"The answer to 'How do I make my dog be comfortable in a dog park?' is you don’t. You honor your dog's feelings on this, and you realize that not every dog was meant to be a party animal.
Read More
"The easiest way for the dog to get comfortable is to be able to figure out how this house works. If you're very clear from the day they walk in about the rules... that’s what creates comfort for an animal. They can cope with whatever set of rules you have, as long as they are there from day one. It’s actually more cruel to let him on the couch now and then, three months later when you're no longer feeling sorry for him, try to take that away."
Read More
Unfortunately, the real damage that is done there is not so much to the confident dog. Clearly, it was confident enough to deal with it, but to the small dog that walks away thinking, Aha, see how this works, right? See how tough I am. Because it's only a matter of time. My famous phrase tick tock. It's only a matter of time. Every time something happens to a dog that was kind of predictable behavior, that's what I say. Oh, well, tick tock. The clock was on that one because it was going to happen. When you have a dog that does that over and over again, they're going to end up that's somebody barking. They're going to end up running into the dog that won't take that crap off of them.
Read More
And sometimes, if that means when I go to visit my sister, who's out of state, we don't see them that often, I always take a crate with me. So I might have three dogs and only one crate, but I have a crate so that if I have a dog that's going a little over the top and I don't want to deal with him, I don't want to have to put myself in a position where I'm stressed out because I'm trying to be entertaining with my family and deal with the dog. I can use the crate most of the time.
Read More