Socialization is crucial to every puppy so I’ve been trying to socialize my 4 month old female puppy. Twice now have I had negative experiences doing so. The first time a man let his dog correct mine, which at first I didn’t understand that’s what he was doing (“watch” was the only thing he told me). She yelped so hard and I almost cried! At first she was struggling to open her eye but after some time she seemed to be okay. When I went to pick her up, the old man took her from me and was cuddling her for like 10 minutes so I couldn’t look at her eye right away. The second time a man saw me walking his way and leashed one of his 2 dogs when our paths crossed. He told me the dog off leash was friendly, which is great so that mine (on leash) can say hello. His leashed dog started lunging, growling, and barking while pulling him closer and closer to mine. Mind you she was a small dog, but he was letting her come almost face to face with mine. He was telling me something but I couldn’t hear him over all of the barking and growling, which my puppy started copying because she is a copy machine and loves mimicking other dogs. I kept saying “what?” While trying to focus on his dog’s mouth to make sure my puppy wasn’t near it, while trying to get my puppy to stop barking and interacting with this man’s dog and to focus on food I had for her. After far too long of him being so close that his dog was centimeters away from biting mine, I finally realized this old man was telling me to let dogs be dogs, that they’d figure it out. What am I supposed to do or say in these scenarios? I get really bad anxiety, especially social anxiety. The two old men really did seem to have good intentions which is why I couldn’t react the way I wanted to (I wanted to say very mean things). I’m really shy and kind of a push over and I am working on it, I just need advice.
submitted by /u/Pinkasaur95
[link] [comments]