Do people accept different standards of behaviour from different breeds?

[MonChoufleur123]

Interested in people's thoughts on this... Today in our village a dog that looked like a puggle ran at two children barking and snarling. The owner had it on a long lead but hadn't been paying attention and yanked it away just before it touched them. Last week in the park I saw a bichon frise who ran up and started eating a family's picnic while off the lead! And we have a neighbour who owns a pug that spends all its time barking and snarling at the fence when other dogs go past... In all the cases the owners just haven't seemed that bothered or embarassed Or attempted to do anything about it - maybe because the dog is small or looks cute? Are people more accepting of bad behaviour from Little or toy dogs do you think?

User467 totally agree that sometimes the double standards are understandable and fine (by me).

We have two JRTs that weight 6kgs. They are allowed to jump up at people because

a) they are very small
and (perhaps more importantly)
b) they are not interested in greeting strangers so don't ever approach anyone else to jump up

At no point has the jumping up been an issue so it's been allowed to continue.

The springer, on the other hand, has had to endure months of training to prevent jumping up because he

a) weighs 25kg
and
b) is much more social so more likely to jump up at people he doesn't know (if allowed)

We are fine with the different behaviours from the different dogs because of their beed differences but also their differences in personalities.

I was also really interested to hear what the behaviourist said because it's something I have observed myself.

The JRTs and spaniel are not great friends, despite spaniel being some kind of social butterfly that has made a truck load of doggy friends in the village. Almost all his friends are other gun dogs and it's long been a theory of mine that it is because their play style is similar to his so they have a basic understanding of each other already. The JRTs and springer just play in totally different ways.

Absolutely yes - and I say this as the owner of a little dog with ishoos.

The difference is the capacity of big dogs to cause harm - a Great Dane jumping up is going to have a very different impact to a chihuahua jumping up. Similarly a big dog pulling on a lead is a bigger problem than a little dog.

Blame also tends to be put on the bigger dog (especially bull breeds). My little one ran up to a GSD and started barking from a metre away on one occasion and a passerby assumed the entirely innocent GSD started it - I actually had to persuade them it was my dog's fault. Similarly when he kicks off at his main trigger we get a variety of reactions - the majority of people think it's not OK (which it isn't; we're working on it) but I also get some who think it's funny. I can guarantee if it was a big or stigmatised breed people would be universally horrified.

I own a tiny and cute dog, I try to hold her to the same behaviour standards which would be expected of bigger dogs, but it’s not always easy. She’s not aggressive in any way and she has excellent manners with other dogs, but she can be over friendly with humans because humans are over friendly with her. I can’t go out with her without strangers wanting to touch her so it’s hardly surprising she thinks everyone is a friend, that simply wouldn’t happen if she didn’t look like a living cuddly toy.

There's are double standards, but it's because in bigger or more intimidating breeds, any sign the owner isn't in total control is cause for concern. It can be a bit unfair - our beagle gets away with a degree of cheekiness because he's fairly harmless (and looks it) whereas our friend's much better behaved GSD gets a very icy reception if he nicks a ball and won't give it back, for example. Bigger things like growling or jumping up at children wouldn't be tolerable in either breed, but the GSD is definitely expected to be on 100% best behaviour even for middle ranking behaviours, IYSWIM

“There's are double standards, but it's because in bigger or more intimidating breeds, any sign the owner isn't in total control is cause for concern.”

Hmm... my Rottie is smaller than most labs, I definitely do not get the same reaction as a lab owner, never have even though show strain rotties tend to have the same propensity for being over friendly thugs.

He shouldn’t be to other dog owners more concerning than dogs bigger than him...

He is of course but it’s not logical.

I don’t have anything against labs btw, I quite like them, lol.

They’re just a good comparison because they’re a similar size breed to my dog and have similar teenage behaviours.

Behaviourist explained that there was no aggression from the terrier. He was playing terrier style but to a spaniel (and the owners) this was not okay

This is really interesting. My terrier x is friendly but a bit of a thug so I only let her play with larger dogs on walks. Surprisingly, she is very gentle with our smaller border terrier cross - maybe because we got hi m when he was still a puppy.

Size shouldn't matter. A jack russel out of control could still do serious damage to a child. I've had my leg shredded by a JRT & i dread to think what that dog could do to the likes of my 5 year old.

In my experience small dog owners think it's funny & cute when their dog 'acts out'. I've had my big dogs - usually bull breeds - terrorised by little dogs, even had a 'terrified' chi chase one & hang off his face. The owner told ME off because her dog was clearly petrified of my scary monster walking past it. Owners of smaller dogs (again ime) tend to let their dogs off lead with no recall, & titter if they approach other dogs/people barking.

Shouldn't matter how big your dog is, or what breed they are. It's irresponsible to allow your dog to act out whether they are tiny chis or enormous danes

It was really interesting missbattenburg. I'm really glad I did it. He understood the dogs body language so well and gave me some great advice on my two. Individually my two are great with other dogs (other than the over exuberance of my younger one) but together they were becoming quite a noisy pack and meeting dogs was becoming quite an issue.

He showed me different behaviours that my dogs and the others were displaying and was able to predict whether a meeting was going to go well or whether I shouldn't allow it to happen. Even down to a single step back or a tongue lick. Things I wouldn't have noticed. It's not a quick fix, I'm don't now have two dogs who are lovingly embracing all dogs that come near but I have a much better understanding of what they are doing and how to work on it.

The plan thing was especially interesting. My youngest is getting quite a bad reputation at day care and is currently being separated. The day care took videos which I showed the behaviourist and he explained it was just terrier play (albeit at an inappropriate level especially for that setting). He explained that day care is actually often not a great set up for dogs as unless they are on the same level, tensions can grumble until something happens. I now see that my dog is not aggressive, but her behaviour does need to be worked on to bring it down a gear if she is to an acceptably social dog.

We have two JRTs that weight 6kgs. They are allowed to jump up at people

Sorry, but comments like that really annoy me. So what if they're only small and don't tend to jump at strangers? One day they will and if they get at a much bigger dog or someone who hates dogs/is scared of them you could have a real problem on your hands.

I don't care how small your dog is, don't allow it to jump up!

One day they will

They are 12 years old. So far, so good.

Oh, and jumping up at people is totally different behaviour to jumping up at dogs. The female, in particular, might be the most dog-socially savvy dog I have ever seen. The very last thing she would do is jump up at another dog.

Finally, she was skinned about 5 years ago in an attack by a larger dog. She didn't jump up at it, even then.

If my bull terrier jumped up at someone - even in a friendly way - i'd be called irresponsible & told my dog was out of control. Why is it okay for small dogs to do it???

It shouldn't be @mustbemad17 - but as shown on this thread some people do think it's okay to allow their small dogs to jump!

My dog is stupidly cute and is trained not to jump up at people - however people are always encouraging her to.

Breeds are different. Mines is a terrier and while her recall is brilliant it’s certainly not first time if she’s under a tree staring at a squirrel! She’s too busy telling me loudly ‘Mummy it’s a SQUIRREL!’.

And while she drops chicken bones on the street when I tell her to first time she certainly wouldn’t drop a rat til she’d shaken it.

My dog only actually puts his paws up on people when encouraged. People want to stroke him and so encourage him to jump up. He was reprimanded for jumping up on people when not encouraged, so now ignored those that arn't wanting to fuss him.

I get the play thing, I have a poodle and it's like all poodles and poodle crosses know each other. They are instant friends. He gets on well with spaniels and labs too but not so much with terriers as they do play rough and he just likes to chase.

Some people don't think they need to bother sorting issues with small dogs because they aren't big so aren't intimidating.

but as shown on this thread some people do think it's okay to allow their small dogs to jump!

As I think I am the only person who's said they are ok with this behaviour in their small dogs, I am guessing this is aimed at me.

I don't know why it's rankled me, but it has. I suspect it is because there is an underlying accusation that the dogs are out of control. They are not.

In 12 years they have never once approached someone uninvited. Not once. You might have a dog that was trained not to jump and has not jumped at anyone for 12 years. We have two that have never approached anyone uninvited. So it's not that they "tend" not to approach anyone. It's that they never approach anyone.

But let's say they did have a personality transplant and decide to approach someone... in that case being on the lead (her) or having impeccable recall (him) would be what stopped them jumping up at strangers.

When greeting new people they both sit on command and stay sat until told otherwise. Greeting new people is always controlled.

Besides all that, their jumping behaviour is not greeting (for which they keep all paws on the floor) but is done to ask for something - play, treats, to go out for a wee. As they would only ask people they know for these things, it doesn't happen even when we have guests they don't know very well. Besides, with 3 dogs in the house no one who doesn't like dogs ever visits us .

I didn't bother with all this in my original post because it seemed irrelevant extra info when the discussion was just about whether there were different expectations for different breeds. It just seemed like an interesting (to me) comparison that I've noted we have different behaviours we find acceptable here, some of which was about breed but most of which (as noted) was about personality.

I don't know why I bothered to type it out now, except stubborn pride won't let me sleep while the rest of MN thinks these two very well behaved dogs are running riot...

I don't think they're running riot but I don't think it's desirable behaviour in a dog whether you mind it or not.

They might not do it to strangers but unfortunately when people see dogs jumping up (be it at them or their owners) they see a badly trained dog who is allowed to do what it wants. In turn that unfortunately gives dog owners a bad name. Your dogs may well never jump at strangers or other dogs, but plenty do.

So when they see yours do it, they don't see it as any different to all the out of control dogs doing it. You said yourself your springer had to be trained out of it, so if it's not an undesirable trait, why not let her do it too?

Answer: because your terriers are small and won't do the damage that she does, so you're holding different breeds to different standards purely due to their size.

I have no issue, by the way, with dogs jumping up on command or when asked by their owners, but I think dogs jumping up to ask for food/treats isn't great behaviour.

That doesn't mean the dogs are bad or out of control, but I just think if you wouldn't let a Great Dane or a Malamute behave a certain way, you shouldn't let a chihuahua or a Jack Russell do so either.

I don’t think that sort of thing was what anyone else was talking about though missbattenburg’s JRTs going up off the ground isn’t really any different to my dog sticking his head on peoples laps in my house, only they can’t do that.

It’s not the same as jumping up when greeting IMO.

A while back a little fluffy dog trotted over to me in a park so I said hi to him. Next thing I know, I have muddy paw prints all up the shins of my pale green jeans ....the owner didn't bat an eyelid. While I wasn't too bothered, I would have liked to see a bit of willing from the owner to prevent it or apologise!
My dog doesn't greet or jump up on strangers, or kids (Not by virtue of any training, she's just aloof with strangers and protective of kids, hooray!)....but thinking about it, I wouldn't even let her approach anyone we didn't know in a park, never mind if there was potential for her to leave muddy paw marks on people's boobs or shoulders! (Those are reserved for her adult humans)

Yes! Totally! My friend has horrible small dogs, but like she says; she can just pick them up before they bite a toddlers face off. My massive dog has to be very very well trained, because I could not physically stop him.

My spaniel still has the tendency to jump up at people when he is on the lead if they fuss and stroke him. I try to counteract that but people still insist on coming over, even crossing the road, and fussing him lots which means he then jumps up. I try to stop him jumping up and I do tell people he may jump up whilst almost trying to stop them working him up but it's a work in progress.

He never does it if they don't interact with him.

There is a definite difference but not just in the owners. I have a cavalier and a show type cocker - so small, cute and naturally "over friendly" spaniels.

The absolute hardest to thing for me to train was not jumping up at people because so many bloody strangers encourage it!

My cocker hasn't fully stopped yet and he is 12months old now, because every step forward is undone by some idiot encouraging it. (He is kept on a long line so that he cannot approach people until this is sorted but the amount of people who come up to him and encourage it is so frustrating).

My cavalier was 18months before he was reliable at keeping paws on the floor and there are still people who are quite pushy in their encouragement for him to jump up. It drives me nuts.

I always hold my dogs to the same standard I would expect of a strong, large dog. But strangers have made out I'm mean and my little cutie is just being friendly, whilst encouraging my cavalier to jump up or even try to get him to approach them instead of recalling to me!

To an extent, I can understand where the difference in people's attitude comes from as a smaller dog will generally do less damage and dogs like staffies have a strong jaws and potential to cause more harm than other similar sized breeds. I think the only exception to the size thing is labs.

Labs being allowed to be overfrindly thugs drives me mad. A well trained lab is lovely but a "he's just being friendly" thug is frankly terrifying. They can knock a grown adult to the floor easily never mind my young DC and my cavalier is frightened of large black dogs since a black lab came charging through the woods and flung him a few feet through the air, when Cav was just minding his own business, sniffing a tree. The owner didn't see what the problem was.