08/13/2024
Many people are ✨shocked✨ to see that my dogs aren’t super dog-friendly. They’re a dog trainer’s dog, how can they be so mean?
“Mean” because they don’t run up to other dogs, mean because they aren’t dying to meet your dog, mean because they don’t tolerate inappropriate behavior..
To me, they’re an example of dogs with healthy boundaries and relationships to others. It seems to be the “norm” for a lot of dog owners to expect other dogs to tolerate all of their own dog’s behavior. If your child was being harassed by another child, would you tell them to tolerate it? Of course not; we would intervene and the same should be happening for our dogs.
Any inappropriate behavior (posturing, face licking, jumping, excessive sniffing), or really any behavior that makes the receiving dog uncomfortable, should be interrupted or punished.
This can happen in two ways: we intervene which is the preferred method. If your puppy is face-licking your older dog and your older dog isn’t enjoying it/is trying to get away, etc, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to remove the puppy from the older dog. We should not except any dog to tolerate annoying behavior and we certainly don’t want to raise our puppies to continue this. Or if your male dog is excessively sniffing a female dog to the point she’s uncomfortable, you can interrupt or punish that with a “no,” a nick on the ecollar, separating them, etc. It is your responsibility to manage your own dog and advocate for others.
The other option is to allow the receiving dog to correct the inappropriate dog, but this is rarely efficient and should only happen under very strict circumstances. We never want to allow a dog we don’t know to correct our dog. There’s a good chance they won’t, which will teach tolerance, and there’s an equally good chance they will overcorrect, resulting in injury or fight.
Often a puppy is raised where other dogs are expected to tolerate behavior. One day the puppy runs up to a dog and starts behavior that they’ve rehearsed, the new dog doesn’t tolerate it and corrects the dog/starts a fight...
Read the full article here:
https://www.horizonretrievers.com/post/socialization-1
