why-animals-do-the-thing:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

Unpopular opinion: Don’t take your dog (especially a bully breed) to the dog park. Just don’t.

I do not know a single professional trainer who willingly will take animals to a dog park, or who doesn’t cringe and go ‘ugh, dog parks’ when anyone brings them up. Why? Because dog parks are generally where a huge number of dogs develop fear and reactivity problems due to lack of management. 

The problem with dog parks is the owners, honestly. Most dog owners are notoriously bad at reading their own dog’s body language or interpreting social behavior between dogs in the first place. Then, you have a dog park, where everyone assumes you can just let your dog run free and basically not have to pay attention to it. So you’ve got dogs of all temperaments, ages, sizes, and levels of polite manners running around unsupervised by their owners. 

Dogs get bullied at dog parks. Dogs get attacked at dog parks. Reactive dogs, fearful dogs, dogs that play too rough and bully other dogs, dogs that steal toys and/or resource guard them – people just let them loose in big dog parks and assume the dogs will sort it out. A lot of owners talk to their friends or sit on their cell-phone and ignore how their dog is behaving and how other dogs are interacting with them, which drives responsible dog owners who actually try to manage their dog during a dog park visit absolutely nuts. You hear constant stories, as a trainer, of people who had to go break up fights or rescue their dog from a bully only to be told ‘oh, they were just playing, it’s fine’. I know dogs who have been traumatized by being attacked or bullied at dog parks by dogs for whom that environment was really not appropriate to be in.  

So here’s why I say really, really don’t. You’ve got a bully breed, which means you’ve got an animal who (no matter how sweet), has to some degree a genetic disposition for dog reactivity and a low threshold for frustration. What that means is that you want to set him up for success by making sure you manage his experiences so he’s less likely to develop behavior problems. He’s also very young right now, which means he’s still learning polite dog manners and he’s also learning his boundaries and how to stand up for himself. While he’s out of his critical socialization period, experiences he has now are going to set up him for the rest of his life. – that’s not a dog you want to expose to the sheer potential for bad experiences at a dog park. 

You can’t control who shows up to a dog park, and it’s impossible to get some irresponsible owners to be more responsible. People think dog parks are a place they don’t have to deal with their dog, and that’s that. So honestly, skip the dog park, and set up playdates with other dogs one-on-one or in a small group. That way you can make sure all the dogs have been introduced properly and that they play well together, and you can step in to mediate if you need to without having to worry about the other animal’s owner getting upset. 

(Dog parks are also serious cesspools of parasites and disease, because people don’t tend to clean up after their pets or watch to see if dogs eat poop). 

Rebageling because more people need to read this one.