Hi. Hoping for some advice. Puppy is nearly 7 months and has been a delight: easy to train, great at night, no accidents for weeks etc etc. She is also my first dog and I feel a lot of the time that I don't know what I'm doing.
I have let her off lead when walking as often as possible and generally she's been great, and still is, but if there are other dogs around who want to play, she wants to play too (entirely understandable, really, she;s friendly and well socialised). She will either approach another dog, or wait for it to approach her. If the dog isn't playful, for whatever reason, she's usually happy to listen to me, and come with me. Until recently, if I got hold of her and waited for her to calm down and listen to me, she'd then come with me.
However, just recently, if the other dog will play, she just goes completely deaf, and I need to put her on a lead for a little while until that other dog is out of reach. Yesterday, having played with a dog at the start of our walk, which I was happy for her to do, as was it's owner, she spotted it, some 30 minutes later, in another part of the park about 3-400 yards away. She just hared over to it, just went in a heartbeat and had no intention of coming back.
I went to get her, calling, rattling treats, but I was totally ignored. The other owner was clearly fed up that her walk was delayed by waiting with her dog for me to get mine, and commented on her (lack of) recall. She suggested using my 'angry don't mess with me voice' (i find that doesn't encourage mine to come to me even when she is listening).
Part of me thinks, it's just a baby dog and that's life, but I don't want to walk her always on a lead (I put her on a trailing lead after that and she got it wrapped round a tree and had to be rescued) and if I'm honest, the way the other owner was, quite cross and not understanding, has really upset me. I don't like badly trained dogs and I don't want mine to wind others up.
Has anyone any ideas, or do I just need to get a grip and accept that this is what young dogs are like? We had some 1-2-1 training early on and maybe I should get some more to deal with this, but as things generally are going well, I am wondering if I'm being oversensitive and overthinking this.
Help please oh wise and experienced ones!
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The doghouse
7 month old puppy and playing with other dogs/recall
19 replies
Theoscargoesto · 09/10/2018 15:13
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