We’ve all been there – who can resist saying hello to puppies, they are like little magnets. If you are out with your puppy, you know that you are going to struggle to get very far before someone stops and makes a beeline for the puppy.
With an incredibly cute little puppy, that may not sound too alarming. One of my favourite sayings comes to mind here, ‘what dogs rehearse they become’, so if a puppy learns that every time they see another person, they get to say hello, they get made a fuss of and get cuddles, they are going to start to expect this pattern every time they see someone when out and about. 💡✨
The bigger they get, the more problematic this could get, (especially if they grow from a 6kg puppy into a 30kg bouncy and energetic ‘teenager’🐶🤸🤼♂️🙈).
No one wants their dogs focus to suddenly be on yet another new passer-by, with their dog wanting to greet everyone in the street – which is exactly what they’ll learn to do if they’ve received attention from every passer-by when they were young. (Or worse, people who aren’t dog lovers won’t appreciate your dog wanting to share their personal space).
It’s perfectly acceptable to politely say no to the fuss. Something like,
“Sorry we are going to keep walking. We’re practising that we can calmly walk past people without total puppy bouncing chaos. Maybe next time… enjoy your walk.”
This can be incredibly powerful and will give your puppy a really good basic foundation for enjoying their walks while focusing on you and ignoring potential distractions.
If you have a puppy give this a go and let me know how you get on.