Unsolicited Advice

If you are dog owner, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I got a lot of unsolicited advice when I was the parent of a baby and a toddler. It is nothing compared to being a dog owner.

When our first dog was a puppy (and even now that she is full grown), perfect strangers felt morally obligated to tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing with my dog.

Sometimes the people introduced themselves as “dog trainers,” a term that I have come to hold very loosely. There are a remarkable number of “dog trainers” in this town. Sometimes they were dog owners. Or past dog owners. Regardless it was open season on the harried lady with a wild puppy.

The Bridget Jones quote kept running through my head:

“..you seem to go out of your way to make me feel like a complete idiot. And you really needn't bother: I already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway.”

As a new dog owner, I felt like I couldn’t stand up for myself and my pup. Sometimes people started proactively training her for me, without asking me. They would yell “down” when she jumped, thoroughly confusing the issue since she knows that command as “off” and “down” meant something else.

Others vigorously kneed my dog in the head when she jumped. Emma loved the “getting kicked in the head” game and redoubled her efforts.

“You should try teaching her commands or something,” a lanky college kid suggested on the street in front of our house. “That way she will do what you want.”

He had stopped us on the street and asked if he could say hi to Emma. I could see a slight trembling of hindquarters that told me she wanted to leap up and kiss him, so I asked him to wait for her to sit nicely in front of him before giving her attention.

I wanted to explain the value of implicit versus explicit commands. I wanted to tell him that Emma knows hundreds of commands, that we have been working on commands every day since she was 8 weeks old. That we have weekly calls with a trainer and weekly classes that I drive two hours to get to in the mountains. That I sit down each night, exhausted, to write out an updated training plan to work on the next day.

“Training commands is a great idea,” I said. “Thank you.”

Now that we have a new puppy, I’m resolved to stand up for myself and for her. Sometimes it’s not a good time for people to say hi to her. Sometimes it’s not a good time for her to play with other dogs. Or be off leash. Or to greet your toddler. And never is it a good time for her to play with your aggressive dog to help “socialize” him.

Instead I’ll work on my deep breathing, treat no as a complete sentence, and have more faith in my own imperfect training efforts.