Dealing with Dogs with Poor Social Skills

We don’t know what Gabe and Rose dealt with before us. We know that many bully breed dogs need a little time to develop reliable social skills. We are still working on this with the twins.

We are training around other dogs who are on leash and at a safe distance. This is messy work and sometime the dogs pull and vocalize and there is a temptation to be embarrassed and quit. This isn’t the right choice! The babies need to learn and our calm means the learning is likely to happen more quickly. We can’t quit. Embarrassment is not terminal.

We are taking the dogs one at a time to the back of a parking lot where dogs are going in and at and playing. We look like stalkers, but having some music and treats and calmly watching can help the dogs learn from observation. It isn’t really flooding. We stay far enough away to avoid freaking out. We hope to move closer.

We walk them on one side a of chain link fence with another dog with a handler on the other side. We get close enough to sniff and calmly interact, but not push to difficult behavior. Our trainer has even brought her poodle over for sniff and ignore interactions.

This process is slow, messy, noisy, and sometimes discouraging when process is so slow. COVID doesn’t help. However, as a teacher of human students, I often talk about creating a safe place to make mistakes. We must go through the process of creating safe places for safe interactions and providing enough distance and time for small mistakes we can address and resolve. When a lesson isn’t working, it doesn’t mean it never will. It means we are in process.

Learning takes courage. The dogs deserve to have a fuller life and we deserve the peace. Good education takes time. We will move passed embarrassment when the dogs aren’t quite ready for a step, take a breath, and finder a smaller step to build success. Dog training is an intentional process of learning new skills and building the relationship between pup and person. We will endeavor bravely and have a stronger relationship because of the struggle.