I am on the whole a very assertive person in my professional role but at home and in a personal capacity I really falter when it comes to asking/telling my friends to not let/encourage Harley to jump or get over excited. So I completely understand what you are saying @selina27, I would rather avoid the situation than ask them to stop a certain behaviour with Harley. If it is something hurtful to her I would definitely say something but we have a friend that tends to get her excited and Harley jumps on her. The friend doesn't complain but my heart just sinks because I think of all the training we have done. And I DO say something but clearly it is not assertive enough to get her (the friend) to stop the behaviour. She lives away from her home town at the moment and loves dogs so much that I feel too bad to ask her to stop playing the way she does with Harley. I know. I am a baby and I need to speak up. But I would rather avoid the situation. I am so serious in my job that I kind of just want to be a bit more laid back and fun at home.
I have a friend who just can't help it. My dogs are excitable with visitors, but they are crazy with him! I ask him to ignore them at first and then use a non-excited voice and slow strokes but he simply can't do it. He laughs and giggles at them and simply gets them worked up. They adore him, of course.
Most people seem to love labradors as well. If I'm walking with other dogs people always want to say hello to Stanley. It's probably also because he's giving full body wags with a big smile and you can practically hear him like "pleasebemyfriendpleasebemyfriend". I think I probably got socialisation wrong and interpreted it to be mainly people/other dogs. I have friends/family with aggressive dogs and I see how stressful it can be walking them so I really didn't want that. Stanley got paraded around everywhere with me for months - met every kind of person and dog. I didn't focus on sounds etc but he probably got it anyway from being out so much. He came to the supermarket and everything Only recently though we were on a walk and we saw some cows. Stanleys hackles went up and he hid behind me and OH. That was the first time he'd ever seen cows, and the first time I'd ever really seen him react to something in a not friendly way. So it's definitely affirmed my belief that socialisation is so important!
I see no problem with wanting to have some fun. Could you, perhaps, have a 'play' cue of some sort that is reserved for the times when Harley is permitted to have fun with your friend? It will initially be tougher for her, and you, because of the lack of consistency but I think if you work at it then it could be a viable approach. What do others think?
I think dogs can differentiate anyway! Stanley never jumps up at me or OH, my parents or his parents. I have friends who have dogs and turned their backs on him and he never jumps up at them. Our friends who let him jump and fuss though he thinks are fair game and will tigger them for ages. I just let him, they don't seem to mind - they love it infact. I used to ask them not to but they just ignored me anyway so I just think bigger fools them
I don't doubt that you're right about that. There are people in our life who have done the right things when meeting Cassie -- guess what, they don't get jumped on! Then there are people who don't do the right things --- guess what, they still get jumped up on. It's all ok -- it's more strangers or people who admire her when she's sitting patiently while I chat, as she does now, who despite me asking them not to, insist on touching her and then it all goes wrong, never mind, we will get there.
@Harley Quinn , could you start a thread about the psychology of dog training? I'm sure a lot of the issue is my fear of appearing to fail in front of others . OP, sorry your thread seems to have taken a diversion.
One thing is definitely true - once that service dog (or in Mags' case guide dog) vest goes on, it's open season on having conversations with strangers in public. People are very curious - especially outside of the US/UK/Ireland where service dogs are still very much an unknown quantity. People know guide dogs, but not service dogs. But as Mags' says, I loved talking about Brogan, so it was no hardship at all to stand and talk to people about what is a service dog, how are they trained, what do they do, etc. I really miss those conversations now that Brogan is gone. Heck, I probably learned more Italian especially thanks to Brogan than my formal schooling (apologies to my fab Italian teacher). As one of my friends pointed out, probably 90% of my own daily socialisation with other humans came from people stopping me on the street during our evening walks to talk to and about Brogan. I'm will most likely do this with my puppy, but with the reverse idea, i.e. something that says, "Service dog in training, please pet me". Or maybe, "Please pet me, but ask first". I want to encourage the idea that getting petted by lots and lots of humans is a normal thing and nothing to get excited over. Both my Rotties loved people and were very good for holding still for pets, so I'm not really worried that a Lab wouldn't be the same... but I'm expecting the "holding still" part may be a little more challenging.
Oh yes - holding still is not exactly a Lab trait Mollie came to Church with me today, as she always does, and - for the first time - she was paw perfect. When she was petted her whole body wagged but she kept all paws down and her mouth to herself. She also settled and snoozed - hurrah, a first! .
Until today I would have said that I regret not taking Harley to the beach. We live in a small seaside city and we have had no excuse to take Harls to the beach except my own anxiety. I was worried that she would run away, be attacked by other dogs or get injured. So we took her for the first time today. I have shared the videos in the video and photo link board
Definitely didn't do enough of this, reinforcing being settled in cafes and pubs, or just settled out and about. H gets so impatient if it's not all about him. We live in an area with lots of young families. As soon as H was doing lead walks to the park mums, dads and little ones would come up to talk to us and meet the puppy. I would warn parents first, calmly say "he might lick your face" as I gently held his collar. Most parents would be fine with that and the little ones would pat his back. H would get a little treat for waiting then off we'd go. Managing to both desensitise Homer to small children and children to dogs. He loves playing with children dropping his ball fir them and encouraging them to play. Luckily what we did as a puppy payed off as he hasn't bounded up to children boisterously but he's not an overly boisterous dog. If he jumped up to children as a puppy I may have treated his encountered differently.
I think the key thing is to try to assess what kind of puppy you have. Do you have a 'fools rush in' type of puppy, or a shy puppy? I think it is DEFINITELY a breed thing. I once watched a DVD on socialisation with several different puppies in a room of people. The differences were incredible. The trainer (on the DVD) said: "now here is a Labrador, watch, this puppy will socialise itself". And it did, it barged into the crowd of people like a canon ball, and was immediately comfortable, happy, then started doing zoomies as its 'totally over excited' switch was flipped. Not all Lab puppies are like this, of course. You get the shy ones and they are all individuals. But both of mine have been fearless and tended to over excitement. With my first puppy, Charlie, I socialised him like crazy. There are some advantages to this, he is pretty much fearless as an adult and I'd go anywhere with him and know he'd be comfortable. But, it also took months, years, to then get him to calm down around people, dogs, or anything that moves. It was a long old haul and he is, even now, still at the end of the 'extremely excitable' spectrum. If I had known more, I would still have socialised him, but done a thousand times more impulse control too. With Betsy, I got her out and about as much as Charlie, but she did a great deal more ignoring of people and dogs rather than meeting them. This paid off massively in my view. At 4 months I had her going to group classes and settling down. Lead walking was easy to train. She still has her moments, and can be a nightmare jumping up at times, but nothing that stops me getting on with the things I want to do. Betsy is not fearless though. She is not that keen on strange men for example. She doesn't seem scared exactly, but will hesitate to approach a stranger out and about - she'll go to within about 2m of them and stand there wagging her tail but won't go up to them. This is really ok with me though, it's better than her rushing up and jumping on them!
