Pet Friendly: To Go Or Not To Go?
As time goes on, pet friendly locations are becoming more and more common. In my area, Yorktown Center and Northbrook Court are both indoor malls that permit pets inside (barring the food court, of course).
But as the saying goes, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Taking your pet into public comes with responsibilities. As I’m sitting here typing this, someone’s pet is barking completely out of control at anything that moves, and has been since I sat down at this cafe ten minutes ago. It’s obnoxious, and no one is impressed, but the owners are not doing anything about it.
I am continually surprised by people who are intensely impressed that my service dog is sitting at my side, quietly watching the world go by. This should not be so impressive that people are compelled to approach me and tell me how astounded they are; this should be the norm. No one’s dog should be surging at strangers, shrieking their lungs out, urinating on the wall of a public indoor building.
No one should be impressed by a dog doing the bare minimum of obedience.
This isn’t just a vent post. My point is coming, I swear. “Socialization” has been completely stripped of what it was originally intended for. The purpose of socialization is not to have your dog engage with everything around them; rather, the goal is to teach them that they are not entitled to engage with everything around them. Puppies, like children, are very curious, and puppies want to explore the world with their snoots (or in the case of Goldens, their whole entire mouth; Golden owners, you know what I’m talking about).
While curiosity is wonderful, it has to be tempered. Remember the first rule of dog training: if it’s allowed today, is has to be allowed in ten weeks, ten months, and ten years. What Scruffy does today without correction, Scruffy has been shown is acceptable and fine. Scruffy has been shown, whether directly or not, that he is allowed to do whatever inappropriate behavior he’s exhibiting in the moment: pulling at strangers, barking inappropriately, jumping on people or other dogs…
A lot of my, ahem, ill-informed colleagues have pushed the notion that socialization is taking a puppy everywhere and cramming them into every situation you can, no matter how inappropriate or rude it is to anyone around you. There is a difference between enlisting the help of a passerby who asked to pet the service dog, and letting a jumping, screaming puppy tackle a total stranger (or anyone, for that matter).
Socialization is not making your dog the main character in everyone else’s story; it’s about making your dog background noise to the world, and making the world background noise to your dog. Both the puppy being socialized and the world around them should coexist peaceably, neither one taking the main stage, but both existing in a comfortable symbiosis.
I’m a big fan of pet-friendly spaces. They’re stellar training grounds, and honestly, where else am I going to walk my dog for two hours in January? I love taking my boarding dogs out to pet friendly places to train and get a change of scenery, and not much beats chilling in a cafe with your dog laying at your feet while you catch up on some work posts you’ve been meaning to write (maybe a tiny call-out, but it’s aimed at me so it’s fine). But to keep earning these things, we must be responsible with them. If your dog isn’t ready for pet friendly things, that’s okay. Your dog doesn’t need to go places, and if they’re not ready for it, they’re not missing out on anything. Stressing your dog out and overstimulating them by dragging them into places they’re not ready for just isn’t healthy for anyone.
But hey- if you do want to make some training happen and earn your pup that extra bonus, you know where to find a really cool trainer who loves any excuse to do two of his favorite things: training dogs and snarfing down mall pretzels.