Then we headed for the downtown park to dry off in the sun on our blankets. Putting our Mat Training Games into real life situations. The doggies noticed people and dogs go past in the distance and were calm on their mats. We got some work done! Those mat training games paid off.
But then ... an irresponsible dog owner passed by on his bicycle with his dog off leash, crashed our party and stole one of our dog's chewies. Whether the dogs was friendly or not was not the issue ... whatever breed it was wasn't the issue ... (well maybe not a major one) but the dog came up uninvited to a picnic and didn't respond quickly to the owners cues to come or to drop the chewie. Grrrr... Luckily I have benefited from anger control methods and meditation ... and our dogs have benefited from practicing the "Car Crash" or "Dog in Yer Face" games ... We do a lot of exerices from Leslie McDevitt's excellent book "Control Unleashed"
http://controlunleashed.net/index.html
See our Training Workshops and learn exercises that can help you in situations such as these.
There may even be a reactive dog class coming soon!
PUT ME ON THE WAITING LIST!!!
ReplyDeleteSuch a perfect picnic we had...LAT game, chill'n while we were busy..UNTIL that off leash PITT was right behind us...stealing a CHEWY! OWNER not even WARNING us!!!!
THANKS to you...WE actually got it back!
HOW many people would have let their dog 'DEAL' with that situation...do people even know how dangerous it is letting two strange dogs "DEAL with a bone?" Or break up a fight over one?
I may even call animal control. It's one thing when a dog gets away by human error and the human actually tries to help out...but that guy just IGNORED that we asked him to call his dog....