Jessica Moe

So, today we took the girls to the bark park…Despite our long(er) walks everyday, I felt like they should get some good exercise that just isn’t possible especially since we have been so busy lately…so, we loaded up our barking, drooling, messes…and headed out. 

Now, before I tell you about the proud moment…I will say that, in the past, our girls haven’t been the best behaved animals. I mean they weren’t badly behaved, just not well behaved…somewhere in the middle.  Despite our best efforts, we simply weren’t speaking “dog”. 

Anyways, lately, we have been watching the Dog Whisperer (Cesar Milan) on Animal Planet (now on National Geographic Channel) and we have gained some valuable insight as to how better control our pups.  Did I say valuable? I mean *priceless*…

One of the most important things we’ve learned is that when entring a social situation, a dog who is unstable or imbalanced can throw off an otherwise calm and stable pack by acting erratically.  Now, I could be misquoting a bit, and I am sure I am…but from watching his show, I know that when my girls are overly excited going into a a dog park can be a resipe for disaster.  Ally expecially gets into a hyperactive state of mind, and will snap if a dog approaches her too quickly or too aggressively.  When they are calm and submissive, I can allow them to go in and introduce themselves by allowing other dogs to sniff them and they can sniff other dogs in a friendly and curious manner…

So, using some of Cesar Milan’s techniques, we were able to get the dogs to calm down enough to enter the dog park and conduct themselves in a friendly way… We remained calm, dominant and vigilant…

And then it happened, in much the way it always does, a crowd of dogs…one starts barking, another freaks out and within seconds there is a dog fight. It begins with two dogs, and doesn’t take but a few more seconds for pretty much the entire park to join in.  Usually, this means that Ally is barking wildly and her hackles are up….Erin is confused and cowering somewhere, and they are exacerbating the situation…

But not this time, no sir!

Those little ladies stayed perfectly calm. They ran right to us and watched without excitement or fear, just observers to the crazy fleabags losing their everloving minds. 

And this happened not once, but twice. The second time was WORST than the first with every Pit Bull and German Shepard and aggressive breed in the lot going at it.  It took THREE large men to pull the dogs apart and my ladies just looked at me like “Sheesh! What’s their problem?”

I couldn’t have been more proud. They listened to me and Issa so well…and we now feel like we can take them to the park more often now that we know what to do.  And that was my proud dog-mom moment.