We have a 6 month old golden retriever who is lovely but very overly friendly. Whenever we’re on a walk and pass by another person or dog he gets excited and wants to say hello. He’ll literally clock them from down the street.
We are working on getting him to ignore and carry on, and it’s working when we don’t let him say hello at all. However, when we do stop to say hello or let him play with the other dogs on their walk, when we try to break the contact and carry on with our walk, he seems to get very overstimulated and excitable and basically throws a huge temper tantrum. He jumps up at me, growls and bites on my sleeves/hands. It’s like he decides that he hasn’t played enough and takes it out on me.
What can we do here? Do we just not allow him to say hello to anyone on his walks? I worry this would then go the other way and he’ll never learn how to disengage in situations with other dogs as he’s never given the opportunity to learn it. Does anyone have any advice on disengagement tactics? It’s very stressful and I’m open to any advice. Thankyou
submitted by /u/alt97979
[link] [comments]