There are times when I look back at something that has just happened with one of my dogs and think that a situation could have been completely avoided with a bit of common sense. In fact, I shouldn’t call these ‘dog fails’. I should call them ‘colossal lapses in human judgement’ – because when my dogs fail, it’s inevitably because I’ve taken my eye off the metaphorical ball. Every time I see one of those Dog Shaming posts, I want to get the tippex out and write “Owner Shaming” instead. There’s inevitably a human who took their eye off the dog there too. Unless there are a lot of people who let their dogs rifle through the bins or destroy sofas whilst they watch on. I look at those ‘dog shaming’ photos and sites, and it makes me sad. It’s not the dogs who should be ashamed, but their owners.
One of those lapses in judgement happened here last week. In fact, it was a string of Owner Fails. The first fail was four years ago, letting my collie x retriever Heston explore off-lead aged 4 months. His recall was blown because chasing deer was so much more fun. Four years on, I’m still working on recall. The second fail came at the same time. That was using an extendable lead and not teaching him that walks don’t involve pull-and-stop with constant pressure. And four years on, I’m still correcting that Owner Fail too. The follies of a new puppy owner who didn’t know what she was doing! On the day last week, there were a series of fails, all because I was distracted and a bit overwrought. I don’t take Heston out first thing in the morning because there are too many fresh smells. But I was due at the vet’s at 9am. Really, I should have kept him on the lead since we had to leave for our walk when it was still dark, but I felt guilty that I was so busy, so I let him off. I was still waiting for him 45 minutes later. Luckily, he taught himself to come back to where he left me … eventually.
Owner Fail #1-3: not teaching a reliable recall to a puppy, using an extendable lead, letting an unreliable dog off-leash in a space that’s too distracting.
Another fail happened to me at the weekend. I’d taken Heston on a long leash walk (because I’m still working at two hours a week to stop the lunges and leash craziness!) and the first quarter-mile, I could see a man with an off-leash Jack Russell and chihuahua. He was dawdling and I should have turned around and gone another way. It was too challenging an environment for Heston to handle and quickly gets him into old habits, like lunges when he sees other dogs. What did I do? Because I wanted to do my loop (I’m doing a sponsored 1000 mile walk in 2017) I followed but we inevitably got too close a number of times and it took me ages to get Heston back to a calm point again. Luckily, having had enough of him going crackers at a dog behind a fence halfway around, I avoided the third “dog” blackspot and went another way instead.
Owner Fail #4: putting my dog in a position where he has no choice but to react.
I have had a few fails with Tilly, my American cocker. She is temperamental with toileting at the best of times. We have months where there are no accidents, but it is vigilance on my behalf rather than great toilet behaviour on hers. I’m meticulous about getting her out first thing, then after food, then around eleven, then mid-afternoon, then before dinner, then before bed. Meticulous. Except when it’s a bit damp or cold. I do exactly what she does and I feel the same. I do not want to stand outside with my eleven-year-old dog who should know better to check she’s been to the toilet because it is cold and wet. She does not want to go outside to the toilet because it is cold and wet. When she wasn’t moving at 9pm, I left her to it. When we went to bed an hour later, she got up in the middle of the night and left me a lovely puddle right by the door.
Owner Fail #5: letting toilet vigilance slide with a dog who needs you to be vigilant.
Amigo, my collie x griffon doesn’t give me cause for many fails, but his age is giving me a couple. His hearing is going. Some days, he’s all but completely deaf. Others, he can hear a little. Because he can’t hear my other dogs (and his eyesight is not good either) sometimes he gets too close and he can’t hear their warnings. He’ll keep moving in and their warnings get more and more noisy. This means I need to leave the lights on until everyone is properly settled down, and not encourage midnight roaming. Still, one day over Christmas, I was more tired than usual and I switched all the lights off. Amigo came up to the bed for a little petting before he settled and stood on Heston. Luckily, it didn’t come to blows, but only through chance.
Owner Fail #4: not keeping my older dogs safe by sticking to a routine.
Amigo also doesn’t like to be on the leash. He is usually great off-leash, but he can’t always hear us when we’ve moved on, and even 10 metres away, he can’t hear a car. However, he’s obviously been mistreated to get him to walk to heel, so he cowers, his ears back, his head down, the whole time on the lead. So I let him off because he looks so sad. Instead of putting his safety first, I let him off in places where it’s unlikely there will be cars or other dogs, but not impossible. It’s time to seek out new, secure walks, or to get him happier on the leash.
Owner Fail #5: not using a leash with a dog who has hearing problems.
When Tilly arrived, we had a good few Owner Fail moments, including bin-rifling. I’d never owned a dog who would rifle through the bins before. I could leave anything out for Molly and the worst thing she would do would be collect a few of my things together and sleep on the bed with them. Tilly was fine if the things were in an enclosed bin. At first. But then there were a few times I’d come home to an upturned bin or a bin bag that had been torn apart. Once she ate some lambs’ kidneys that had been in the fridge for two weeks. How she’s only had an overdose of e-coli once, I don’t know. Anyway, I got pretty good at ensuring there was no food left out.
And then I got Heston. He did what adolescent dogs will do, and he chewed stuff. Not often, but enough. Four or five books. A toothbrush. My electric blanket. He liked blankets to chew too – that’s what can happen with a hand-reared pup. I got vigilant about picking stuff up and leaving him in the living room without anything bad to chew, and only good stuff to chew.
When Ralf arrived, he liked to break into the kitchen and take cans of dog meat, or bags of sugar, or pasta, or anything else he could find as a snack. Cue closed kitchen and stuff on high shelves. Food got locked away and the cupboard was under lock and key. Twenty months of life with Tobby after Ralf died got me sloppy about locking food up, but Effel my foster dog broke into the room one day and a habit was born. All food is now back under lock and key.
Owner Fail #6: not ensuring my dogs are left alone safe in a temptation-free zone.
Tilly is a scrounger, a scavenger, a shameless bin-dipping floozy; I daren’t tell you some of the more disgusting things she’s retrieved. Treating the cat litter tray like a hot snack buffet is the most publishable of her dirty sins. For that reason, bins are outside in what functioned as the dog pen for the previous resident of the house. If dogs can’t get out, dogs can’t get in. It still didn’t stop her sneaking up to lick out the cat litter trays or root around the bathroom for tasty non-flushable items.
Owner Fail #7: not ensuring bins are dog-proof.
Despite all of these Owner Fails, I generally operate a safe environment, especially where foster dogs are concerned. These days, I’m much wiser.
But how many dogs are sent to the shelter or banished to outdoor pens where they have very little human interaction and virtually no stimulation at all, simply for doing what dogs do? How many dogs end up in yards because they haven’t been taught rock solid house manners? Banishing your dog for peeing on the couch is easier, is it not, than teaching a dog not to eliminate inside. Banishing your dog for counter surfing is easier than teaching them to stay out of the kitchen unless they’re with you. Leaving your dog in the yard because they eat the walls is easier than thinking they may be suffering from an illness, they may be bored in your absence or they may have separation anxiety.
Looking through the photos on a popular dog shaming site, all I can see are dogs who’ve not been taught better alternatives. Dogs who haven’t been taught where to eliminate. Dogs who haven’t been taught what to chew. Dogs who are bored when home alone. Dogs with possible separation anxiety. Dogs with poor manners around their humans or around other dogs. Dogs with too much freedom and owners who think dogs should know better than to counter surf. Dogs who don’t know how to behave around other dogs. Dogs who don’t know how to behave around children. Dogs who are unsupervised. Dogs afforded trust to be alone that they have not earned. One pair of dogs were “shamed” for chewing the cat basket when the owner was out. She says the day before they’d destroyed their own beds. If you ask me, it’s not the dogs who should be ashamed, but the owner who is not only giving her dogs far too much space and freedom when unsupervised, and not giving them the right things to occupy them, like a stuffed Kong or an interactive toy, or a marrow bone.
It makes me really sad that dogs are given so much freedom and so few rules. It’s not the dogs who should be ashamed. It’s the owners. I’d be ashamed to post a photo of my dog having eaten the Christmas tree. All it shows is what a knob I am for leaving a dog unsupervised around something dangerous, or for not teaching my dog to leave stuff alone. For all the things I do wrong with my dogs, all the owner fails, many have consequences that could end up at the vet – or worse. The dog who gets shot accidentally for having poor recall. The dog who gets run over when straying. The dog who eats rat poison and ends up at the vets.
There’s another thing too…
Chewing stuff we’re not supposed to, barking, digging, chasing stuff, peeing where you’re not supposed to, destroying stuff, playing, jumping up, counter surfing, escaping, poor recall, poor behaviour around other dogs, humans or children… they all have one thing in common.
They’re all things we need to teach our puppies not to do, or to do appropriately. They’re all things that lead to dogs being abandoned in shelters and things that lead to returns. If we want our dogs to fit into our lives and if we want them to be easily adoptable should the worst happen, we need to start when they are puppies and stop expecting them to grow out of poor behaviour. They’re all things that are simple to teach puppies, but time-consuming to teach an adult dog. Wouldn’t it be nice if our dogs grew up without us failing them quite so badly? When I talk of “Dog Fails” these days, what I mean is “the way we fail our dogs.”
It would be nice if instead of failing them, we addressed those very simple behaviour problems instead. It would be even better if we did it when they were puppies and they never learn how much fun the other stuff is.