Five Things to Remember When Your Dog Misbehaves in Public

I want to start this post off with a story.

A year or two ago, I had just started back into training my service dog in public. Covid had happened and shut us down for quite some time, so I had to start back from scratch in a way.

Add that to an already cripplingly socially anxious personality, and you get a terrified Blythe.

But I had been instructed to start ripping off the band-aid and going into public to get over my fear.

I decided to take her to a place I knew well, my therapist’s office.

As we walked in, I saw some men working on the roof of the building.

I thought nothing of it, and proceeded to check in and sit in the waiting room.

All of a sudden, one of the construction workers began hammering into the ceiling above us. It sounded like frantic, heavy knocks, and I was pretty surprised and startled.

Quimby was too, and she decided to voice her opinion very loudly in the doctor’s office waiting room.

I was mortified.

I wanted to melt into the ground.

Service dogs aren’t supposed to bark, after all.

Shortly after, my therapist brought me back to her office, and we had an entire session on how to help myself recover after feeling so terribly about my dogs’ behavior.

Funnily enough, no one even batted an eyelash at Quimby’s bark, and everything was just fine afterwards. We go back weekly, and no one has ever had an issue with her one startle bark from the construction. 

But while I worked through the embarrassment, I learned many things:

Your dog’s behavior is not a reflection of you as a person.

Your dog is a separate being from you, and you cannot control everything they do. That’s just part of having a dog. We can try our hardest to control their every move, but if we are training kindly and compassionately, our dogs will not be fully controlled (nor should they be).

Our dogs will startle. Our dogs will occasionally show fear or stress. Our dogs might bark once or twice when confronted with surprising things. Our dogs will show excitement. Our dogs will have emotions. These are all NORMAL dog behaviors. This does not make us bad owners/guardians/trainers.
 

Every dog has their thing.

This is something I didn’t know until I started training. All we see are picture perfect dogs on Instagram and impeccable clips of service dog work (or pet dogs) in public. What we don’t see is the pull on the leash to get to a crumb on the ground that happened right before or the fear response to a loud noise right after. Every single dog struggles with something. There is no “perfect” dog.

Most people are impressed with the basics.

Most people barely get around to teaching their dog to sit, or have a dog who could pull a sled full of bricks the entire walk. Just seeing a dog walking on a loose lead and picking up their leash is enough to wow them. One brief sniff or a bark from startle is not going to make people think any less of you, and they almost always immediately forget about it.

You did the best you could. 

Sometimes, our dogs will do things outside of our control. In those moments, we do the best we can to keep them out of harm’s way and under control for the public. If you did the best you could in the situation, then that’s all you can ask of yourself. You will always be able to improve, but leave those thoughts for next time. In this moment, you did all you could to keep your dog, the people around you, and yourself safe and comfortable.

Not everybody needs to like your dog.

This is really hard for me to accept, but sometimes people just don’t like dogs. And that’s okay! It’s unfair to put the pressure on ourselves to make our dogs likable at all times. That’s just not realistic. As long as you are keeping your dog, the public, and yourself safe and accommodated, that’s all that matters.

If it helps, write all of these down and post them in your training journal or near your dogs' bed or food bowl. REMEMBER THEM. 😉

This was a fun post to write because I have struggled SO much with this in the past. Especially after some not so great experiences with people who don’t happen to like dogs much.

These are all things that I have to repeat to myself daily.

Stressed about my dog sniffing something?

I repeat: “She’s a dog. She will sniff. People are impressed that she redirected to me.” or something similar.

I try to replace each negative or anxious sentence with one from the above list.

It’s taken time, but I’m slowly getting better and better at moving on from my dogs’ mistakes.

Do you struggle with this and want some accountability to change how you think about it?

You should join me in The Pack (my online program for training your dog, service dog, or puppy to listen to every cue joyfully)! We talk about topics like this all the time, and seeing a whole community of others struggling with this too has been so helpful for my clients. 

Click here to learn more!