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Do you say HI to everyone when you're out?
I'm pretty sure the answer is NO, so why do we think it's necessary for your dog to say hello to every dog you come across on your walk?
Saying hi to every dog teaches your dog this:
That everyone is more interesting than you.
To constantly be on the lookout for fun, instead of focusing on you
By pulling towards what they find exciting, they get what they want.
Instead we want to teach our dog this:
When we see another person or dog = nothing special, we can ignore it.
Engagement and focus on YOU
If you get to meet a dog we do this calmly
We can walk calmly and with a loose leash because passerby's arent that important to us.
It's also showing polite manners to not say because:
Some people don't like dogs and don't want to have dogs sniffing their ankles.
Some dogs don't want to say 'hi' because they don't like other dogs, are introverst, are in training, are old, sick, bad experiences or want to mind their own business.
Unless you're extremely extraverted you don't go up to every single person in the mall to say HI?
If you do, I'm pretty sure people will start posting about you pretty quickly in facebook community groups.
Dogs don't need to say hi to EVERY dog. They need to be able to nice and calm when seeing MOST dogs and they can say HI to 'RELEVANT' dogs in their life. (Dogs they see on the daily, have to interact with regularly, dogs that are important in their lives).
We talk about this in our podcast in much more detail, feel free to check it out here:
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