Since discovering 'dog psychology' I take every opportunity to observe dogs when I am out and about and more to the point their owner's behaviour with them.
Sat in the vets the other day (the poor old boy having developed some wobbliness in his back legs), I was struck by just how much owner's unwittingly reinforce their dog's levels of excitement and how much they humanise them.
A Minature Schnauzer is delivered back to her owner following having some stitches out, she is perky and excited, busy barking at everyone and everything. the owner talks to the dog saying, 'yes are you better now and feeling good about having your stitches out?' this reinforces the dogs excitement and she continues to bark and prance about. Some would say cute and others would say that the dog is over-excited and if she bumps into the wrong dog right now this could lead to a fight. This owner is not meeting the dogs needs, her role should not be to induce excitement in this situation and she should be working on keeping things calm. This is particularly true in a small space like a vet's waiting room when there are all sorts of hazards, lots of different animals, people and children.
Sonny is a different kettle of fish, he positively hates the vets and visibly shakes when he's in there. He is so scared in fact that he forgets all about his distrust of other dogs which is good in one way and not in another. We are working on sitting it out with him, not allowing him to climb up in our laps, although he tries and keeping a short but slack lead. If we stayed in the waiting room long enough eventually he would calm down as they cannot keep up that level of fear indefinitely and it must burn itself out. However unfortunately there is not really enough space for us to sit there for that long.
Up ahead there is a young Boxer. These are high energy dogs at the best of times and he is busy sitting there lording it over his owner, he tells another dog off as it passes him, the owner laughs. Still being a dog behaviour novice, I'm not sure whether that was aggression or not but I do think that as owners we need to take our dog's behaviour seriously whenever it interacts with another dog.
It's easy to say all this with hindsight of course. A few years ago I was one of those people doing all of those things with my dogs. It may well be that these owners will have a stress free life with their particular canines or they may go on to develop more problems. When does a dog that barks incessantly become a pain rather than cute, I think it's probably when you are in the middle of an important phone call and you realise that it would have been quite useful to teach your dog to stop barking.
One of things that I have realised most recently is how much a gift being CALM and PATIENT with your dog can be. For one thing when we are calm we are in a place to notice much more the subtle behaviours that our dog is showing us which tell us more about their behavioural problems. Secondly, how can we teach our dog to be calm if we are not. Cesar said dogs don't listen to excited, aggressive or, nervous energy. Pack leaders are CALM ASSERTIVE.
I'll keep practising...
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