the only problem was Charlie would scrape to get out to Sam when he woke up during the night, after a few months this stopped.

The best way to introduce them in my opinion is to just do it and keep an eye on them until they decide who is the boss. In our case it was Charlie eventhough he is the baby!!!

Because your dog is 9 months they will be glad of another dog to play with. You will be surprised how they will sort out the introductions!!!

Good luck and post some pics of the new arrival.

When we decided to get a second Basenji, -the first one being a bit dog agressive- we were all a bit worried about how Saba will re-act to the second one (Ochre) so seeing how Saba was around the house (Quite protective of us and the house) we took them outside where it was no ones terrortriy and let them meet there, now love each other. Keep them on leads so you can control them if anything happens... You can also try parks and beaches.

Beauregard was 6 months old when we got Elvis. We took him with us to the breeder. When she opened the door he was greeted by 9 or 10 adults (she was dog-sitting) and a litter of puppies. That was his 'introduction'. By the time we got home a couple hours later they were best buddies. :luv: