Feeling sad re dog's boisterous behaviour.

[MyGastIsFlabbered]

Our dog is a rescue and there's a socialisation group we take her to organised by the rescue. It's in a completely enclosed park so is one of the few places we can safely let her off the lead.

Yesterday we received an e-mail from the group organiser asking us to keep our dog on the lead when we go as her boisterous behaviour was upsetting some of the other, more nervous dogs.

Obviously I'm upset that she's been upsetting other dogs, but she also needs help with socialising and I feel we now can't take her to this group. If she meets other dogs when on the lead she is aggressive, but totally different when off the lead...she just wants to run and play. We've only had her a few months and she's quite a young dog (not a puppy though).

We've e-mailed back and said we won't take her to the group but I just feel sad about it.

Seems a shame to stop going. You could use it as a good training opportunity as long as there's enough space and dogs not all crowded together.
Take treats and toys and work on keeping her focussed on you. Maybe get a long lead (not a flexi) light enough to trail on the ground when dog gets a bit calmer so you can grab or step on it.

Some sessions with teaching dogs might help her learn some manners.

Where are you based? Anywhere near here?

They are lovely people, with a very good reputation and they run various socialisation sessions as well as working 1:1 and with teaching dogs.

Wow Moosemama that website and blog are great - really fantastic description in the blog re. what they did with socialisation-wise with Elsa. I'm incredibly fortunate that my dog's early life as a stray on the streets abroad mean that he 'talks dog' incredible well, but the advice in the blog (and no doubt attendance at their sessions) would be so useful if taking on a dog from puppyhood.

They are great. I would give anything to live close enough to take my youngster there. I know several people that have worked or are working with them and they can't speak highly enough of them.

I'm not sure what language my boy speaks, but it's definitely not dog! He would benefit so much from working with well socialised, teaching dogs in a controlled environment, but it's not something that's readily available across the UK, unfortunately.

We took our pup to puppy socialisation classes at the rescue. On the first session there was a dog that went utterly crazy - barking and growling and lunging on the lead. It looked aggressive but the trainer stayed very cool and calm and just pulled it right out of the class and offered the people one to one training instead. That seemed a good solution.

Our dogs were only offlead for the last 5 minutes so your dog might have been OK. And even then they were heavily supervised as two of them were huge and two of them (mine and one of her siblings) tiny! Maybe just look for another class.

Joffrey makes a good point. Enrolling her in some training classes, where she can learn to behave calmly around other dogs, whilst on the lead, would be really beneficial.

I'm not really keen on socialisation classes that are just a free for all with all dogs running free. Far better to get them to learn alongside each other and to understand that even when other dogs are around, they still need to focus on and listen to you. Then, once you have a good level of general control, you can let her off with the confidence that you can control her behaviour around the other dogs.

Yes, the first thing our dogs were taught, even before 'sit' was a recall word. So when we let them offlead we were practising recall right from the first session. And all the dogs seemed to 'get' it - not just the brainy poodle cross and GSD cross but the two silly staffy crosses as well...

Maybe we were lucky and got a good trainer! He didn't believe free for alls = socialisation at all.

I was going to recommend Dog Communication as well! I know Penel and she is really, really good.