Interpret This Video.....(sillysally)

I don't see anything wrong in the way they were behaving.
They just wanted to play and if the owners would have let them off leash thats just what they would have done.

Keeping the dog on the leash is much more stressful b/c the dog is taking in the owners feeling of worry and fearfullness.
It's best to allow your dog to have some reign and interact on thier own w/out tightening up. If a fight breaks out and you need to correct them then do so. But it irritates me to watch these owners be oblivious to friendly dogs.

Golden Tails

Keeping the dog on the leash is much more stressful b/c the dog is taking in the owners feeling of worry and fearfullness.

Agree, you can see that the owners dont really trust their dogs and they are "ready" to pull them back = owner's tension, fear, anxiety, etc. which is not the best attitude to have towards a meeting like this if its the dogs first time meeting each other (which probably was the case)

Dogs are too hyper for my taste to be introduced. The pitbull is more under control but it is still anxious

I agree...that was frustrating for me to watch.  Obviously the dogs were frustrated because they were not allowed to meet.  The dogs wanted to play, and if they were allowed to be off lead, I too feel like the would have been just fine.  Neither one had aggressive postures working...they were wiggly.

My guess is the owners were were working on focus training using the other dog as the distraction. 

Agree with all of the above comments.  These dogs were not showing any aggression that I could see and the tight leads were just amping the dogs up. 

 I agree, the body language all seemed friendly.  Ears back, play bows, their commissures were pulled back, bouncy movements.

My interpretation is how NOT to socialize a dog, lol.  I can't do any meetings on leash, I get too tense and do it all wrong.  If my dogs want to meet other dogs on walks or whatever (and the other owner is encouraging their dog), I drop the leash. 

Liesje

My interpretation is how NOT to socialize a dog, lol.  I can't do any meetings on leash, I get too tense and do it all wrong.  If my dogs want to meet other dogs on walks or whatever (and the other owner is encouraging their dog), I drop the leash. 

I feel the same way, especially about my own tension. A few months ago a neighbor's dog was off-leash in front of his house. I was walking Sassy and the dog saw us and came running full speed towards us. Sassy's ears were up and so were her hackles and I just felt like the best thing I could do was drop the leash and let her run with him. It turned out to be the very best thing I could've done and all went fine.

I'm guessing that Mr. Riggs has some behavioral issues perhaps?  He was the brown spotted dog.

He showed some signs of anxiety about the meeting (sniffing and turning away, lowered tail), but I feel, like some others, that there was more of an issue with his owner being too tense.  It's possible there's a reason for the tension - it's hard to untangle that without a context.  By the end, both dogs were highly anxious.  I too have no idea why we are doing the leash lunging thing.  Either we are going to trust these dogs to interact, or someone needs more work on social skills.

I watched a couple other videos with this dog.  In one he apparently spends many nursing (literally) a Bad Cuz.  In another he is being courted to play by what appears to be a younger dog, and he shows many characteristics of the "dog nerd" - behaviors that would earn him a "kick me" sign if courted similarly by a more confident, higher ranking dog.  Ie, he's very rude to the other dog. 

Finally, there's a vid where his owner, bless her heart, shows off his obedience while he's playing with a big plastic egg toy, which he obviously enjoys greatly.  In it, she uses the same recall and release cues that she used when she was shown asking her dog to interact with the other dog in the first video.

In the egg video, here's what I saw:

(Mr. Riggs plays with purple egg ehtusiastically) 

OWNER:  OK!

Mr. Riggs returns to heel position.

OWNER:  Good boy!  Good boy!

Mr. Riggs looks pleased with himself.

OWNER:  BISH (or whatever that was - some type of release)

Mr. Riggs goes and plays with his egg.

OWNER:  Good Boy!  Good Boy!

Okay, so what I'm seeing is that the release word, to Mr. Riggs, means go and attack something.  I don't mean aggressively, but one of my favorite herding trainers would point out that what we've done is taught the dog a command for "Go be brainless."  What I would focus on with this dog is ask him to do something with the egg  - probably several somethings, plus some oddball commands like distance downs, directionals and so forth.

Notice now when you look at the two dogs interacting, that the owner uses that same "Go be brainless" command when asking her dog to go interact with the dog asking to play.

 I noticed that weird "go be crazy" release, but it makes more sense now that you say she uses it in other situations.

It seems a bit tragic to me. He seems pretty clued in to his owner and I think a lot of the anxiety comes from her in one way or another. I don't really get it. Just let them play and the tension will melt away.

Egads!!  What the heck were those two girls trying to acheive?  The first cardinal rule broken is allowing these Dogs to greet face to face, eye to eye.  All they had to do was start walking, keep moving parallel to one another so that Dogs had opportunity to sniff one another's tails! This keeps EVERYONE relaxed and safe. Once they had some good whiffs and were walking with relaxation and ease, THEN just release them and let them freaking play for heaven's sake.  This was clearly taunting these dogs and setting them up for failure.

Also note that once again, Pitbulls demonstrate an incredible ability to respond to requests - that sweet boy was impressive and he showed the beauty of that Breed.

But if you take careful watch, he responded but his posture when back to heel was FAR from relaxed.  He kept looking up at her in a nervous way, saying, "Is this right?"  And when she didn't give him correct affirmation, he submitted to Down as if guessing that is what she wanted.  This woman is clearly a heavy handed handler and would be better off with a less sensitive Breed.  Trust me, that Dog makes her look good.  Her voice tone was ridiculous and unnecessary.  Some sort of power trip I would suspect.  I'd bet my bottom dollar her training tactics were less than "positive reinforcement" ones...... there were a few tones of Hundekommando's in there.  

What a frustrating little piece of video to watch.  

I agree with most of what Justine said. They were setting those dogs up to react to one another. They were both very animated and stimulated. As a pit bull owner, I would never let Rosco greet another dog at that level of stimulation, or with his tail held up with a fast wag. Not to mention face to face, with eye contact, tense leashes and forward body posture.

Even if the dog does return to heel position, he was dragging the owner toward the other dog, which is something I don't let my dogs do. It's rude, bad behavior, hard to control (once they are at the end of lead pulling with force), and self rewarding/reinforcing.

Do I think either dog is going to go bananas? Not sure. Is there a big opportunity for failure -- yes!
 

 I think Riggs would play given the chance.  The other dog was more conflicted about the greeting.  Riggs was more nervous of his handler than of the other dog IMO, and yes, that out-of-context ground sniff WAS a displacement signal. Not hard to see why, after the repeated idiocy of those nose to nose taut leash meetings.

All those tongue flicks can come from just being a genetically subordinate dog, or one that has reason to think a correction is coming if he isn't right. The commands that Riggs' handler was using are the ones traditionally used in Ringsport, so draw your own conclusions about that.

The commands that Riggs' handler was using are the ones traditionally used in Ringsport, so draw your own conclusions about that.

Really? I'm hard of hearing and the sound on my little MacBook stinks - I couldn't understand them.  What were they?  Wait, are you saying dog fighting (I'm sorry, I just realized you are saying "RingSPORT" not "Ring", ie, French protection)???

If so I'd be feeling pretty horrified right now.  Yikes. 

Yes, what I mean is French Ring Sport, which is a protection sport, not dog fighting. 

Au Pied is the command for "Heel".  Coucher is the command for "Down", and Pas Touche is "Leave It" (In Ring there is a food refusal exercise).

Not everyone who trains for such sports is a jerk, in fact I know a couple of nice people who do.  But, it does tend to attract more of the military, cop, show 'em who's boss types for the most part.