If I’ve invited someone, they’re my guest. I’ll take everything into consideration, and try to make them feel welcome. Likely, if it’s that big an inconvenience, I’ll meet them somewhere else rather than suggest they come to a place where an animal they fear lives.
If it’s just someone knocking at my door - well, I’m not gonna lock my dog up every time that happens. He may as well spend his life locked in a cage. At that point, I won’t let him bother you too much, but I’m not gonna tiptoe around your preferences. You don’t have to knock at my door. If you’re a stranger at my door and my dog wants to say hello (in, I point out, a non-aggressive fashion, whatever the stranger “thinks” is happening) then my dog overrides the stranger.
Of course, I won’t let the dog hurt anyone (and nor would he - I don’t think he knows how). He’ll likely sniff around, throw himself upside down at their feet and wriggle a lot until they rub his tummy. If they have an issue with that - eh. Too bad.
The people who pat their knees for the dog to jump up on are undermining the training because they misunderstand the training. They think you’ve trained the dog to “not jump on people without their permission”, when you’re actually going further and into “not jump on people, ever, period.”
The ones who raise their arms are used to being able to deter children like that. They see something that bounces like a child and (IME, I’ve never seen people do it with a mastiff) has the size of a child and their backbrain falls back on something which would work on a child that size.
In both cases, I’m afraid the only thing you can try to do is educate the human.
One of my coworkers, who would be made of marshmallows if he was any softer with his kids, recently bought a dog. He swore it was the children who’d take care of the dog - we warned him it would be him who did. Of course, it is not the children who are taking care of the dog, it’s him. He’s been complaining about the puppy biting for the two months he’s had her, but when those of us who are used to being around dogs (1) tell him how to train her, he goes all mushy “aww, but she’s just playing!” Dude, you want to stop getting bite marks all over your hands? You want to not have to change your trousers before leaving the house in the morning because the dog jumped all over you? Then you need to train her! Mind you, he should have trained his children first… but we have a lot of “shoulds” in this thread, don’t we?
1: I’ve never had one, but my uncle J has always had at least one, with breeds ranging in size from Shi-Tzu to Mastiff of the Pyrenees. M has always had dogs; the current one is a rescue of no known pedigree (they think there must be some golden in there from her hair). None of those have ever bitten, and the one who would jump on people was a permanently-horny Catalan Shepherd who would get knee-stopped (if the asaultee was vertical) or flipped over on the floor and held down with a hand/foot (if you were sitting down), by a gaggle of nephews and friends who didn’t like being slobbered on. That one would get shut away when there was a new visitor; the Shi-Tzu sits back, yaps and isn’t interested in meeting anybody who doesn’t offer food; the rest would all sit back and wait to receive a signal that it was ok to come greet the new person.
First thing first. Dogs are not a known quotient. They naturally range from: “Doesn’t ever jump, on anything, ever.” to " Will climb a fucking tree if I don’t watch him". Some are easier to train than others, and some then best you can do is mitigate the worst of the behaviour. I have two medium sized dogs. Both were rescues we got as 6-8 month olds. One is perfect in all respects of training except that she likes to hop up and greet. She knows all sorts of advanced commands and tricks, but that initial exuberance is just something that seems to be innate. We’ve mitigated it down to hopping from jumping up to greet, but at 8 years old, she just isn’t going to get any better at this. We are hoping that as she’s slowing down now, the hopping will diminish.
The other dog is still a puppy at 2-ish and usually declines to hop at all naturally unless you are playing with her. Her problem is mouthiness when playing. She came to us as a starved, abused give away dog. Despite this, she has extremely fine control of herself and has never nipped or bitten hard when playing, nor offered aggression of any sort to human or dog. It can become disconcerting to others though, and occasionally a sharp doggy tooth can hurt just from brushing your hand in play. Our solution to the problem was teaching her to immediately stop playing on command and give kisses/ hugs instead. It works well.
When we have guests, If they are overly enthusiastic I put them outside to burn off some steam. When they come back in they are allowed and expected to greet the guests. Guests are expected to manage their damn selves as adult humans around a friendly dog. If they are bothering you, tell them to stop, shoo, or go play. Rarely do they have to be put back out, but I will do so if they are making pests of themselves.
Not only is this thread the first time I’ve seen any of these abbreviations, but this is the first time I’ve seen the phrase “German Shepherd Dog” used for a German Shephard. I think you’re overestimating the commonality of those abbreviations.
Aren’t most people? When I talk about horses I don’t start laying down acronyms like ASB (American Saddlebred), DWB (Dutch Warmblood), OTTB (Off-Track Throroughbred), or numerous other abbreviations that are second nature to a person who is active in those sports. I’m not going to think a casual horse owner is a moron if they don’t know what those abbreviations mean, and certainly not any non-horse owner.
Sure, dogs are a lot more common than horses in the American household, but unless you have reason to know the AKC rules and official terms, you wouldn’t know them.
True enough, but that’s no excuse to dismiss the use of a legitimate term just because (generic) you personally are ignorant of it. In a discussion about dogs, it might behoove the participants to become familiar with dog terminology. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. Especially in a forum such as this where it’s easy enough to take a side trip to Google, instead of a live conversation where you’d have to keep up in real time.
You would have a point if I have said that all dog owners behave in this way, as it is I took great care in making sure nobody thought I wasn’t referring to “some”, “not all” dog owners. Well, nobody, except you.
As it stands, I have no idea why you quoted me and followed with the above.
I didn’t say it wasn’t a legitimate term, I said that people don’t know those particular abbreviations, unless they have cause to know them, which most people don’t. And no, I don’t see the need to learn an AKC-approved breed acronym list, in order to discuss whether dogs jumping on guests is an odious habit. If we were discussing the Westminster Dog Show, sure. But people who don’t even own dogs can have an opinion on this issue.
Nobody said anything about learning an entire list. If it’s too much to expect people, especially on this board, to be willing to take two seconds to look up a term they don’t know, then I can’t help you.
I already knew what GSD meant, personally. It’s kind of funny that you leap to the assumption that I am personally ignorant on the matter. In actuality, I just think huffing off “OMG if you knew ANYTHING about dogs you would know what it meant!” a la curlcoat is pretentious twattery. It also reveals that she cares a lot more about “appearing knowledgable” than “sharing knowledge” which is a pisspoor attribute in an animal trainer.
I grew up with a German Shepherd as the family pet. (Why on earth would you deed to tack Dog on there? It’s obviously a dog.) I had no idea what GSD meant. Like you said a quick trip to Google and I was all set but the first couple time I saw it I knew they were talking about a dog but I had no idea what breed.
If their true goal is to communicate and be understood, why wouldn’t someone simply take the few extra seconds to type out the word? Is everyone in such a big rush they have no choice but to abbreviate?
If they are in such a hurry, why do they expect those they’re attempting to communicate with to devote extra time to research their abbreviations?
Perhaps the people insisting on all the internet abbreviating have primary motives other than conveying the topic at hand.
Anyone who doesn’t know enough about dogs to know that the name of the breed is German Shepherd Dog is not someone whose input into topics relating to dogs I’m much interested in reading. I want more posts from people who are knowledgeable about the topic at hand, I don’t want all replies to be specifically constructed to convey meaning to people who don’t know much about dogs. Or whatever the topic at hand happens to be.
I for one have absolutely no reason to know anything about AKC terminology - I simply keep and enjoy dogs, I’ve never been involved in breeding, showing, dog sports, etc. But by keeping and enjoying dogs, and paying attention, I’ve picked up a lot of particulars.
And I don’t understand people on the internet who complain about abbreviations. I’ve joined probably 15 forums in the past 5 years that deal with a specialized hobby, goal, or lifestyle and use all sorts of abbreviations and specific terms. It takes a very short time to learn them from seeing them used in posts, and anything you don’t get right away can be found with less than 30 seconds on google. Or internetslang.com.
I confess that I didn’t know what ‘PWD’ stood for. However Portuguese Water Dog Club of America are the second hit if you google ‘pwd’.
And you would have a point if I had said that these people are my friends. I don’t have to be Best Friends Forever and Ever to visit people. Generally I try to stay away from people that demonstrate such carelessness about manners, so I don’t think rude dog-owners have much chance of getting past that initial impression. I’ll still say hi to them on the street.
So, I shouldn’t complain about dogs I don’t own and dog owners I don’t care about because I don’t know enough about dog breeding? Huh?
No, complain away. We’re all entitled to be annoyed by anything that has an effect on us. I was talking about the arguments about dog behavior and dog training that have been going on in this thread.
This whole thread is becoming ridiculous; 95% of dogs will stop jumping once I turn my back to them? That would be pretty good advice if you told me precisely which 5% would not react in the way you predict, and you also then came around to put an easily readable label on each of the 5 percenters, so all of us non dog owners would know which specific dogs would not react in the way you predict. Otherwise I’m just getting bitten by a dog, it’s not big deal to me, but, I find it uncouth on the part of the owners.
When I drove up to to a county property in Australia some 20 years ago on an invitation, I parked about 100 meters down the drive and then started walking up to the main house. The whole family came outside to welcome me including two german shephards who came at me at a rapid pace. There was no way I could discern whether the dogs were coming to slaver me with welcoming or to attack me. As it turned out they just wanted to nip my shins. The “owner” laughed at me and told me that they just wanted to show me who was boss.
If you go back to my post, you will note that I appended “(generic)” before “you,” meaning that I was referring to any random person, not you specifically. I also don’t recall saying that I expected people to know everything about dogs. My point is that I don’t feel that people should have to dumb down their remarks to the lowest possible knowledge level just because someone else might not know what they mean. It’s a basic adult literacy skill to look up unfamiliar terms when you happen to run across them.
A reasonably intelligent person can tell from context that “GSD” or “PWD” refers to a type of dog. That’s enough to go on. If you want to know more, as I said, it’s a two-second Google search. If you (again, generic “you,” not necessarily you personally, I hope I’m being clear enough this time) wish to remain blissfully ignorant, that’s your choice too. But the discussion isn’t unintelligible just because someone uses an abbreviation.
I had no idea what GSD meant. Like you said a quick trip to Google and I was all set but the first couple time I saw it I knew they were talking about a dog but I had no idea what breed.
We’re all entitled to be annoyed by anything that has an effect on us. I was talking about the arguments about dog behavior and dog training that have been going on in this thread.