A Dog’s Eye View: Tiramisu on Dog Parks

This week, in “A Dog’s Eye View”, Eric hands over his blog post to his Belgian Shepherd, Tiramisu.

Hello. My name is Tiramisu and I am a Groenendael, a Belgian Shepherd, the black kind. You may have seen the nice pictures of me on Life As A Human. Eric is my dad and I try to keep him as well trained as I can. I hope he doesn’t annoy you too much. He likes to talk about dogs. He’s agreed to let me talk to you today about what I saw at the dog park. I still don’t understand it but maybe you can help me figure out why some humans do what they do.

I was trying to explain to Dad about what I saw at dog park last week. It is so confusing! He tried very hard to explain it to me but he says I should tell you myself so he is typing this out for me.

A Poodle on a Flexible Leash

We went for a walk at the dog park to play and I saw many strange things. First, there was the small poodle. She seemed nice enough; very happy and very playful. I’m glad she wasn’t too close because she didn’t really have good manners. Her mom had her on a leash…a very strange leash. Sometimes it was very short and sometimes it was long.

What I didn’t understand was how the poodle could know how far was o.k. to go before getting yanked? Sometimes here was o.k.; sometimes there was ok.. I know that with my dad that the leash is either loose or it’s tight. But with this poodle, it was always tight no matter how far or how close she was to her mom. My dad always tells me “Easy” if I am pulling too hard, but the poodle’s mom would just pull on the leash and make it shorter. It must be so confusing for that poor poodle!  How far is too far when the distance is always changing and her mom never tells her it’s too far?

The Rottweiler in a Pinch

A little farther on the walk we saw a big black dog. My dad says it was a Rottweiler. this dog had one of those pinch collars on his neck. Dad used to put one on me when I was young to help me understand when I was pulling too hard. I saw something I had never seen before with this Rottweiler: every so often, the Rottweiler’s dad would yank on him and tell him “NO!” It must have hurt a little because the Rottweiler would drop his head and shake a bit to loosen the collar.

When Dad used this kind of collar with me, he would let me get to the end of the leash and if I pulled too hard the pinchers would be uncomfortable. It didn’t take long for me to discover that if I didn’t pull as hard, the prongs would relax some. I quickly learned how to control the collar with my own body by pulling more or less. That was when dad taught me what “Easy” meant. When I would release the tension on the leash to loosen the prongs, Dad would say “Easy” and I learned to ease up when he said that.

But the Rottweiler’s dad wasn’t saying anything. He was just yanking every so often, sometimes even when the leash was short. I asked the Rottweiler about this when we passed by. He said he wasn’t sure what was going on. It seemed to him that every time he got excited or interested in something, he would get yanked. He said it was frustrating because he thought his dad didn’t want him to check stuff out but sometimes it was o.k. and sometimes it wasn’t — and sometimes it hurt when he got yanked hard. I didn’t know what to tell him, he was so confused!

The “Friendly” Dogs

We came to an open field on our walk and there were a few dogs there playing with their moms and dads. Suddenly these two big dogs started running toward me. One was black and one was yellow colored. I was scared!  These dogs were bigger than me and they ran fast.  I had to think of something to do but I couldn’t, so I just froze and stood by dad who was yelling something to the dogs’ mom.

Just before the dogs got to us, dad stepped in between the dogs and me as best he could. But they were very rude! One of them tried sniffing me without even giving me a chance to introduce myself or even check them out first. His nose was poking right into my groin! Dad was trying to get them away and I was SCARED. I didn’t know these dogs at all or what they might do.

Dad kept yelling to the dogs’ mom but she was waving and smiling as she came over to us. I know Dad was doing his best but I was really getting annoyed with the poking and sniffing from the other dogs. I was on a leash and they were not! I could not get away from them. It was so frustrating.

Finally, I had enough of the rudeness from these two and I told them off sharply. The two rude dogs backed off but their mom wasn’t smiling any more and she was talking very sternly to my dad. Dad later told me that the woman said that he shouldn’t bring an aggressive dog like me to the park if he couldn’t control me. Control me? And she allows her two mannerless louts to run up to any dog and stick their noses where they want to without being invited? Dad said he didn’t understand some people and their dogs either.

The Ride Home

We found a nice fenced-in area and dad threw the ball for me for a while until I got a little tired. He always asks for something before throwing it. Sometimes I sit or spin around or go around him, and as a reward he throws the ball. I love this game because I never know what he will ask for — today he even asked for me to lie down! I know how to do all of that stuff so it’s easy — and I like showing off for my ball.

When we got back to the car, I gave dad the ball and hopped up into my travel house (crate) in the back and Dad gave me my usual treats. They were yummy. Dad gave me my chew bone to enjoy on the ride home. It was a fun trip.  It’s amazing to see how other dogs live. They all look happy but their moms and dads are sometimes very different from mine, some happy and some not so happy.  But I guess there are all kinds of ways to live with humans. I guess I’m pretty lucky.

Well, that’s about it. I hope you liked my stories. I’ll talk to you again sometime. I’m gonna have a nap now.

From the Secretary — Eric

The story above is, of course, a fictional recounting of some of my experiences with Tiramisu when we have been out for walks at parks. The individual dogs in the stories are fictional but the situations are very real.  We see them pretty much weekly on our travels to local parks with our dogs.

Many of the things we do with and for our dogs seem like good ideas. But they are only good ideas from a human point of view. Flex-Leashes seem to give our dogs lots of freedom but do they really do what we expect?  Does a dog need to know where the leash-boundary is? How far is too far? Should we have a command that asks them to ease up a bit or do we just give a pull to tell them that’s enough? I think it would benefit any dog-human relationship if we can learn to communicate the basics of how to walk together enjoyably.

Prong collars are great tools for helping an overly enthusiastic dog understand how to walk with less tension on a leash. They can also be devastating instruments of torture if used indiscriminately. Like any punishment, they can suppress behaviour in either specific or general ways depending on how precisely and carefully they are used. A dog consistently punished with a prong collar who can’t connect the jerk on the collar to a behaviour has no way to avoid it. So they simply begin to shut down. Perhaps for some people, that’s the goal.

Not all dogs enjoy the company of other dogs in close proximity. Many people like to let their dogs run off-leash, myself included. It’s a great way to give them some exercise, and running with other dogs is also a great activity for dogs. But I think dogs also deserve a chance to introduce themselves and get comfortable with each other. We’re not dogs so our human rules about what is and what is not appropriate may or may not apply. To a certain degree we need to let dogs be dogs.

But it’s not fair if a dog wants more distance and can’t get away because of a leash. It’s also not fair to yell at a dog if he is uncomfortable and tells the other dog to back off by barking or snarling. After all, dogs don’t have the ability to say, “Pardon me, would you mind stepping back a few feet?  You’re making me uncomfortable.”  Well, they do but it comes out as barking and snarling sometimes.

I think it’s important to take a “Dog’s Eye View” sometimes and try to help our dogs be successful in everyday tasks like dog walks, and to interact with others in addition to specific behaviours we might teach them. Communication, consistency, and clarity can go a long way.

I hope you enjoyed “Tira’s little talk” and I would like your comments on it. Perhaps I should do more articles like this!

Until next time – have fun with your dogs!

Photo Credits

All photos copyright Petra Wingate 2008-2010

Recent Eric Brad CPDT-KA Articles:

• The Dog That Changed My Life
• Keeping Your Dog Informed
• Teaching Your Dog to Not-Behave
• The Simple Complexity of Dog Training
• What The Dog Wants