The March of the Good Dog

Please just give us a moment to get out of your way.

The March of the Good Dog

I had a Good Dog once.  Her name was Sidney.  She had been running around a neighborhood on Whidbey Island and people were throwing rocks at her.  I trapped her in a humane trap.  She barked at me when I approached the trap.  At home, when I let her out of the trap, she was skeptical for a little while.  Within an hour, she let me put a collar and harness on her.  From that point on, she was a perfect little angel.  She was gorgeous, clean, friendly, and sweet.  Sidney would follow commands, except, most of the time she would do what you were about to ask her before you even asked her.  I could take her anywhere and she was never a problem.  Obviously, I couldn’t keep her.  I only get the crazy dogs, the ones no one else wants.  She was adopted into a very nice home.

I have fostered at least 25 dogs.  The ones I kept were, for the most part, the ones that were unwanted, the ones no one would adopt.  Like Mu.  He was crazy when he was young.  Very destructive.  He was always happy and fun, but he would have burned a house down if not managed properly.  I had to keep him on a leash inside the house to keep him from chewing through electrical cables and killing himself.  When he turned one year old, I started training him to find lost cats.  Having a job made him so much more manageable.  He started his career as a search dog when he was a year and a half, and in the past ten years he has found over 350 lost cats.  He has saved the lives of people’s beloved family members. While he is a great dog, he is not always a good dog.  In public, he has a tendency to bark at people who don’t need to be barked at.  If a serial killer wearing a hockey mask and carrying a chainsaw and a machete walked toward us, Mu would great him happily.  If a Girl Scout selling Thin Mints approached us, Mu would probably bark like she was satan.  Also, if Mu is with the rest of his crew, Fozzie, Sky, and Tino, he will bark at other dogs approaching.  When I take the dogs for a walk, I try to go at off-peak times, and I always make sure to have a planned escape route so that I can move my dogs away from trouble.

At least a couple of dozen times, in spite of my efforts to avoid such a situation, someone has come marching toward us with a Good Dog.  My spirited dogs will start barking and pulling hard on the leashes.  Sky, the dog found in a cemetery, gets them all started, and acts the most crazy.  Tino is just huge and strong, and at 110 pounds I have a hard time controlling him.  What often happens is that Sky gets in front of me and then Tino pulls me over the top of her so that if I don’t adjust my stance I will just be pulled down.  Once this team of crazies starts pulling, it can take me a few moments to get my feet under me and get the leverage to pull them away to one of our planned escape routes.  I’m pulling back on 265 pounds of dogs, with great traction and a low center of gravity.  If it has been raining and the pavement is slippery, it can be even harder to get everything under control.  Many times, the owner of a Good Dog has seen me floundering and flailing with my pack of mad monsters, and this dog owner has just continued to march right toward us with his Good Dog.  It seems to be a point of honor, to say, “I have a Good Dog, and you are a bad person because your dogs are out of control.”  I’m happy you have a Good Dog, and I think you should be proud.  I can certainly understand why you would judge me, and I really don’t mind if you are thinking bad thoughts about me.  You might even say to your dog, “You are a Good Dog, not like that awful man and his crazy mutts.”  I talk smack about people all the time to my dogs.  That’s all fine.

Where I have a problem is that you can plainly see that you are walking into a potentially dangerous situation, and you are not hesitating, to maybe give us some space.  You can see that my dogs are a handful, and they are just about to take me down.  If they do, it would be better if you laugh at me from a distance.  If you come right up on us before I have my dogs under control, someone is likely to get hurt.  My dogs aren’t mean or aggressive, but they do like to speak their minds.  What is likely to happen is that Tino or Mu is going to get right in your dog’s face and bark at him, and very likely your good dog is going to snap at my bad dog.  Then it could devolve into a scrum and someone could get hurt, probably me when I try to get my body in between the excited dogs.  If you kept marching towards me and my pack of crazy dogs, and there was a ruckus and someone got hurt, you could probably say it was my fault.  Maybe I ought to do more training to keep my dogs calmer in those situations.  Maybe I should take time out from the 80 hours a week I spend helping lost pets, and do some Behavioral Adjustment Training so my dogs will be less reactive when a Good Dog marches toward us.

There is another option.  If you are out walking your dog, that means you aren’t on your way to work or to an appointment, having to be there at a certain time.  Most likely, you don’t even have to walk down this street.  If you are out walking your dog, you could stop and wait, and give me 30 seconds to get my feet under myself and get a good grip on the leashes.  You could even turn around and go back the way you came.  It’s a loop.  You can go around the block one way just as easy as going the other way.  You are walking your dog.  It’s not like you will be penalized if your path forms a semicircle instead of a circle.  But if there’s some very important reason why you absolutely have to keep going in the direction you are traveling, there is no reason in the world why you can’t just pause for 30 seconds.  You could even ask your dog to sit, as I’m wrestling with my maniacs, and show me up even more.  You could have your dog turn her head up and to the side a little, like she’s snubbing us, the bad dogs.  I don’t mind if you judge me and think I’m horrible.  Just please give me 30 seconds to get out of your way.

When I had a Good Dog, like Sidney, it never would have occurred to me to do the Good Dog March, charging right up on an out of control dog just to show how superior we were.  I was very proud of walking with Sidney, and I always liked to walk along with my golden beauty, on the leash just so, with that beautiful arc in the leash like the Narrows Bridge cables.  As proud as I was of my Good Dog, and as much as I like to judge people and think mean thoughts about them, I would not have marched Sidney into a potentially dangerous situation.  If I saw some poor sap wrestling with his out-of-control dogs, I would give him space, not because I care about the person so much but because I care about dogs.  I would not have wanted to put my Sidney in danger, and also I definitely don’t want to upset a reactive dog.  I want all dogs to be happy.  If I see a reactive dog who doesn’t know how to handle a social situation, I don’t want to antagonize him further and make him miserable.  I would want that dog to be happy and give him the space to be comfortable.

The Good Dog March seems to be a reflex more than a planned antagonism.  It’s like, “This is America, I have a good dog, you have bad dogs, and my good dog should not be prohibited from walking wherever we want just because you haven’t trained your dogs.” I agree with you.  I don’t want to interrupt your walk with your Good Dog.  Just give me 30 seconds to get out your way.  Please.  Don’t do it for me.  Do it for your dog, and for all dogs.