I just had a conversation with a coworker that's pretty average when it comes to dog knowledge, not a bad thing, but a good peek into what the general public thinks about dogs
He didn't do much research on dogs before getting one, I think that's typical for the majority of dog owners, he just had dogs growing up, went to the pound and got one for his family.
Although, because he was looking up the shelter, he started getting recommended dog training videos on his feed, and he got interested in it, and is doing his very best with training, but (like I'm assuming most people would) didn't get the memo 100%
He took "socializing your dog" in the context he understood, "make sure your dog meets everyone." And it's lead to some issues he's vented to me about. He takes his new dog to dog parks and she got in a fight, he blamed the other dog and took her again, another fight. He has his dog do leash greetings and now she lunges at dogs on walks. He took her to bars and has everyone who wants to pet her, and she's now a little nippy and barks at people. Which, for I think most of us here, is the most expected result, but of course that wasn't his experience
He now has the opinion all this "new age dog crap" is terrible and ruined his dog, and it was hard to give him advice; when before "socializing", he was enthusiastic enough to do what he felt was enough research all on his own, and I feel bad for him and all other owners that have similar experiences
I'm not trying to get the whole internet to change how we word things, but I've been thinking that personally, I'm going to refer to it as "desensitization" which I think is a lot more intuitively understood. Because really, that's what we mean by socialization.
Getting a dog used to many environments, and being calm in them isn't a very social part of training. In fact, when I'm working on 'socialization' I don't let anyone come and pet my dog, I don't let my dog IN the dog park, and I don't let any other leashed dog approach, because that is the exact opposite of what I'm working on.
I didn't really notice how ironic of a term "socialization" is until today, and I think it's a really easy mistake to make and I feel awful for him and his dog, because really, he was trying, and now he's resistant to further advice. And really, so much of this is avoidable because "desensitizing" just fits so much better in every aspect I can think of
submitted by /u/olioili
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