E13: Good dogs in public

Judge once tore a nail clean off in a badly kept dog park, built on dirt with rocks and glass in it, and came home with blood all over his stomach. Bowie only goes into a dog park if it’s empty, or if there are a couple of small dogs who look friendly. Ben has seen too many fights to trust the rest. Makenzie once ran off in a fenced dog park near Seattle so big you couldn’t see the fence, and it took us a while to find her again.Three dogs and three owners who have used dog parks in very different places, and still don’t agree on whether they’re a good idea.This is a conversation about who dog parks are really for.For the eleven months we lived in Seattle, Makenzie and I went to dog parks every day, sometimes three times a day, and I never saw an incident. People were tuned in to their dogs, and the dogs came back when they were called. That’s where she learned to play from Bucks, a huge, hairy mix twice the size of a German Shepherd. He let her chase him, chased her back, and taught her to walk away when another dog didn’t want to play. When we moved to London, the dog parks I found were small, every dog was off leash, and very few of them had recall.The conversation moves through Bruce’s view that the responsible owners are the ones who make the effort to go to a dog park, and Ben’s rule of only letting Bowie off when the park is empty. It covers what it’s like to have your dog on a leash when an off-leash dog runs up to it, and how differently people handle a passing dog in Germany and here in Taormina. And it ends with Judge at eight, with a bad back leg, pulling to go to the dog park and coming home limping.A dog park doesn’t give a dog good or bad behaviour. It just takes the leash off.Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Judge flew to London in the cabin, and when the plane landed, a man a couple of rows ahead turned around and said he was the best behaved dog he had ever seen. Bowie commutes into Waterloo, finds himself a corner on the train, and waits. Makenzie pulls me into every pub, shop and restaurant we pass, and wants to leave again the moment we sit down. In all three cases, the dog people compliment is only part of the dog we live with.This is a conversation about what it takes for a dog to be good in public, and what it costs them.Makenzie doesn't settle on the floor of a pub. It's too loud and too busy for her, even in a quiet corner. In her stroller, she does: she says hello to everybody, collects the attention and the treats, and in places she knows she falls asleep while we have dinner. I used to wonder who takes a dog out in a stroller when the dog isn't old. Bruce did, and now so do we.The conversation moves through the embarrassing stories: Bowie lifting his leg on a stranger's pram in the park, Judge peeing in the other dogs' water bowl at the dog park, Makenzie dragging me onto two strangers' picnic blanket for their camembert. Through the escalators in London, where Judge and Bowie hop off at the end by themselves and Makenzie gets carried. Through how many of our friends we met because of the dogs, each other included.A stranger sees the best behaved dog on the plane. We know the rest.Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Bruce's dog Max isn't neutered yet, so at daycare he was kept in a small room on his own while Judge, who is, went out to play. Ben had Bowie neutered as a puppy, and the humping dropped off dramatically; the rest of Bowie stayed exactly who he was. Makenzie was spayed before she turned six months old, and years later started marking everything, as if to tell every dog she has met even once that she has been here too.Three dogs, one routine surgery, and three owners still turning the decision over. This is a conversation about what one routine surgery means in the four countries we live in. Bruce had Judge neutered after being told that otherwise he would get cancer at some point, guaranteed. A few months later, a doctor he worked with told him there were really no studies showing it prevents cancer. Judge, meanwhile, still marks every tree, fire hydrant and light post, lifting his leg even when nothing comes out. At a friend's dog's birthday party at the dog park, he lifted it on a woman standing behind the red streamers, and on the birthday dog too. Now Bruce has to decide about Max, in a country where he feels it's harder not to neuter your dog than to do it.The conversation moves through Kane, the unneutered German Shepherd guard dog in Ben's family, who Ben says isn't much different from the neutered dogs around him, just impossible to get a toy off. Through Ben's reason for neutering Bowie, so bigger dogs wouldn't smell him as a threat, and his theory that Bowie rolls in poo to mask a testosterone smell he no longer has. Through what I've seen in Germany, where unspayed females share the same parks and woods as everyone else, and owners simply walk a different way, or at a different time, while a dog is in heat.Is it a decision about the dog, or about the place you live with it?Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Bruce watched a fully grown Rottweiler growl once at four-month-old Judge and had to trust it was the right thing happening. Ben has stopped trying to change how his dad handles two much bigger dogs off-leash near a blind corner, even after one of them nearly took his dad's finger off. Makenzie can't always talk herself down out of a tense moment with another dog, no matter how many off-leash owners insist she'll figure it out on her own.None of them are describing bad advice. They're describing the moment they had to decide, alone, whether it was even meant for their dog.This is a conversation about where dog advice actually comes from, and what happens to it once someone has had a dog long enough to have opinions of their own.Judge was a few months old the first time he met Trigger, a fully grown Rottweiler belonging to Bruce's best friend. Trigger's owner told Bruce beforehand not to worry, that Trigger would growl once and that would be the whole message. Bruce believed her and was still afraid watching the two dogs meet, Judge so small next to him. Trigger growled once. Judge understood immediately, and neither dog needed the lesson twice.The conversation moves through where ideas like pack order and "showing them who's boss" actually came from, and how much of that thinking the research has already moved past. Through why people trust their own judgment over someone else's almost automatically, and how differently that plays out for someone on their first dog versus their third. Through the particular kind of confidence that builds once a dog has been part of the same household for years, and what that confidence quietly stops noticing.Once you're sure enough to stop asking, how do you know you haven't also stopped listening?Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Bruce got Max, a Chihuahua, as a birthday gift he hadn't asked for; he says now he'd never have chosen the breed himself, and that his vet is more wary of Chihuahuas than German Shepherds because of what she calls the little dog complex. Ben watched Bowie walk into a household with three bigger dogs and decide, within days, that he was in charge, taking whatever he wanted from dogs three times his size and never once being challenged for it. Makenzie has talked me out of a sibling more times than either of us can count, most recently by screaming in terror when a cat casually walked past her.None of the three of us added a second animal because the timing or the planning lined up.This is a conversation about what actually happens to a household, and to the dogs already in it, when another one arrives.Bruce's household grew one animal at a time, mostly by accident: Nipsey the cat, rescued off the street on a hot August day; Max, a birthday gift he hadn't asked for; Patches, taken in from a cat colony during a cold winter and still too scared to leave the bedroom months later. Judge, his first dog, turned out to be the aggressor with Nipsey rather than the one who needed protecting, chasing her under the bed for days at a time before they settled into an order of their own.The conversation moves through Ben's early mistake of feeding Bowie separately from the bigger dogs, convinced he needed protecting, before realising Bowie never needed it at all. Through the week Ben's other dog spent bonding with Kane, the German Shepherd, before he could even move in. Through my own case for keeping Makenzie an only dog: the naps that now run for hours, the cat she's more frightened of than curious about, and how quickly she can tip from fine to not fine with nothing in between.The decision looked straightforward from the outside. From the inside, it rarely is.Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Judge lunged for a passing bus in New Jersey, and Bruce jerked the leash back with maybe a second to spare. Bowie sprinted for a pond full of ducks so fast that not even Ben's voice could call him back. Makenzie used to get her recall for free in Seattle, riding a pack of other dogs home; in London, with no pack and no dog park left, the walk itself had to become the whole point.In all three households, the leash was never just about the dog on the other end of it.This is a conversation about the walk in its entirety: the leash, the route, and what happens the moment it comes off.Judge's story runs the full length of it. A trainer recommended a pinch collar when he was a puppy, certain it wouldn't hurt him. The first time he ran and hit the end of it outdoors, he choked and coughed for an hour. Bruce switched him permanently to a front-clip harness, and still keeps him on a leash on every walk except the dog park, where letting him off once meant half an hour spent unable to get him back at all.The conversation moves through the pressure a pulling collar puts behind a dog's eye and not only the throat, something none of us had thought about until Judge's choking scare. Through the two-harness trick I read about, one harness signalling a five-minute errand and the other a real walk. Through the on-leash-dog-is-never-at-fault principle that keeps Judge leashed everywhere except the dog park, and Bowie's one blind spot, a pond full of ducks. Through what changed for Makenzie once a walk in London stopped being just a way to get somewhere.If the leash comes off, does the responsibility come off with it?Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Judge, three-quarters through one of Bruce's notebooks, freezes mid-chew the moment he hears a single stern word. Bowie, caught mid-heist with a treat several sizes too large for his diet, drops it instantly when Ben says his name, then goes and buries a smaller one in the garden for later. Makenzie tucks the evidence of her nightly treat runs under a pillow and gets away with it until the smell gives her away. Three different dogs, three different corrections, and none of the three people holding the leash are entirely sure why the ones that work, work.This is a conversation about the moment itself: what actually happens when a dog does something it shouldn't, and how a person responds in the seconds that follow.Bruce is certain Judge knows exactly when he's crossed a line. There's video evidence: Judge, caught with a fresh hole chewed into the couch, scooting himself over the stuffing before Tatiana can spot it. Bruce has rewatched the footage more than once, looking for proof his dog felt something like guilt, and he is fairly convinced he has found it.The conversation moves through whether dogs actually understand what they've done wrong or only appear to, what the so-called guilty look might really be tracking, how being the strict one in a house with four dogs changes the sound of a correction entirely, and what a sharper-than-usual no costs a relationship in the hours after.What is a dog actually reading, in the half-second before the word even arrives?Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Judge grew up before COVID in a house with a backyard and learned to go on concrete for the first time when he moved to London. Bowie was a pandemic puppy in Canada who ended up better socialised than most, because during lockdown the parks were full and it was the only place anyone could go freely, then moved to a farmhouse in England and laid down the social order the day he arrived. Makenzie arrived in London at eleven months and stopped on her first time out, held in place by the Canary Wharf wind tunnel, and couldn't go to the bathroom there for weeks.In all three cases, the world each dog had been prepared for was not the one waiting for them.This is a conversation about what socialisation actually builds, and what it can't anticipate.I used to have a checklist for Makenzie: the vacuum, the washing machine, the car door, all introduced on my own terms. What it didn't cover was a dog approaching before she'd seen it coming, on its own timing, the moments no checklist could prepare either of us for. About a year and a half ago I started stepping in between her and whatever was approaching instead, showing her I was there to handle it rather than leaving her to work it out alone. It's changed how quickly she moves past those moments now.The conversation moves through Judge's first flight in the cabin as a trained service dog, and his refusal to go to the bathroom until he had made it past customs. Through Bowie telling his new farmhouse pack he was in charge within days of arriving. Through the idea I brought into the conversation myself: a dog who gets to feel a hard moment through and recover from it comes out the other side more capable than one who is kept from ever meeting one.Can a dog be socialised for a world that no longer exists?Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Bruce wanted a Rottweiler and came home with Judge, a Pomeranian he had not intended to buy, after Tatiana touched the glass of his puppy pen and Judge woke up and licked her fingertip. Ben wanted a Husky and got a Pomsky who walks up to Kane, the German Shepherd he lives with, presses a squeaky toy directly into his face at close range, and waits. Makenzie, before she was vaccinated, stood outside the small dog park opposite our building every day, pressing against the fence and wanting to get in. At four months old she was finally allowed, went straight to the Great Dane in the corner that the other dogs had been avoiding for weeks, and began chasing him wildly around the park.None of the three of us ended up with the dog the breed description promised.This is a conversation about what actually predicts a dog's personality, and how little of it turns out to be the breed.It took Trigger, a Rottweiler, a single low growl to teach Judge exactly where his boundaries sat, and Judge came home from that friendship with a habit he'd never had before: scraping the ground after he goes, something he'd only ever seen Trigger do.The conversation moves through Bowie ending up on top in a house of three bigger dogs, Kane taking Bowie's whole head into his mouth in play and never once closing down on it. Through Pomeranians once being kept, in 1970s and 80s Cologne, as older ladies' lap dogs, more toy than companion, a long way from a dog willing to bark at strangers twice his size. Through everything the Shiba Inu warnings had told me to expect, and how little of it prepared me for the dog who actually walked in: stubborn in exactly the way described, and not much else the reading got right.If the breed doesn't tell you who your dog is, what does?Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com

Judge stopped eating this week. Bruce was away, Judge spent it at daycare and did not enjoy it, and now Bruce is home and Judge is mad at him. Ben switched Bowie's food so many times that he started handing rejected bags off to neighbours in Toronto when Bowie decided he was done; now, alone in the flat, Bowie's food can sit untouched for an hour, and at his cousins' place with three other dogs eating alongside him, he finishes it immediately. Makenzie eats from a bowl that is held, at the right height, by a person who stays.In all three households, the bowl was never just about the food in it.This is a conversation about what actually changes when a dog stops eating the way we expect.I tried meatballs spaced across the plate, tried spoon-feeding, tried every food including one from a Seattle shop I could watch them cook through the window. I followed Makenzie through the flat with her bowl in my hands for weeks, adjusting the temperature, the topper, the room, certain the right version had to exist. Then one evening I knelt on the floor with the bowl on my lap instead of carrying it after her, and she came and sat down and ate. The food hadn't changed. I had stopped walking away.The conversation moves through what owners consistently report about a dog's appetite tracking their emotional state more than their menu. Through the research on how much individual dogs differ in food motivation, and how little that variation has to do with what's actually in the bowl. Through Bruce coming home to a dog who isn't ready to forgive him yet, and Bowie eating instantly surrounded by his cousins after ignoring the same food alone.Sometimes what the bowl is asking for has nothing to do with what's in it.Find everything at: https://pawplexity.substack.com