Is Russell's role at the dog park, it seems. [8D]
We had what I counted as a positive experience at the dog park yesterday. We used to go almost every day but since he started "puppy hazing" I've gone less and less, now only very occasionally when I'm up to the (possible) challenge. He had good days and bad days there but I was getting so uptight about it, worrying he'd act up or someone would make a comment about him, I wasn't enjoying it anymore. Now I've starting going sometimes under certain circumstances - when I can take him for a long walk first and can go a little early,
before the whole "pack" is there for social hour.
So yesterday I took him for a 30min walk, played fetch alone for 20min at the park, then joined a small group of dogs to play for another 20min or so. There was one hairy moment when a Corgi puppy was bothering Russell's buddy, an older shih tzu. The shih tzu growled at the puppy and Russell bounded in to reprimand the pup. [
] Barking and air-nipping at his flanks. I called him off and to my delight he stopped, let the puppy sniff him, licked the pup's mouth, and was fine with him the rest of the day.
Then an adult ACD burst in the park full of energy. Initially Russell approached him in a submissive posture (squatting low, head and ears low). But when the ACD and a Lab started excitedly playing, chasing and wrestling with each other, Russell got excited and began to bark at them. For a moment I got tense and was about to remove him, but then I decided to chill out and just see what he'd do. He spent the next 10 minutes or so just following them and yipping excitedly. The dogs seemed not to care or even notice him. He never even air-snapped, and in fact he looked excited like he was having fun rather than getting agitated... when they'd run, he'd run after them quietly but bark again when they wrestled.
I think he's just excited by other dogs playing - does that sound accurate? More to the point, would you allow it? He started doing that in the playtime of our "Graduate Puppy" training class when he was about 7-8mo old, and our trainer didn't like it. She removed him from play, holding him in her arms, and once spent the whole time squirting him in the face with a water bottle (to my chagrin). I felt like he wasn't doing any harm, the dogs didn't care at all and he wasn't barking constantly to the point of annoying me - but he's my dog, would that drive you nuts if another dog did it at the park?
You can probably see just from this post how anxious and uptight I get about the dog park... but right now this is our only opportunity for him to be around other dogs. When we move my mother-in-law and brother-in-law have a few dogs between them and we probably won't "need" the dog park to have good dog-dog experiences.