Don't do that to my dog!

[RedwingWinter]

Out for my short walk of the day, I bumped into a man who lives on the next street who thinks he is an expert in dog training. He told my dog to sit. Of course, the dog ignored him. So the man tried to push my dog's bum to the ground! The dog resisted and I asked him to stop, which he did, but he then tried to give me a lecture about how to train my dog. He said I'd just let the dog know he was the boss, and I said no, if I ask him to sit and he doesn't then I wait patiently until he does and the dog knows that nothing else is going to happen until he's complied.

That's terrible, he says, 'you need to get a shock collar'!!! So I explained to hiim about positive training methods and he tried to tell me it wouldn't work on an adult dog. What I really needed to do, he said, was roll the dog over and sit on him so that he knew I was the boss!

I would never do that to my dog and I told him so. He then proceeded to tell me that in the future I would have terrible problems and that people would be calling the animal control officer to complain about him (I wasn't sure if he was trying to threaten me that he would, but in any case the dog is very well mannered and no one would find anything wrong so I'm not worried about this).

Thanks to you guys and books you've suggested reading, I felt confident in telling him all about positive training. I don't care what he said, but I am still really angry that he tried to force my dog into a sit position.

The thing that makes me feel better is that this man has an entire retriever that has supposedly been through all the obedience training there is, but he never takes it for a walk and when it does get out/is allowed out in the street it tries to hump everything in sight.

And thank you for listening, I feel a lot better for getting that off my chest!! A shock collar, just because he didn't sit within a few seconds!!!!

Well done for standing your ground.

You need to think up something withering to say to him next time Humpty is out and about!

God, what a numpty! I think if someone tried to give my dog commands and then force him into position I'd give them what for! Well done for trying to get him to see sense, but people like that are probably not for turning, especially if he hasn't even got the sense to neuter his dog - got to feel for his dog really :(

Just thought as well, how does he know your dog is even trained to sit on the word 'Sit'? Not all dogs are trained to respond to the same words - for instance my dogs are trained to respond to 'off' as a command to get them off a sofa/bed, but others will train 'get down' or another command. My dogs see 'down' as to lie down, and hence when they are lying on the sofa, and someone tells them to 'get down', they look at them in pure mystery as if to say 'but I already am?'. You should tell him your dog is trained to sit on the word 'dimwit' and see how he fairs with that

I had this once with my dad.

He told my dog to sit, he didnt.
He told my dog to roll over he didnt.
He told me dog to stay, he didnt,

Big speech about how he was untrained.

Called my dog over put my hand out and pointed to the floor, he came and sat.
Pointed to the floor again only bent down slightly, he laid then rolled.

held my hand up and walked away he stayed there until he heard me in his treat jar

untrained?! He is slightly deaf and doesnt seem to be able to understand words when its noisy so I always just used arm signals.

We also went out on w walk to which dad insisted on shouting "walk on" at every junction He was ignored. Dog responds to short whistles (seems to be able to hear that fine)

Plus he wont sit if the floors wet anyway!!!!!

You should intorduce him to my dog. I can get him to sit in a nano second if I have cheese, however, if I or anyone else laid hands him he'd bite me/them.

That man is lucky he has not met a dog like mine if that he what goes around doing to every dog he encounters.

Yes, he is lucky my dog is so calm. He was buggered if he was going to sit but he wasn't going to do anything else.

notjustme, I like the idea of training him to sit in response to 'dimwit'. You're right about different commands - this man's dog apparently responds to Klingon.

Signet2012, that sounds funny with your dad. Well done with the hand signals. We have been teaching those too and they seem to work a bit better than verbal commands.

Although we don't know much about the dog's past, we do know he was abused because he sometimes flinches when we go to stroke him. So sitting on him would be about the worst thing we could do.

Without meaning to, I usually gesticulate in some way when I give a command to my dog, and I'm fairly sure he responds to that more than the word.

Yes ours respond to hand signals too, and I am guessing that it's probably that the dogs learn the combination of these as a full body language as opposed to just the word.

What an Idiot your neighbour sounds. IF he did that to my 2 he would have got a mouthful from me!