Dogs That Stare...but Not At Goats

[indigirl]

Goats??? H

There's a movie "Men who stare at Goats" 2009, Ewan McGregor and George Clooney.

Ahhhh lol :)

[OSoSwift]

The behaviour sounds confronting and rude and if it was in my class the owner would be told what there dog was doing, what they needed to do and whys for the previous things.

It is the instructors job to notice and either manage or diffuse situations BEFORE they become a stand off, fight or a lunge. It would be nice if owners had a clue but quite often they don't, so it is the instructors job to step in and teach the owners what the go is.

I would personally ask the person to turn their dog away and re-focus it. If the instructors asks you why tell her/him. If they do not think the behaviour is confrontational and upsetting to other dogs and a potential risk, then they should not be training people and their dogs.

[mumof4girls]

Have you been back whippetsmum? How did you get on..

[Whippetsmum]

I go back later this week. As I said in my original post, I wanted to get the DOL consesnus on this behaviour, which I have now, and that gives me more support/backing to explain my concerns.

My plan is to get there early and leave my boy in the car. I'll find out who is taking the class and ask if they can run through what's expected from the handlers as well as their dogs in terms of behaviour, and ask that no person or dog is singled out, more like a general discussion. It could be that with different people instructing each week, that they think this has already been done. If they aren't prepared to have this conversation/ are dismissive of my concerns, I think we'll have to go home. There's another club nearby that I can check out if need be, I'm hopeful that this won't be necessary.

[Whippetsmum]

Update-

As I planned, based on all the support I got from DOLers, I spoke to one of the instructors before class. One of the other class members came up and had the same concerns and backed me up 100% saying that all the dogs were freaked out by the behaviour, and that the handler didn't seem to have any idea that their dog was sending out these signals and the impact it was having. We were both very clear that we weren't saying the dog shouldn't be in class, but that we wanted more focus on keeping everyone's dogs attention on their handlers.

The instructor said they'd talk to the President or Vice president or someone more senior to get some help, the instructor we spoke to had had an past issue with their dog getting freaked out by another, so was sympathetic. When class started we had a different instructor, they had a different approach and somehow managed to keep everyone a healthy distance apart even without saying this, they didn't keep at any exercise too long so the dogs had no time to start wnadering off, or staring off for that matter. There was also had a second "advisor" in class, someone who seemed experienced with the same breed that was staring. The second advisor was there for the first part of the class, they seemed to be goving a few tips to the staring dog's handler. I think the "starer's" handler had been aware that their dog wasn't focussed, and they may have asked for help as well, I'm not sure. Regardless, we had no problems at all at that class. Even better was the improvement in the "staring" dog's focus, they did really well in all the exercises, so that would be highly reinforcing for the handler. Throughout the class the handler was actively keeping their dog's attention, and turned them away from the other dogs. Hopefully the improvements will continue.

Thanks to everyone who responded.

[espinay2]

Excellent to hear that proactiveness on everyones part has paid off and that your concerns were listened to .

Fingers crossed that it continues now the issue has been identified.

[OSoSwift]

Great news