MINGLING AND PLAY! WORKING TOWARDS THE FUN STUFF

Mingling and play!

Dog reactive dogs often resort to behaviours like barking, lunging and growling when they don’t have strong human leadership or the right training approach and accountability for polite behaviour. During board&train, we teach dogs how to ‘coexist’ around other dogs by correcting mental arousal, giving lots of calm and controlled experiences around polite, trained, well behaved dogs and also by giving structure in every aspect of his life (place, crate, heel, etc.). In order for reactive dogs to be successful around other dogs, we aim for ‘coexistence’, meaning that he is to be calm and polite and follow his commands while his human handler advocates for him and doesn’t expose him to no win situations and keeps other dogs out of his personal space. In some cases, dogs actually learn to enjoy light and polite play with other polite and well trained dogs but this should never be the goal because it’s a rare bit of extra icing on the cake! 🎂

A few of the rules that we follow in social settings are:
🐾Dogs are not allowed to correct one another... The human is responsible for supervising at all times and for advocating for dogs who need it and for correcting anyone who is pestering or bullying another dog or otherwise misbehaving.
🐾No rough stuff...
Some mingling, light play between mutually interested dogs is fine but no UFC throw downs or naughty intentions/actions are allowed that could cause harm or injuries or spark a fight should someone take things too far.
🐾Prioritize commands over play...
Socials are a great time for the dogs to loosen up and enjoy each other’s company but they are still responsible for following and prioritizing commands over play and always listening to their handler.
🐾When someone doesn’t accept a play invitation, the asserting dog needs to walk away rather than continuing to push and pester for play. This is also a time when the human leadership needs to intervene and advocate for the dog who isn’t interested in the play.

🐾Keep things moving...
The handler needs to move around a lot and keep the flow going rather than allowing the dogs to clump up in one area where someone might feel overwhelmed or trapped. I like for the dogs to keep moving and mingling so that they always have space to move into and away from anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.
🐾Pick their friends carefully...
Many dogs who feel uncomfortable around other dogs have lost their trust in dogs so it’s very important that we only allow our dogs to share company with other polite, calm and trained dogs that we know and stay away from dogs parks, onleash meetings, or other situations that would set our dogs up for failure.
🐾When enough is enough...
Once social time is over, the dogs are responsible for coming when called (the first time! 😉) settling down and calmly heading back inside.... until next time ❤️