[NAGDU] {Spam?} Re: Loose dogs?

[Tami Jarvis]

Daryl,

Honestly, if it's not affecting her work or building up towards 
aggression or likely to turn into a real dog fight, I would let be. It 
might be a good time to do some recall with reward for Jenny, which 
would tone her side of things down a bit and might even teach her to 
just ignore the dogs when they go by. This might also cause the dogs to 
ignore Jenny more. In my experience, it takes a pretty high-value reward 
to lure a dog away from a fun session of fence barking. If I don't have 
enough temptation to compete, then I'm better off not calling them.

Every now and then a dog we haven't seen before will wander around loose 
here. My dogs will go bonkers at first, then settle down and just watch 
it sniff around or make fence friends with it. I figure if it's hanging 
around our fence line, it's not going into the street, so that keeps it 
safe until the owner shows up or animal control shows up or the dog just 
gets bored with adventure and trots on home.

Oh, the important thing not to do is to add excitement to the mix by 
running around trying to catch your dog to drag her away, unless you are 
better at grabbing a collar while she's avoiding you than I am. /lol/ 
That drives me crazy sometimes, and then I want to jump up and down and 
screech, which really winds things up. It works out much better in the 
long run to figure dogs are dogs, and as long as they don't go too 
overboard, they can just settle down on their own. It's pretty normal 
here for dogs to be barking in their yards, so I can be more relaxed 
about it than if I lived where the culture is more uptight about that 
sort of thing. We all just try to keep our beasts within reasonable 
limits and let them be what they are.

I have been noticing that I am barked at less walking with Loki these 
days. I guess he's learned to ignore them and has enough maturity to 
just go about his business. Most of the time. I get a little lost at 
times on the route in and out of the neighborhood because if the dog in 
the yard on any given block isn't barking at me, I must not be where I 
think I am. I've gotten lost in my own yard at night because the usual 
barkers weren't active for some reason. I try to remember not to use 
that for orientation, but there it is.

Tami

On 05/12/2016 08:38 AM, Daryl Lang via NAGDU wrote:
> Hi everyone! I would love some advice. A couple of months ago, Jenny and I were followed halfway home by a very nice, lovely, loose dog. Since then, Jenny has been hyper-aware around other dogs. She has not been aggressive, but is much more aware of their presents, and is slightly more distracted by them that she usually has been. There was somebody in my neighborhood Who Walks his dogs in the back alley by our house off leash. This is against the City by law, and I have told him this but he keeps doing it. Jenny has been known to bark at these loose dogs, or otherwise show signs of stress. This only seems to happen if we are on our property, and not when we are out and about. Do you have any suggestions, or should I just let this run its course, because it is not really affecting her work. Thank you!
>