I’m surprised Runty’s owner didn’t just laugh–which is what I would have done.

Yeah I thought the sitting thing was pretty funny as well, and a good way to handle conflicts. However, the guy didn’t like his dog being sat on. He probably felt that it reflected badly on their combined male macho power. I suppose I can understand some of that; some people see their dog as an extension of themselves, so dominating their dog is like dominating them.

His wife just picked up Runty, made coo-ing noises to him, and didn’t say anything to anybody.

Their daughter kept apologizing to us. She seemed really stressed out so we talked to her some and told her everything was ok, and there was no need to be sorry. Kindda felt bad for her, but we decided the best thing to do was to leave.

Wow that is interesting that Ziva does that too. Shania does not do that. She is more of a submissive dog so whenever there are any conflicts she rolls over to show that she is not a threat. Nowadays I am careful to screen the dogs she meets coz I don’t want her to have bad experiences with other dogs.

I used to take my Shiba to enclosed dog parks in the area. I went to about 5 different ones to try them out and then finally settled on one that seemed to have a good mix of dogs, and also had responsible owners. However, the nature of enclosed parks is such that all it takes is one anti-social dog, and accidents could occur. Also, some people would bring their kids and let them run all over the place which is very dangerous.

Finally I decided to stop taking Sephy to enclosed parks. We now only go to hiking parks which are a lot better because the owners usually stay close to their dogs and hiking parks are huge. The environment in a hiking park is a lot more structured and appropriate for Sephy. He was picking up a lot of bad habits in the enclosed parks.