We–along with most of the free world–got a covid puppy in 2020. She's a very good dog but perhaps loves a bit too much and can get pretty excited. We enrolled in a training program to deal with some of the issues we couldn't seem to curve, and man alive was that an eye opener.
I know the traditional view is all bad dog behaviour is just bad human behaviour (and most of it is), but there are legitimately wonderful and hard working dog owners out there who got monumentally screwed by bad luck. There were dogs that picked up loose-leash walking with 3 corrections over 5 minutes, while there were dogs that never got it, and both owners were lovely people who were 100% committed.
On the final day I was chatting with the trainer and asked about the discrepancy and their reply was something along the lines of "Some of these dogs are highly anxious and some aren't. Ever know anybody with anxiety? How easy was it to fix them?" That sorta stuck with me, that sometimes the work required to train a dog can be incredibly difficult and outside somebody's available bandwidth.
So I totally see how Scroopy can list this among the drains on his life. Sometimes it's hard with 100% buy-in, and he doesn't even have that.
|