This actually used to be one of my most dreaded phrases for a long time. WARNING: May be triggering for others who have experienced the same situation.
Following on from Lucy Heaths brilliant post on Dog Walking Etiquette I want to explain why these unwritten rules are so important. So sorry if this one turns into an essay.
Some dogs need space. I know this all too well, and it just takes one incident to cause it.
Imagine, you, your pup and your best friend were out walking your four month old puppy.
You are feeling really happy that your dog feels confident although not too ‘in your face’ around other dogs. You decide to take her to the park to let her off lead. She has even started to crack loose lead walking.
When you arrive, you ask for a nice calm sit. At that point, you turn to see a dog running at full pelt towards her. His owner is at the other end of the field, about 100 metres or so away.
You think to yourself, “Ok, this dog must be friendly, its human doesn’t seem to be too worried about it saying hello to my young pup”.
At which point, in a split second that dog goes for your dogs neck, shoulders and attempts to start shaking. Your young puppy is squealing, whimpering, crying and shaking with her tail between her legs. The owner didn’t even apologise or attempt to put his dog back on the lead.
Somehow, you manage to separate them and miraculously there doesn’t seem to be any obvious injuries. However, your pup is lying down, unable to walk with fear.
You end up having to carry her the whole way back as the thought of walking terrifies her.
For the next two weeks, you cannot get your once very confident puppy out the front door without carrying her.
A month later, she finally has the confidence to go on walks happily again…until she sees another dog at the other side of the road. As she is still very young and feels very scared, she lies down and stays rooted to the spot.
Now imagine walking her, and shes on the lead. Other dogs run up to her, and she has a few further smaller run ins with other dogs.
Her nerves are a bit fried although to other people it sounds like a trivial incident. She has grown up a bit and is determined that she wont get herself into that dangerous situation of meeting another dog whilst on the lead. She will do ANYTHING to get herself out of that horrible situation.
Even your “friendly” dog. BTW, no dog is 100% infallibly friendly. Neither are we. We both have something called a threshold that I will explain in another post.
This includes pulling away, trying to escape her collar or harness, barking, growling and lunging. If you walked past us at the time you would probably be judging us heavily for having such ill mannered dog. After all, your 4 year old bouncy jack russel only wants to play right? Wrong!
The thing is, its people like you that can make incidents like this worse and cause my dog to feel scared and trapped.
I think this poster explains it really, really, really well:
You are probably thinking, well, your dog is the one being badly behaved and rude, my dog is innocent and wouldn’t hurt a fly. To explain it more in depth, let me use an analogy.
You are on a tube. The carriage is packed. There is nowhere to sit. You are feeling fed up as you would prefer somewhere to feel relaxed and have some personal space.
Then a man comes up to you. He is quite short, and quite young. He looks normal, just like any other person standing. However, he looks at you.
Ok, fine you think.
Then he proceeds to come a bit closer to you, really invading your personal space. You start to feel uncomfortable. You turn away, feeling awkward and hoping he will go away at the next stop. After all you can’t escape as you are trapped in a carriage.
But the thing is, he doesn’t. He brushes is body against yours, and places his face really close to yours. You feel threatened, this does not feel like a safe situation and you want him to back off. You tell him to.
He ignores you and starts shouting in your face and grabbing you. You tell him again for the second time to back the hell off and to get out your face.
Next thing you know he is has you in his grip, you can’t physically escape and you completely lose the plot. You are wondering whether it would be socially acceptable and a reasonable reaction to kick him to get him to go away and phone the police, after all he has harassed and physically assaulted you.
Eventually he is dragged off the train having had the whole incident observed on CCTV.
Entirely reasonable?
Your dog can’t talk to tell another dog to back off.
She can turn away, throw stress signals but may need to resort to barking or growling to tell another dog she is uncomfortable with the situation and to back off.
Personally, I would prefer a dog to bark, growl and lunge rather than air snap or bite the other dog. We prefer to talk to people, shout at them, push them away to get out of a situation rather than physically injure them.
Humans have a warning system to tell other people to back off which is universally accepted. Why don’t people give our dogs the same respect?
In my view, both people and dogs have rights and responsibilities:
Owners of lead reactive dogs, you have a right to walk safely but also a responsibility to keep other dogs safe.
Here are some tips that I have found as good ground rules if you have a reactive dog:
1) Know your dogs threshold limit. Do not put your dog in another situation on purpose where you know he could get scared.
2) If your dog is completely dog reactive, not just lead reactive, it may be wise to walk in alternative locations or secure paddocks until you have total control. Alternatively it may be wise to use a long line.
3) Its ok to be “rude” to other walkers. It is perfectly fine to turn away in the opposite direction or tell other walkers to call their dogs back/put them on a lead if your dog gets scared.
4) Formulate a training plan to HELP YOU DOG GET BETTER. Personally I used Donna Hills “Look at that” game and Pams “Surprise Party” game* (for emergencies when we couldn’t avoid other dogs).
5) Following on from that, always carry high value treats to be able to do this
6) Consider using a double ended lead with a front clip harness (This will help your dog in a non aversive way stop lunging and help with loose lead walking, more on this later!)
7) Make it obvious. Get your dog a “I NEED SPACE” bandana or vest. Personally I found the bandanna from Yellow Dog UK better for Betsy as the vest would often slip off.
8) Spread the word about the yellow dogs campaign and help educate other owners, in a positive way.
9) Have patience, a year later and we cracked it. We have performed at Paws in the Park, the National Pet Show and the London Pet Show. We could of only dreamt of doing this before.
thehoundwrangler 