Sorry in advance for the rant below but I just need to let it out!
I took Boston into my hubby's work place today for his first visit. His work place is very dog friendly and in future, once Boston is well trained, we intend on letting Boston join him in there every now and then. They are quite strict about what the dogs can and can't do in their dog policy, which I completely understand, and we are well versed in what is acceptable behaviour (eg no nipping, biting, accidents inside etc) or else Boston will be banned from ever going in again.
Anyway, I arrived outside and my hubby tells me that it was Santa day today and so there were lots of kids around (he didn't realise, otherwise we wouldn't have taken Boston in on that day). We agreed we needed to be hypervigilant about Boston, as he still gets super excited about meeting new people and especially children.
We go inside into a common area where two of my hubby's workmates were already gathered to meet Boston. Boston was being his typical exuberant puppy self and he was jumping up in all the excitement. So we calmed him down and made him sit between our legs, holding him closely, as we were so concerned about him accidentally nipping someone. Everything was under control and Boston was being calm.
Then, a small group of parents with very young children (some as young as 2 years old) come into the room from behind us and of course, the kids beelined it for Boston, hands going straight for his face. I literally had to physically haul the kids away from Boston and it was a good thing my hubby already had hold of Boston and that stopped him from lunging.
The parents basically DID NOTHING. They all just stood around and let their children approach a completely unknown and very young puppy with no supervision at all. I made it clear to them that this was not ok and one parent's response was 'It's fine, my kid is good around dogs'.
Now what really infuriated me was that if Boston had of lunged at one of the children because they stuck their hand in his face and he accidentally nipped them, we would have been at fault and he would have been banned from ever going into work again. Just as we have a responsibility to control our dog, parent's also have a responsibility to supervise their children. I couldn't believe the parent's blase attitude to what could have been a very dangerous situation.
And looking back, I don't see how we could have behaved any differently to prevent the situation. We are continuing to train Boston to be calm when meeting people but with a young puppy this takes time (and he is making good progress but is still not there yet). Any advice would be appreciated.
Sorry, but I just needed to let the steam out of that one...
I took Boston into my hubby's work place today for his first visit. His work place is very dog friendly and in future, once Boston is well trained, we intend on letting Boston join him in there every now and then. They are quite strict about what the dogs can and can't do in their dog policy, which I completely understand, and we are well versed in what is acceptable behaviour (eg no nipping, biting, accidents inside etc) or else Boston will be banned from ever going in again.
Anyway, I arrived outside and my hubby tells me that it was Santa day today and so there were lots of kids around (he didn't realise, otherwise we wouldn't have taken Boston in on that day). We agreed we needed to be hypervigilant about Boston, as he still gets super excited about meeting new people and especially children.
We go inside into a common area where two of my hubby's workmates were already gathered to meet Boston. Boston was being his typical exuberant puppy self and he was jumping up in all the excitement. So we calmed him down and made him sit between our legs, holding him closely, as we were so concerned about him accidentally nipping someone. Everything was under control and Boston was being calm.
Then, a small group of parents with very young children (some as young as 2 years old) come into the room from behind us and of course, the kids beelined it for Boston, hands going straight for his face. I literally had to physically haul the kids away from Boston and it was a good thing my hubby already had hold of Boston and that stopped him from lunging.
The parents basically DID NOTHING. They all just stood around and let their children approach a completely unknown and very young puppy with no supervision at all. I made it clear to them that this was not ok and one parent's response was 'It's fine, my kid is good around dogs'.
Now what really infuriated me was that if Boston had of lunged at one of the children because they stuck their hand in his face and he accidentally nipped them, we would have been at fault and he would have been banned from ever going into work again. Just as we have a responsibility to control our dog, parent's also have a responsibility to supervise their children. I couldn't believe the parent's blase attitude to what could have been a very dangerous situation.
And looking back, I don't see how we could have behaved any differently to prevent the situation. We are continuing to train Boston to be calm when meeting people but with a young puppy this takes time (and he is making good progress but is still not there yet). Any advice would be appreciated.
Sorry, but I just needed to let the steam out of that one...