How is social distancing Affecting your dog?

Personally, I'm seeing improvement in Shamas- he's becoming LESS reactive, as dogs move away from him, and he no longer feels the need to scare them off by acting out. His threshold is shortening, as he finds dogs less threatening.

But I wonder about friendly dogs? How is this affecting them?
 

Boogie

Moderator
Location
Manchester UK
Echo goes crazeee to play with any dog he sees.

He usually gets puppy class every week, learning that we don’t play unless off lead. I realise now just how useful those lessons were!

I can hardly hold him when we see another dog. A nice big sprat on his nose sometimes works, but not always. 🧐
 
My dad says Chloe can't understand why she's not allowed to make friends--she's usually allowed to wander off-leash and mingle. Now, even when they come up to walk with Shamas, the dogs aren't allowed to touch...
 
Not much different for Homer. We could still sneak him off lead on early morning walks. Everyone was happy for their dog to interact normally. He's on lead a bit more to and from the common but we do that from time to time anyway.
He's now going to his dog walker once a week when I'm at work, he's more tired afterwards.
 
Squidge is my sociable one, but she's never been (technically) allowed to approach other dogs without asking. "Technically" because of course as a youngster, this wasn't always successful! :D
So, as much as she would be anyone's best buddy given the chance, she's used to not always being given that chance. We've seen our friends' dog, Annie, a couple of times and she's always over the moon to have a play with her, but it's really not a big deal.
 
Location
Norfolk
Huge improvement for Ripple and also a big help in training Toffee that not everybody wants to talk to him. Both boys are more interested in people than other dogs so social distancing stops (most) people from coming to talk to them.
 
Stanley is exactly the same as always.

Generally a massive pain in the arse and over friendly crazy creature but everyone seems to love him and find him infectious.

He smiles at people as he walks past so he always gets a hello 🙄
 
Not at all for either of mine . Nelly has always pottered along in her own little quiet world , preferring to stay very near to me , she is fine with other dogs but can take or leave them . Reuben loves everyone and all dogs but as long as I have a ball in my pocket , he stays close to me x
 
Mine are fine. They are like me not really interested in other people. Rory doesn't go up to people neither does Iver. Rory sometimes greets other dogs Iver wants to greet all dogs but is getting better. I do go out at 5.30 to miss the crowds
 

Emily_Babbelhund

Mama Red HOT Pepper
Carbon is pretty starved for dog interaction. I've made a couple of poor choices over the last week when it comes to understanding how deep that 'starvation' goes. Our SD trainer, always wanting to be R+, said that this shows I'm highly optimistic even in the face of overwhelming odds. That made me laugh pretty darn hard.

The worst example of this was last Sunday. We went for a walk on the coastal path. On the end of that particular section of the path, you come to a small bluff overlooking a massive beach (Constantine Bay). It's quite safe there for Carbon to be off lead, so he was. The path ends with a wooden fence and a large staircase down to the sand. We'd already had a long walk, plus I'm not fit enough at the moment to get back up that staircase. Carbon and I just paused to look at the beautiful beach. I leaned on the fence and he sat by my side. Ah, human-canine bliss.

"Bliss" until I realised that the crazed black Labrador running hell-for-broke towards a family and their two dogs on the beach below was MY CRAZED LABRADOR. I still don't understand how he left my side, went all the way down the stairs and then across the beach without me noticing. Maybe if we travel in a TARDIS, Carbon is a Time Lord in his own right? In any case, it ended as it always does, with me trudging towards Carbon, apologising to the family (from a socially appropriate distance) and dragging my hooligan away from the party.

"Awwww, M.L. do I have to go? No, no, you are a horreeeeble mama lady, de verdad, really you ARE!!!"

Argh. |(

On the bright side, I got lots of exercise hiking up the dunes back to the path. So...win?

Another dog, another country: my friend in Germany, Nadine, and her erstwhile off-road Chihuahua, Fine, are also feeling the social distancing blues. I just talked to Nadine this evening and she said Fine is FED UP with not being able to interact with all the customers coming into Nadine's newly-opened shop. Fine rules the roost at the store and I can only imagine how disgruntled she must be. Nadine says she notices Fine trying to interact more with other dogs as she's not allowed her normal allotment of adoring humans.

Oh, and yesterday all the beer gardens opened in Regensburg, so since then there haven't been many customers in the shop anyway, doubly depressing for poor social butterfly Fine...
 

Candy

Biscuit Tin Guardian
Joy I think is starting to miss socialising with other dogs and her hooman friends. Occasionally we see a friend from a distance and there is a shouted conversation. Joy cries throughout these. At home she is biffing me with her paw and nudging me with her nose quite a lot, which is quite new behaviour. I think she just misses having other people around. It's more than ten weeks since there was anyone other than the two of us in the house and despite my best efforts I do think it's affecting her. We walk for at least two hours a day, have games in the garden and extra snuggles, but I still think she's really missing extra company, poor little girl! Also she now hasn't been anywhere other than home for ten weeks, apart from walks. We both really benefited from our five hour plus walk on Tuesday and I might have a think about more like this that we can do safely. I wish I could explain to her that it's not forever. :saddog:
 

Boogie

Moderator
Location
Manchester UK
Echo went loooopy when my brother visited us in the garden. Then he sat by the gate for ages after my brother had left in his ‘hopeful’ position.

:saddog:
 

Jacqui-S

Moderator
Location
Fife, Scotland
I'm not sure Lilly or Oreo are much affected. We are all going to work as normal and the only difference is no longer walks in the big woods or beach.

(Lilly would never like me to point out that there is NOTHING quite like a beach with all its opportunities to get wet and stinky, and the sooner next weekend arrives the better!)
 
Honey and Vanilla not 100% sure, because I can WFH normally and OH is at home due to personal reasons, don't think it has affected them that much. They get additional play time with me, which they will miss on the days I go back to the office. Walks in the evening and morning during the week are no different to any other year at this time of year. We always walk on the golf course, local streets. Only ting they have been missing is the Beach walks at weekends, but due to them having either an ear infection or operations we have kind of missed that for a long part of this year. But gradually starting to go back to that at weekends...
Of course going back to the beach in the winter is great for them, especially Vanilla as she finds anything and everything, rolls around in it until she smell to high heaven and then looks very pleased with her self....and now Honey has to join in too...
 
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