You love your dog, they love you. Now just trust each other.
My whole childhood, my mom drilled into me not to befriend strangers online and to never (I repeat, never) meet up with any online person in real life. Flash forward a good decade and here I am, ignoring my mom’s rules and meeting up with twenty-odd online friends all in one go. To be fair, they’re dogs. And I love dogs.
In January this year, hosted by Dog Love SA, we all gathered at the best place on earth (aka Walkhaven Dog Park) for the second JHB Instameet and you can imagine it was organized chaos. Dogs running everywhere, Instagrammers running after the dogs with their phones and cameras, flying balls followed by a stream of dogs, greyhounds zooming in and out of everyone. In short, it was great. And the best part about all of this? I got to meet my extended fur children! Sorry humans, I do better with dogs so I apologize for not socializing too much.
Here are just some amateur snaps of the day. Can you tell how much all the dogs enjoyed themselves?
Okay now to talk about my dogs. A little over a year ago, I first met Lauren and Mia from Dog Love SA with Beanie and Bailey at Walkhaven. It was one of the first few times we had taken Bailey out and she was still in her angsty stage, but the only way to get through that is to socialize. She was still learning and I was still learning about her. All seemed well until there was a bit of jealousy and she and Mia had a bit of a tiff. Flash forward to this Instameet and there’s Bailey running around with other dogs, not getting cross when they stole her ball and totally okay with me and my mom petting other dogs! Of course I watched her very closely as usual, but she was so happy that it made me feel a little less stressed.
I’ve met some amazing people on Social Media who also have a similar problem as I had with Bailey. I know it’s scary to go out into the world when your dog might have a disagreement with others, and that’s okay! It takes time, but the only way to get through it is to just bite (for the lack of a better word) the ball and go for it. I used to use a red bandana, red collar and a red leash when taking Bailey out, making sure everyone knew that she was bad business. When dogs came up to us (ahem, yes you, annoying people who let their dogs off a lead at parks where you’re not supposed to), I would quickly talk to Bailey and turn around, praise her and give her a treat if she came with me without looking at the other dogs. Eventually she started ignoring the other dogs who would gallop in her direction and automatically look back at me. We then still quickly turn around and stride away.
Don’t get me wrong: if a dog off leash runs up to Bailey while she is still on lead, she will tell them to fluff off. However, if everyone is running free, Bailey seems to have gotten the idea that we’re all friends for the most part. We are both (yes, dog and trainer together as a team) are still learning. So don’t be discouraged. Be brave! And I hope to meet more of you at our next Instameet!
