I love all dogs. All dogs should be my best friend. That’s what I believe. Mother tells me often that this isn’t the case. Some dogs don’t want to be friends with other dogs, let alone confident bouncy annoying creatures like me.
When I’m in my kennel at work, and a dog gets out their kennel for a check over, sometimes I get incredibly jealous. Why are the nurses allowed to say hello to the dogs and I’m not! It’s so frustrating. Sometimes I get so annoyed that I scrabble and growl and snarl at the kennel doors that will not open. Mother says I sound aggressive when I do that, but I just get so annoyed at the doors and I need to make sure that everyone knows I’m annoyed.
Mother has suggested this is frustrated greeter syndrome. She hasn’t found any papers to suggest its possible to express this while in a kennel, but apparently it fits me to a tee. I don’t do it as often now as I used to, I was definitely worse as a teenage. Mother says doggy teenagers are around 9 - 18months old. And Mother and the work team have worked hard offering me all the best treats including the ‘magic’ liver paste when I don’t react to the dogs.
Usually frustrated greeter syndrome affects dogs on leads. It’s when a dog exhibits almost aggressive lunging snarling behaviour at the end of a lead towards another dog on a lead. The dog appears aggressive, but actually just really wants to be friends with the other dog and is just frustrated that the leads are preventing them from meeting.
Today, on our brief lunch time walk, I was tootling along, when a French bulldog approached. I was off lead, and the Frenchie was on a lead. Mother asked me to wait so I went into my play pose and stopped, and the other people and the Frenchie approached me. The Frenchie and I said hello, gave each other a sniff as such. All was well. But as Mother walked past me (she had been behind me when we came upon them), she grabbed my collar to nudge me along with her. I was not happy to have my collar held! I wanted freedom. So I started to snarl. I was foaming at the mouth, and growling. Mother tugged me a bit away from the Frenchie, put me on the lead, and we walked away.
And then I was fine. For the rest of walk all was fine. We walked back to work, I went back to my kennel with no complaints, had some food, then went back to sleep.
One of the nurses brought her dog, Ted, in today. Ted doesn’t like strange dogs. At the end of the day, Mother let me out my kennel while she cleaned it out, so I was wondering around kennels, with Ted watching me. Ted growled a few times at me through the kennel door, but I was ignoring him, playing with my toy and eating some kibble Mother put out for me. Mother cleaned the kennel and then we moved through to the consult room to get our stuff together and go home. I didn't once bark, growl or even give any attention to Ted.
Mother says I’m very frustrating, because my behaviour isn’t always reliably the same. I’ve never experienced frustrated greeter signs while on the lead, despite it typically being a on the lead behaviour. In fact, one of our friends has a little dog, Jake, who had typical on the lead aggressive behaviour that Mother thought was frustration. So Mother and I hired out a field and we met with Jake and his owner, and they let Jake and I straight off the lead together (behaviouralist will probably tell us off for this) and he was absolutely fine with me and now even on a lead he’s fine with me. Jakes owner has even been able to take him to busier dog areas and now he’s much better behaved.
Given that Mother has seen it with dogs on the lead, and understands the concept of it, it annoys her greatly that I haven’t read the book on it, so I’m not doing it right. Next time, I’ll try and do my homework more thoroughly, so I can display symptoms correctly.
Mother doesn’t know how to help me in the kennels when I get frustrated. She can’t let me say hello to the other dogs because they’re patients, and that’s not professional or appropriate. So I’m probably always going to be a bit frustrated in this situation. Thankfully, as I said, I’m definitely not as bad with it now as I used to be. Mother lets me off lead more and more now, given that my recall is better. So maybe if I’m tired from walks I’m less fussed about the other dogs in the clinic.
Today was the first time that I’ve done it when my collar was grabbed. But Mother doesn’t usually grab my collar to pull me away from other dogs, so I think I was just really surprised. Normally, Mother just calls me away from them and I come, but today because she was walking past me and the Frenchie on a narrow path she just wanted to nudge me along.
Mother is really hoping this doesn’t become a common issue. Mother doesn’t want people thinking I’m aggressive, especially since I want dogs to come up to me, not stay away! If I start doing the growling and lunging on the lead, Mother does know what she needs to do though, so hopefully she can help me with it. If I do develop frustrated greeter syndrome on the lead, Mother will need to distract me and reward me when I’m distracted from the other dog. Eventually, I’ll learn that when I see another dog while on lead, if I ignore them and look at Mother I’ll get the good stuff (usually sprats!). To be honest, I do already know this, so hopefully that means I’ll be okay.
Mother has always tried to not let me say hello to every dog to avoid this happening. If dogs are permitted to say hello to every dog they see, they assume that they’ll always be allowed to say hello. So when they can’t (i.e. on a lead), all their emotions are heightened with excitement and now they’re being prohibited from expressing that excitement in the only way they’ve been taught how (i.e. greeting the other dog). So you need to find an alternative way of letting the excitement out, so that the dog isn’t annoyed with all this unburnt energy to spare.
Mother always asks approaching people when she can if I’m allowed to say hello to the approaching dogs, whether on lead or off lead. Which means sometimes I’m allowed to approach, and other times Mother calls me back and I go on the lead. So far, I’ve never had a problem with this. I know Mother must have a reason for not letting me say hello to every dog.
Let’s hope today was a one off event. Providing Mother doesn’t try to pull me away by the collar midway through a meet and greet, we should be fine. But Mother will probably monitor me a bit more now.
But on that note, please, please believe me when I say, I am a good boy. I do try my best.