I took my puppy (8mo 60lbs German Shepard mix female) to a fair today. Her first time in crowds, and loud noises. She loved it, ate corn dogs, cheese fries, and met other dogs. She never snarled, barked, or growled. She gave hugs to people who wanted hugs after I told them it’s her favorite thing to do. I noticed the looks from other people with and with out kids. We ran into my 5 year old niece and her mom and my girl sat patiently while she received hugs from the tiny human. She never pulled away from me that bad. We’re still working on leash training a bit. She’s used to an open field.
Anyway, there was this chihuahua who was barking at Mika and I noticed the owner didn’t seem to react to her dog pulling and barking toward my dog. I promptly signaled my dog to sit between my knees until the chihuahua passed. Mika never once barked at the chihuahua. She pulled a little bit on the leash but she was close and curious.
During this whole thing I thought about how if my dog was acting that way towards the chihuahua we would have probably been yelled at or pulled aside by the owner and other people around us.
Now before I never really understood little dog syndrome. My chihuahua wasn’t socialized in public because he got so car sick in the car. We tried petsmart and he was just never comfortable in a car or in public. I didn’t feel the need to push it. I chalked it up to him feeling uncomfortable because he was so small and everything else was so big. He and I had an understanding at home though that he was to be nice to those visiting.
He only ever got mean to someone one time that threatened me outside our home in the yard. He won that fight, he escorted that POS to the property line snarling and snapping. He never bit. But had he been a big dog that man would have probably called the law. And yes, he received lots of treats after that for being protective not aggressive.
My mom also had a smaller dog and we never had problems with him fussing in public unless someone got too close too fast and he could sense the discomfort. He would just bark lightly and stand in front of me or my mom who is disabled.
Both of these little ones have passed within a year of each other but they knew and were taught to only bark and make a scene if one of us was in trouble. They were never taught biting is okay. In my opinion, we trained them as if they were big and could do significant damage to someone. I say significant because my chihuahua had such a teeny tiny mouth.
I thought it was common sense to train your dogs out of disruptive behaviors but I suppose not because now those stories I read make sense. This small dog was clearly very young and maybe the owner wanted to bring him/her in order to work on that which is fine if done properly.
To finish this off, do any of you that took the time to read this have tips for socializing a larger dog in public? We hadn’t so far because we’ve worked so hard on potty training, getting her under voice command, and bringing people and other pets into our home. Her best friend is my munchkin cat if anyone wanted to know!
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/c0f1qh/i_finally_understand_little_dog_syndrome_from_a/
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