Dog Park Etiquette Fail – Ball Possesiveness
Meet Brutus
In the two years we have had Larry, he has overall developed much better dog park behavior. Now, when we see a “sled dog”, I tell Larry to go play with it, versus worrying about whether or not he will get in a scuffle. He has even gotten better at interactions with intact male dogs (though I can usually tell from his first interaction with them that they are intact, even if I can’t see that part of the dog).
Still, Larry has some occasional issues at the dog park.
See Brutus there. Brutus is a lovely, large and very muscular Bulldog. Larry recently decided to take on Brutus. And believe it or not, Larry was winning when we got them apart. He had Brutus on his back and had not a single mark on him. (I will note that Brutus also did not have a mark on him. This was a scrap, not a fight.)
The scrap lasted less than 30 seconds, but despite Larry’s tenacious nature and speed, I would not put odds on him against Brutus if we were not there to intervene and (literally) carry him away from the interaction.
What caused Larry to go after poor Brutus? A ball. It was not “Larry’s ball”. It was a park ball. We had been throwing it with the chucker when Larry decided to take a break from chasing it and just chew on it. Brutus made the mistake of coming over to sniff Larry while he was chewing, and Larry became instantly possessive of the ball and attacked Brutus.
Not going to the dog park really isn’t an option for us. Unless one of us decides to take up marathon training, we are not going to be able to get Larry enough exercise on leash. He needs to be able to run, and the dog park is the best place for that to happen.
We are lucky in that a lot of dogs at the dog park respond to Larry’s possessiveness by walking away. But sometimes he comes across a dog like Brutus, and a scrap happens. (Please note, I am NOT blaming Brutus. Brutus was behaving appropriately with all the other dogs. Larry most definitely started the scrap, but it does take two dogs for it turn into a scrap. Otherwise, it’s just Larry being snappy at a dog that then walks away. I still don’t want Larry to do that, but it doesn’t result in us having to carry Larry away from the area.) Larry also is not interested in hurting the other dog, just protecting his ball. That means the interactions are almost never full on fights, for which I am grateful. But ball possessiveness is obviously not a behavior we want to encourage. In fact, it is one that we actively want to discourage. How are we doing that?
-None of Larry’s balls from the house ever go to the dog park. We do have one of the bright orange chucker balls that lives in the chucker, and that will go to the park. But Larry often doesn’t want to chase that ball, which means we get more exercise going after the ball than he does. He prefers the texture of the traditional tennis ball, and is much more likely to chase (and retrieve) one of those.
– We try to only use park balls. The older and more worn down (less fuzz to then decide he wants to chew) the better.
– We try to find two park balls, so that we can always draw his attention away from one ball with the other.
– If he drops a ball while greeting another dog, we get in there and remove the ball as soon as possible
– If he stops running around with the ball and decides to start chewing/destroying it, we step in and try to take the ball away. While we often don’t succeed in getting the ball from him, it gets him up and moving around with the ball in his mouth. And if he’s busy playing keep away with us, he is not focusing on protecting the ball from other dogs.
Larry is an overall good dog. And he is a better dog than he was when we first brought him home. But he is not a perfect dog, and he has occasional possessiveness issues. We work very hard on his dog park etiquette because it is such a necessary tool for his exercise/energy needs. Sometimes, though, we miss something, and an incident happens. Luckily, it is happening less and less often all the time.