22/04/2024
This is a very good breakdown! Your pups have individual personalities that should be respected ❤️
“sociability is a spectrum’ - I love this phrase.
ARE YOU A BOOK CLUB OR A RAVE PERSON? How I often explain dog social preferences to clients.... Imagine how you want to connect with people, how you fill your social cup. What's your ideal night? A book club with the same members week after week? A dinner party where you meet some friend's significant others but most of the people you know? A pub with a cozy familiar back ground with a mix of familiar and new faces? A rave filled to the brim with tons of new potential friends? Whatever your answer none of them are wrong, they are personal and right for you. But if your ideal night is a book club with the same people, you will likely going dislike being dragged to a rave. It's definitely not going to do much to fill your emotional cup. Your dog is not much different- What is your dog's idea social outing. A quiet walk with family members only (book club), a group class doing a parallel activity (dinner party dog), a walk in busy local park (pub) or a day at the dog park (rave). We need to stop trying to make book club dogs be rave dogs.... it does not fill their emotional cup or do them many favours. Instead they will likely be irritated and depleted. Your social preferences can change as you age and that's normal too. and the same for our dogs. Your young pup who may have loved the dog park, starts to dislike it by the age of 2, that's pretty normal. Kind of how I stopped liking clubs in my mid 20's. Sociability is a spectrum, it can change based on your dogs age, learning history, genetics and preferences. These preferences are not right or wrong, they just are. (we're not huge fans of free for all dog parks, although there are some dogs who thrive in that free play environment there are too many people who attend with unsocial dogs. We recommend you always carefully select your dog's play mates and monitor the body language of all parties well and interrupt when a dog is uncomfortable)
