I did love dogs...before I was a dogwalker.

I guess it's like being a kindergarten teacher. Five year old humans are easy to love in the abstract, harder to love when there are thirty of them screaming in an enclosed space. *shudder*



Being with a dozen different dogs every day changes how you view them. Plus, I have certain requirements: no eating things off the street, no pulling, no barking, you do what I say when I say it. I don't care that the dog coming at us is barking hard enough to spray spit onto passersby, or the toddler next to us has just dropped a hot dog directly in our path. Whether I'm walking one dog or eight, I expect them to proceed calmly down the street. In order to do this, the dogs need to respect me and my rules and I need to pay attention to what's going on around me.



Sometime during my second year of dog walking I realized that loving dogs wasn't enough. Yeah, they all greeted me with wagging tails when I came to pick them up, but they also had no trouble ignoring me when we got outside. I was dead weight on the end of the leash.



Now, my husband and I have horses, and there is absolutely no way we would have tolerated that kind of behavior from them. Horses weigh 1000 pounds and more, so there isn't any way you can physically make them do what you want. OK, before anyone says 'oh, you can use a whip and put a chain over their nose and force them to do what you want - just like those poor circus horses, blah blah blah' I'd like to point a few things out. If you try to use pain - real pain - to force compliance from a horse, chances are they will panic. And when they panic, they will hurt you and themselves, whether they mean to or not. YouTube is littered with videos of people who have forced horses into a fight-or-flight situation and it ain't pretty. With horses, you learn early on that you just don't have the physical strength to make them obey you. So you need to think, and handle them in a way that keeps you and them safe and calm.



Back to dogs. I started walking bigger dogs, and found that treating them like horses made them walk better on the leash. Part of this is being proactive about correction. Instead of waiting for the inevitable bad behavior to actually occur, I nipped it in the bud. Picture this: you and your dog are walking down the street and there is another dog approaching you about a block away. Your dog begins to slow down, his tail comes up, his body stiffens. The other dog does the same. If you just continue walking, it is very likely that the two dogs are going to lunge at each other, barking. If either owner is not paying attention, the dogs may actually make contact. Dogs that do this over and over again are walked by people who believe/hope that this time their dog will behave. Look at their faces - sheepish surprise, followed by an apologetic "oh, Binky, stop that". Meanwhile, Binky has been rewarded by being able to bark at the evil intruder dog.



Rewind. Your dog sees the other dog, his tail comes up, his body stiffens. Instantly, you give the leash a sharp sideways tug, hard enough to rock your dog. At the exact same time you growl, "I don't think so," or whatever else comes to mind. Ideally, your dog will look up at you when you tug, and you deliver your warning while leaning a little forward. Your dog's body language will change - the tail will droop and his body will relax. If your dog ignores you and stays focussed on Binky, bump him in the shoulder with your leg, then repeat the tug and warning. The idea is for your dog to look at you, switch his attention from the approaching dog to you. By now, if your dog is still ignoring you, you need to up the ante. At this point, the problem is that your dog doesn't view you as any kind of authority figure. He's in his own doggy world and you don't exist except to give out food and minister to his every need. And it's your fault. But what to do - Binky is still approaching and your dog has gone to red alert.

Grab your dog by the scruff of the neck and make them look at you. You can do it, whether they weigh 15 pounds or 150. Just depends on how serious you are. Use your body to block them and their view of Binky, and force your dog to pay attention to you. Some dogs, if they've been allowed to get away with this sort of thing for a few years, will actually try to push around you to get at the Binky demon. If the dog I am with has gotten this far, I lay them down on the sidewalk. This may involve some wrestling - a dog that believes they are in charge is not going to go down quietly. Doesn't matter, they are going down, and they are going to hold that submissive posture until they calm down. On my part, I'm not angry, just determined. The alpha dog isn't cruel or capricious, there are rules and those rules need to be obeyed. Discipline has gotten a bad reputation these days - people seem to believe that being kind and gentle will solve everything. There's nothing wrong with kindness and gentleness, and beatings don't really get the right point across. But an admonitory swat on the haunch may make your point far quicker and more permanently than endless pleading.

So do I love dogs? Yes, I do, but in a more realistic way. They're dogs, not furry people, and I treat them like dogs. I still get greeted at the door when I pick them up to go out, except now it's a proper greeting, more like one dog to another instead of mindless excitement. I still get kisses. But the best moments are when I am walking the whole pack, eight dogs, and we are walking down the street as a perfect group, past toddlers flinging hot dogs, past skateboarders, past the snarling barking Binky's of the world - and nothing happens. We just keep walking.