September 3, 2024

Walking to and back home from the park

Walking to the park on leash

We walked from my apartment area to the park in the next neighborhood over on leash. Doggie had an easy time dismissing dogs we met on walks. No problem passing them up close on the sidewalk. We practiced sitting and waiting to be released with “Libre” at the curb before crossing any and all streets we encountered, choosing a different route than the previous days: I want to mix it up to help him generalize. He’s getting better and better!

Choosing the pacifier tug over leash biting

During bouts of juvenile-dog-ness, by now, Doggie reliably chooses the fleece tug (when I have it on me) when his arousal gets high! Rather than jumping at me or biting my clothes/shoes, he simply holds on to his pacifier. Since this is actually more fun for him, he looks happy and calms down quickly – as opposed to occasionally looking desperate before I introduced the pacifier. I love how fast he learned to choose the fleece tug over leashes, human limbs and clothes!

Walking home off leash

Today is the longest I’ve had Doggie off leash in an urban environment: after our park adventures I’ll talk about below, we walked all the way home off leash. Doggie rocked it! I’m proud of him!

At the park: curiosity and neutrality towards unfamiliar dogs, handler focus, the tug pacifier and redirectability

Like aunt Chai, Doggie discovered how much fun it is to play in the fountains!

Today – a day WAY less busy than when we first came to this same park on the weekend – I had a few opportunities to record! The video below shows Doggie’s curiosity (first clip) as well as neutrality around other dogs, his handler focus (he chooses to happily play and walk with me rather than explore) and how easy it is to redirect him (last clip.)

If you’re located in the Global North, let me clarify something before you watch. The dog culture is different here. At this park (it’s in a somewhat, but not yet extremely gentrified area), there’s a 50/50 split of on and off leash dogs. Unless an on-leash dog’s human shows that they don’t want to be approached, on-leash greetings are welcomed by humans and dogs.

I know the Schnauzer in the first clip (but Doggie does not.) The reason I added this clip to the video is not to upset anyone, but to share Doggie’s curiosity – and, most of all, the “arousal-happy hackles” I mentioned in my post about day #1!

A fun detail to observe: “arousal-happy hackles” in puppies and juvenile dogs with a certain coat structure

You can see them well in the clip above, where Doggie interacts with the Schnauzer (watch his neck), and you can also see the loose body language. In the second clip, there’s still a bit of “arousal-happy hackles” from exploring the world.

Hackles up doesn’t necessarily mean a dog is grumpy. We need to read it as part of their overall body language. Think of it as a word in a sentence or a sentence in a paragraph: in and of itself, hackles in breeds with a certain coat structure (Malinois among them) mean arousal – no more and no less. The same goes for wagging tails (in all dogs): by themselves, they only mean arousal. They do not necessarily mean the dog is happy or friendly.

Unfamiliar humans at the park

As for humans, it’s been easy to redirect my off-leash guest at the park. He’s interested though and it doesn’t take much encouragement from a stranger, and he’ll approach. Running children are also tempting (but easy to redirect from.) I suspect if I didn’t redirect, he’d play-run and jump on kids. At 5.5 months, he is confident and playful with humans.

In the dog park

I also took Doggie into a dog park for the first time today. Below is a snippet of this part of our field trip:

This video is interesting. One, ideally, I would have hidden my treats and the toy to be less of a magnet for Doggie. He offers a lot of sits for me to get a treat (and since we are only just learning this behavior, I keep up my continuous reinforcement schedule.)

Doggie ignores the other dogs in the park in order to ask me for food instead. While this is lovely, it also shows that Doggie hasn’t been around non-household dogs: since he hasn’t been off leash outside and likes tugging on the leash, he has rarely been out and about with his humans. So it’s been a while that he had the opportunity to interact with unfamiliar dogs.

I’m reading my dog park observations the following way: Doggie is comfortable around dogs (I started recording right after going in, and the Basset Hounds came up right away to try and mug me for treats – no problem for Doggie.) At the same time, he doesn’t quite know what to do (how to play) with the unfamiliar dogs because he hasn’t had a chance to practice dog/dog play over the last few months. A dog his age and of his breed, with his level of energy, who isn’t afraid of other dogs should technically try to play, play and play even more (like he tries to convince Game and Chai to do.)

Watching him here, I decided to keep bringing him back into the dog park every day he’s with me to provide an opportunity to loosen up and start playing with the others. I might have to hide the food and tug the next time!

In any case, I’m really happy how chill he is around dog park dogs! My extreme-early-socialization bias wants to attribute this to the fact that he met between 50 and 60 different dogs in his first 8 weeks of life with me. If he hadn’t had this many interactions early on, I’d expect to see a fearful dog. Mind you, this is just me going off what I’ve seen in dogs this age who have not had a chance to interact with many other dogs since they moved to their humans at 8 weeks or so, and who have not experienced extreme early socialization.

In Doggie’s case, I see (I want to see!) a juvenile dog whose early puppyhood experiences have immunized him against fear of dogs. He hasn’t honed his dog/dog play skills with new dogs in months and therefore switches to known behaviors instead: sit to ask me for treats.

Thoughts on dog parks

We dog trainers will often tell folks to keep their dogs out of dog parks.

In reality, there is no one-size-fits-all solution: some dogs do great in dog parks. Others do not. Depending what part of the world a dog park is located in and what that dog park looks like, we can also either expect it to be filled with well socialized dogs … or with poorly socialized ones.

I don’t tell my international clients to take their young dogs into dog parks. I also don’t hesitate to take this puppy who I have raised with extreme early socialization into a Mexican dog park for continued juvenile socialization. Doggie is going to benefit. If he was a different dog or we were in a different part of the world, my decisions might look completely different. They’d also look different if I was a different person. There is no one right way, but there usually is what’s right for you and your dog right now – tomorrow may be different.

Free-roaming dogs around my apartment complex

I live in a neighborhood that’s not (yet) gentrified (not the same one as the one with the park I showed you), which means we get free-roaming dogs here.¹ Today, I recorded Doggie’s encounter with two of them. If I remember correctly, he has seen both these dogs once before (but I don’t have it on video.) It’s lovely to see how quickly he dismisses the white dog and shows interest in sniffing/scavenging instead! No hyper-greeter feelings, no fear. Just doing his thing and co-existing. He’s a lovely boy!

Thunder? So what!

In other news, it’s been thundering and raining at least once a day since Doggie got here, and he has either not stopped whatever he was doing or slept right through it. SO happy that he’s doing so well! Even when a transformer fuse exploded today, he didn’t miss a beat! Yay! I’m aware that noise sensitivity can develop later in life, as it did in Game – but so far, so good!

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1. Latin American dog culture differs widely, largely depending on two factors: (1) the socioeconomic bracket of a neighborhood and (2) whether it’s a rural or an urban area. ↩︎