#rottweilers — Public Fediverse posts

I took Nori, my Rottweiler, to an admittedly public place this morning super early -- as one does -- hoping to work on some off leash long recalls and other things. Poorly trained dog encounters are pretty much inevitable in suburbia but at dawn it's usually all runners passing by with leashed dogs or retrievers fixated on chuckits on the other side of the field. Not this time. A male Vizsla danced up off leash, greeted Nori and briefly I thought it'd be ok. They could play and I'd work on recalls breaking out of play, getting a treat and going back. Then he tried to grab the back of her neck. She wasn't having any and shook him off, confused; he tried again immediately. She turned the tables on him -- not in earnest, just experimenting -- and he yelped like she'd killed him. That's when my perfect, sensible human-focused dog stopped and looked at me. Nori: Hey, mom, what the heck just happened? What should we be doing here? Me: leaving. We should be leaving. Nori: Sounds good. This guy's an asshole. Will there be treats? Me: buckets of them. I called, treated and leashed her. The other owner tried to tell me it was fine. I explained as simply as I could that her dog's odds of maiming or killing mine on accident -- or even on purpose -- were low. The reverse...not so much. Dominance games with any dog that has power house jaws are only games if the power biter isn't too excited. She didn't get it. The funny thing is that I didn't know I was teaching my dog to look to me in a crisis when I did it. That beautiful "hey mom, can you help me?" has its origins in an endless puppyhood of me fishing balls and bones out from under the sofa so she wouldn't scratch and destroy it, cursing her all the while. The unlooked-for benefit of all that cursing is that I am a reliable solution to problems she considers important. I wish I could say I planned it but I'm sure glad it's there. #dogsOfMastodon #rottweilers #dogTraining