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Originally Posted by kkaffrine
We took Molly to a local dog park yesterday for the first time. She is 6 months now. We have neighbors all around us with all types of dogs she wants to play with but they wont play with her. They are older dogs and are not interested. We thought she would have a blast at the park but it was not a good experience. When we went into the gate, she was immediately surrounded by 5-6 big dogs who all just wanted to check her out. She ran from them, rolled on her back and yipped like they were hurting her. She ran to a picnic table and jumped on top of it. She wanted to play with the people not the dogs! We stayed for about an hour until she began biting at a couple of dogs who came up to her. Any advise......do we take her back and if so how do we handle it? What can we do for her to have a more pleasent experience. She was the smallest and shortest dog there.
Katherine
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I remember Cody's training instructor telling us that a puppies first play date experience with other dogs should be a positive one and advised us not to take our puppies to the dog park for their first play date. She said you don't know what you are going to encounter there and said she has seen some bullying going on(with owners not always paying attention), and that we wouldn't want our young pup to experience that for their first play date; and it sounded like all those dogs surrounding Molly at one time was scary for her. Of course, this instructor was talking about our dog park and had done some observation there as to what goes on.
I second what Susan suggested in having Molly interact with some small/med size dogs several times before attempting the dog park again. - Although I am not sure the size of the dog always matters, as one of Cody's favorites at his day care was a Bernese Mountain Dog who was huge compared to him, but she was gentle and not overly exuberant. She was always allowed in the small/med dog section because the other ones in the larger dog section were too active for her.
If Molly doesn't seem to enjoy being there after her next time, I guess I would not be going back.