4/7/08

Dog Park

Over the weekend, we brought Oliver to the local Dog park. We really wanted him to get friendly with other dogs while we seeked dogs owners with answers to some of our dilemmas. The evening started off well. Oliver met many other dogs his size in the big dog park area. He sniffed around and marked his spots where needed. Unbeknownest to us, this place was littered with tennis balls for all the dogs to play with. Once he got a hold of one, the fetching obsession began. I will admit our fault in fueling it, but Ollie does get obsessive and possessive of the balls.
As we are tossing the balls around, two little pugs(who should really belong in the small dog park)keep running up next to Ollie to catch the ball and play. Ollie, being so concentrated on retrieving the thrown balls, shows his true colors of not wanting to share this game with the other dogs. Immediately we have concerns. Though Ollie is not possessive of his food, treats, other toys. He's really possessive of tennis balls. Next thing we known, Ollie is in a full on fight with the pugs, and barks turn into squeals and yipes. We ran towards the commotion and broke up the dust ball. We immediately separated Ollie from the other dogs and took him for some cooling off period. What a disaster. The pugs were fine, a little shaken up, but up and running right afterwards. We are working on this bad habit. Hopefully we aren't banned from the park.

"I didn't do it!"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you just love the "I didn't do it" look? =P It's their way of making you let them off easy. They just don't know that you won't let them off easy when they pee on the DVR machine (I think that's what you call the machine, it's like TiVo). =x

Anonymous said...

At the previous owner's place, my dog would hide his tennis balls. He'd have 12 tennis balls total, but only three out to play with. If you took more out from his spot, he'd bring them back to his hiding spot and bring you a ball that was already out. That's what happened at lucky times. There was half an hour where I took the ball from his hiding spot, and he'd take all his balls back to the hiding spot so none of them were out, but he'd still want to play. He made you walk over to the spot, get the ball, throw it, he'd drop the ball back into the spot, and you'd have to fetch it again. =P He made us work to play with him. We haven't taken him to the dog park yet, so we don't know how he is sharing his toys.

Penny said...

Oliver loves to hog his toys, especially balls. It's always a game of tug with him and his toys. We tried the "not interested" method you suggested, but he just turns and takes his toy to a corner and amuses himself with it. He doesn't push us to play when we ignore. It's an interesting dynamic.

Anonymous said...

Ahh... so your dog likes to entertain himself. Sounds like me at times.. "I'm bored.. *looks around* Oh, that looks kind of interesting (a random object)... (a few hours later) Woohoo!! This is fun!" Hmm.. I'm blanking out right now on suggestions. I think it's from the 12 hour day at school. If I think of something else, I'll post it up. =)