So when I got to the dog park today, there was only one other dog there, a yellow lab who looked to be about 5 months old.
Now, many of us have some pretty fundamental disagreements about dog training, but I think we can all agree on one thing: you cannot train a good recall if you punish your dog every time she comes to you. Yet, this is exactly what this dog's owners were attempting.
When I got there, of course my dogs ran up to her and they all started playing, and she was playing puppy-style. My dogs are very tolerant, especially of pups, so I made it clear that her silly playing was just fine with them. But they started trying to recall her. Just yelling, "Bella! Bella! Bella! Bella! BELLA!!!" Okay, there's mistake #1. Issue a command one time (and the dog's name is a command? what's up with that?), not over and over and over so it just becomes so much background noise. The guy says to me, "We're trying to train her to recall with distractions." And I was like, "Wellll, it looks like she needs more training without still." because this dog was clearly not in any way shape or form recalling. And they had no way to enforce the recall because it's a dog park and the dogs are off leash.
Okay so let's recap. 5 month old puppy lab, just for the first time meeting two playful adult dogs, and now is the time you want to practice recall with distractions? Now? Really?
But wait, there's more.
So the woman starts chasing Bella around, yelling "Bella! BELLA! YOU LISTEN TO ME! Bella! YOU LISTEN! BELLA!!!" And Bella is totally not paying any attention at all because, remember the two brand new adult dogs? Still there. Still playing. And I'm sorry I'm not going to recall my dogs from a perfectly safe and fun play session because someone else has chosen an incredibly crappy time to try this whole recall with distractions biz. It's a dog park. Dogs play here. And frankly the woman was getting so angry I kind of wanted the dog to get as much playing in as possible because I had a feeling that was going to come to an end very soon.
So finally Conrad and Marlowe spin off and are playing with each other, the woman catches up to Bella and smacks her! Hard! On the behind! So of course, Bella, having a sense of self-preservation, runs off again and this woman is about to blow her stack at this poor puppy. And I'm standing there watching this whole thing saying "She's not going to come to you if you punish her when she does! She doesn't understand what you want! You're punishing her for coming!!!" And these people are not listening to me at all. The woman is like speaking entire paragraphs to this dog about how she WILL obey and she WILL come and she WILL listen. Why do people not realize that DOGS DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH!?!?
So finally, they snag poor Bella (who by the way is just so cute I could eat her up), put her on her leash, which is of course a flexi, the Official Leash of Stupid Dog Owners everywhere (not saying all people with flexis are stupid, but I have noticed that all stupid people have flexis). And then they proceed to remove Bella to the center of the park--the dog park--and then just stand there. Yelling at her as she's expressing an interest in playing some more. So I recall my dogs every time they get near her because I don't want them to get her in trouble now that I've seen what these people do to their dog when she "disobeys" (which I'm going to put in quotes because to obey a command a dog has to actually understand what the command is and means). In the fenced area of the dog park, Conrad and Marlowe have a 100% recall at this point and I had also brought the whistle to give a few trials of our Brand New Whistle Recall (tm). I made a huge display of loving them up every time they recalled just so Bella's people could see that
that's how you get a dog to come to you every time.
These winners stood out in the middle of the dog park for a good five minutes, with their puppy on a leash, "disciplining" her every time she did something wrong, which of course, she had no idea of. They didn't employ any commands or give her any incompatible behaviors. Just "NO!!! BELLA! YOU LISTEN!!!" every time she did something they didn't like.
It was awful and disgusting. I was glad when they left but I seriously wanted to rescue little Bella. Her behavior around them, especially the woman, made it pretty clear that she has been hit many times. Once the woman got near her in her attempts to "catch" her, Bella would crouch low and get ready for a blow and then as soon as possible run as far away as possible again. Classic behavior of a dog being mis-trained with punishment (not saying you can't train a dog with punishment properly though I personally prefer not to, but you can seriously MIS-train a dog with punishment).
I have to say that I was unprepared for the whole scene. In general, the denizens of our dog park are pretty dog-savvy and I rarely if ever really see someone screwing their dog's training up royally. I dunno, what would you all have done? I really did try to tell them that they were punishing their dog for coming and that that won't work, and also that they probably need to do more training with fewer distractions first. But they completley acted like I wasn't even there.