Non-discipline for rescue dogs?

BostonBanker

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#44
I do believe than any rescue OR breeder should take responsibility to make sure that the people they sell or adopt to are reasonably well educated. However, that's just not going to happen in all cases.
Because if they do, people will go on forums and Facebook yelling about how the rescue/breeder turned them down and it would be better for the dog to be in their home than dead and if the rescue let them have this dog they could go save another one and and and....

Maybe I'm more tolerant than some (and every person who knows me in real life is snorting at that statement). Maybe it is because I live in a relatively dog savvy, outdoor oriented area. But really...I don't see much that bothers me with other people and their dogs. Some people probably think my dogs live bad lives. I had someone sort of off-handed, in a way that you could tell they were trying to bring up something that was bothering them, mention a few years ago that they never saw Meg get walked. Well...no. Because she was spending all my working hours outdoors on a farm with me, and came home and crashed. I think of things like that when I consider judging someone and how they choose to live with their dog.
 

Danefied

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#45
There should be a strict screening process and handling courses akin to that for nuclear weaponry for any potential dog owner.
Except dogs are not nuclear weapons, and the truth is, *most* dogs make perfectly find family dogs with minimal or even no training. I know, because when you have a few dogs that you work your butt off trying to teach them not to eat people or other pets it does tend to get to you that the neighbor up the road who’s dog has never stepped foot in a training building turned out just great.
Dogs have evolved forever along side of man to be companions, and they really are pretty idiot proof most of the time.

"You can't feed a dog chocolate?? Really?!"
Some dogs do fine eating small amounts of chocolate for life. Dark chocolate is really bad, but milk chocolate? Chocolate ice cream? Pfft... Lunar just licked the leftovers of a bowl of icecream with chocolate syrup.

"You need to walk it HOW many times a DAY?!"
Leash walks rarely happen for our old men, actually never for Biko. Last time he had a leash on was his well-dog vet visit a year ago.

"No I don't wanna do obedience training with her, she's only 4 lbs."
Obedience training or manners training? Honestly, leave it and wait at threshholds are probably more important cues than sit or down and neither are used in obedience competitions.
 
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#46
It might be the end of summer/back to school, a change in karma, the moon a certain degree in Aquarius - but whatever it is - in the past week or so we have been encountering more and more out of control dogs, off leash disasters, and just straight out idiots in general who have absolutely no business owning a dog. Prior to getting Katalin the amount of research and time I spent on doing homework was massive - and I see other people that get puppies "just because their cute" or whatever; I'm sorry - but I have a very low tolerance for that. Seriously.
 

Emily

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#47
When it comes to a strange dog affecting you with unwanted behaviour that I understand, but griping about other people not being as into dogs as we are or doing all the training we do? Meh.
This. Unless it's affecting me, it's none of my business. I used to have a stick up my ass about other peoples' dogs. Funny thing is that getting into performance sports promptly removed it, thank god. I guess I just found better things to worry about, LOL. I was seriously such a PITA.

I work the general public and their dogs all the time. Those who don't want to train won't, and they will come up with any excuse. There may be a small segment who truly believe that training = harsh methods and that their rescue dog will just wilt under such handling, and so can't be trained. I've met a few who were like, "Whoa whoa whoa, are you telling me we can housebreak him without rubbing his nose in it?!?! ...Go on, tell me more of these dark arts." LOL. But mostly, the dogs that go untrained (and unmanaged) do so because their owners don't want to train them. The rescue/small/this breed stuff is an excuse. Now lots of people have rescues so they have lots of excuses.
 

Barbara!

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#48
Amazingly enough, some people just don't care that much about dogs. *gasp* LOL.

When talking about my own dogs, I have heard "but it's only a DOG" countless times.
 

MandyPug

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#51
.... Same. :eek: LOL It's boring and it takes too much out of me and not enough out of them! If I "walk" it's to get to a park where I can do OB work and play fetch.
That's pretty much my feelings about walks and where I do walk to if i do. However, off leash walks in the coulees up and down those hills with just izzie or with other dogs does wear her out.
 

Emily

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#52
That's pretty much my feelings about walks and where I do walk to if i do. However, off leash walks in the coulees up and down those hills with just izzie or with other dogs does wear her out.
Oh yeah, off leash walks are different to me. :)
 

sillysally

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#53
See, I love walking my dogs, but then I enjoy walking in general. Unfortunately, I have one reactive dog and a neighborhood with lots of either loose dogs or "surprise" dogs that you don't see until they're right on top of you barking, and the other dog can't be walked long distances due to his elbow. So, he has to have short walks and she is generally taken to parks to be walked at "off" hours to avoid being bombarded. I actually sprained my ankle badly walking the dog, so have not walked in a while and miss it (we do have a fenced yard). I love taking Sally out to my moms to walk--we can go for hours walking down country roads through wooded areas. She can't be off leash, but I put her on a harness and it's the only time I ever put her on a flexi. Long walk, just me and her, seeing tons of critters, she gets to wade in the swamp--we both have a blast.

My favorite way to "walk" a dog is off leash from horseback though. My aunt used to have a rat terrier/border collie mix named Belle (would have made an AWESOME agility dog). When I was a kid my mare Sheena lived basically in our yard, and we lived a 5 minute walk from some awesome horse trails. I would put Belle on a leash and hand walk her and Sheena to the trails (Sheena loved dogs) and let Belle off leash when we got there. We would go for hours and she had great recall and would stick with us without really being trained to do so.
 

Barbara!

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#55
Well...it's not technically..."legal" when I walk my dogs off leash.. I am just not going to get caught. Lol.
 

yoko

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#56
I see this with smaller dogs all the time but usually the medium/larger dogs have at least the basics down.

But I am kind of forgiving with some people. Lady was a rescue not from a rescue or a shelter but still a rescue. At home she was perfectly calm and loving and trained. If you came over to my house and tried to pet her even though she was throwing off signs not to touch her she would freak out. She was beat pretty severely almost daily before I got her and was afraid of so much. Men terrified her, hoses terrified her, couches, chairs, carpet, anything new was super scary.

If you let me get her and let her slowly get use to you she was fine. But so many times people would try to force themselves on her and then when she shied away or tried to get behind and then say she needed to be trained without first knowing her history.
 

Laurelin

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#58
The place I go requires a leash. But honestly... I go so early no one is ever there. I actually usually have them drag their leashes on the main paved trail anyways but it's so easy to see a long ways off the few times we see people I can just pick the leashes up. I figure they're technically 'on a leash' and they still get more freedom to explore.

There's some off the road areas that are generally empty too if you go early enough. We do those off leash. They tend to be inhabited by teenage/young adult boys that use them to hide out and drink (we find piles of beer cans sometimes back there). It's on a frisbee golf course which also attracts college aged guys. So if you go before noon, no one is there. LOL Three hour walk there on and we ran into ONE person the whole time and my dogs ignored him. They're really great off leash and I always keep cookies on me to practice recalls just in case.

I'm also lucky in that my dad owns land nearby that we can walk on.
 
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#59
I'm betting that part of the reason Stephie's getting flooded with the obnoxious ones is because it's often when she's got Katalin with her? An unusual breed, big fuzzy attractive puppy and people -- and other dogs -- are drawn to them.

I got way more of that sort of idiocy when Kharma was a pup than I ever did with the GSDs or Terriers.
 

Doberluv

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#60
Even when my past dogs lived on acreage and would get to play and run when I was outside, they still LOVED it when I'd ask if they wanted to go on a walk. They'd become ecstatic....even though they might have been rip roaring around the pasture or woods on my property. Something about going with me and going somewhere off the property...someplace they didn't go every day made them so joyful. Plus, I enjoy walking with them. Even now, when I have to use a leash, we love taking walks...short ones, long ones...something off the property. Mostly now, it's just Jose` or my son's dog I take for walks.

Chulita has issues with going for walks now that her vision is screwed up. However, after a successful walk around Lowe's home improvement store, my daughter and I took her and Jose` to this big park they had never been to, but one we use to go to when the kids were little. There were woodsy trails and a big grassy field where people were having bbq's and kids were playing. She LOVED it...wasn't afraid of anything and trotted along the trail like she use to in Idaho. So, that fearful thing has me a little baffled. Maybe it's just around here on the sidewalks. Maybe something in particular frightened her and she's associated it with a certain kind of place. So, more parks for us. Anyhow, they love going to new places.
 

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