My personal opinion: I don't have nothing against dogs but I hate to hear them barking. I know that you can't completely control that but way many owners do not teach manners to their dogs and they are barking all the time.
Now before someone says "what's up with this guy expecting manners from dogs" I actually adopted two dogs last year and without prior experience I educated them really well. Now I'm pretty sure that a messy dog is absolutely the fault of the owner's behavior.
And you're right about the social contract. The damage that irresponsible owners are doing to society far extends the trivial situation of "that dog is making a lot of noise"; that thing easily becomes a "I hope the owner gets it back" and those collective feelings fuel a more hostile society in general.
You are right to some extent. But may I ask what is your dogs' breed? Different breeds have different behavior patterns and some specific to barking, some breeds are just more noisy than others no matter how you trained them. For example, terriers were used to rats, rabbits, and foxes [0]. This means they had to work along underground so that barking was actually a good trait otherwise their owners might not be able to find them when they had some dangerous situation underneath. Barking was an old GPS for their owners. Terriers were specifically selected by breeders to bark loud and frequent[1]. Of course that does not necessary mean a barking terrier is acceptable. They have to be trained but may bark more than other breeds.
I don't know what breed they are because I found them on the street but they look a lot like German shepherds. But yeah ok, "maybe it's the breed". Still, I think that a courteous owner goes a long way.
I don't know if shepherds are specifically prone to barking but I can tell you that my dogs were particularly prone to barking when I found them. They pretty much barked at anything, other people, other dogs, just because they were bored, etc... Ever since I got them I continuously chided them when they barked at inappropriate situations; around 2-3 months following this relatively simple treatment (sometimes as trivial as just yelling NO!) and their noise and anxious behavior has been reduced considerably.
I'm not saying they don't bark anymore, because they do, but when I'm in a situation where they start barking at someone at the street (for instance) my reaction is to immediately try to do something to make them stop and sometimes I even excuse myself with the people involved; I've seen many owners dealing with the same situation in a completely different way, even taking a defiant attitude, like in "you can't do anything, its not illegal for my dog to bark", this attitude is what pisses other people off.
It's not the dog barking, it's the owner not giving a shit; it's like seeing someone throwing trash on the street, the world's not going to end because of a can lying there in the sidewalk but a world where many people act in such manner is a world that's up to no good.
Others may view the barking in a different way than you do and that could explain their different reactions. If a dog is barking out of fear scolding it may be a bad option because 1) you proved them right. They thought it was a bad situation, now you're in a bad mood and they're in trouble. Definitely a bad situation. 2) Barking and growling is a great way for dogs to communicate their discomfort before it escalates. A dog that has learned not to growl or bark will resort to other signals that are less likely to be understood by humans, and then bite.
The other owners may not give a shit, some don't, but they may be intentionally acting like it's no big deal as part of a larger strategy of changing how their dog views certain situations.
> I don't know if shepherds are specifically prone to barking
Yes. Shepherds are especially prone to barking. They were trained to be, well, shepherds. This breed is used to guard sheep, not scare them. So they have to be quite and obedient to their owners.
Retrievers are also quite because they were used to retrieve game for a hunter. Those games may be just hurt and barking may scare them away. So the breeders were specifically select quite and obedient dogs to be retrievers.
It's not about "bad dog" or "good dog", it's "your dog doesn't belong in the grocery store sniffing the lettuce I'm trying to buy", or "your dog doesn't belong in the clothing store shedding hair all over the pants I'm trying to buy".
Neither are things that a "good dog" wouldn't do or a "bad dog" would, they're both natural things that the dog can't help... ie. it's not the dog's fault it's shedding.
The problem is the owner that invites the situation.
It's just plain rude for the owner to think everyone else has to put up with their animal. I love animals, always have (since I was a kid I've never not owned a cat or dog, or both, sometimes multiples of both), but I would never think it sane to force my animal upon others, especially at a store.
> Now I'm pretty sure that a messy dog is absolutely the fault of the owner's behavior.
I don't agree. We had a dog who was absolutely hopeless. We took her to several professional dog trainers and spent many thousands on dog therapy to no avail. Just because you had a good experience with your two dogs doesn't mean that applies to all dogs.
As I said in another comment you can argue about anything for an infinite amount of time. You are saying that my statement is not true because ONE dog (out of many that you apparently had) was messier than others, yeah I could also say that maybe you didn't treat that dog the same way you treat the others or just blatantly call you a liar, that's a lie!
You and I could exchange every kind of imaginable counterargument and nothing valuable would come out of it; the important thing is that people should (or learn to) live in a civilized environment and realize that their rights end where another people's start.
I find it remarkable that you don't see anything strange in drawing a conclusion about hundreds of millions of dogs based on a population of two.
No, this is not about agreeing to disagreeing. Regardless if I'm lying or not you cannot use your anecdotal evidence to affirm a universal statement. You can falsify "no dogs can be educated", but that's it.
I actually feel the same way about kids "acting out" in public. The difference is, if the guardians are attempting to control the situation. If they are, then I am much more tolerant to the disruption. If not, well to be honest, I'm not sure if I'm more upset with the child or the parent at this point.
The problem is that misbehaviour is often attention-seeking. You then have three choices.
1 - give in and give them candy or whatever it is they're screaming for. Shuts them up for the moment, but makes the problem much more likely to recur elsewhere.
2 - ignore them, or rather, pretend that they're not screaming. This is best in the long term, but obviously sucks for the short term. The worst is the sanctimonious looks you get from everybody because you're letting your children scream it out.
3 - punish them. This is just a variation on #1. They wanted attention, and now you're giving it to them. The difference is that it's much less likely to actually stop the screaming.
Of course, the worst of both worlds is starting out with #2 and then giving in to the sanctimonious looks and the screaming and doing #1 or #3.
While applying 1, 2, or 3 you should also work to find and ameliorate the root cause. Are they tired, hungry, bored or over-stimulated? The last two are particularly hard to tell apart. For instance in an airport it could be either (or both!) -- they're bored because they haven't been able to do anything "fun" but over-stimulated because they're shoved into an overwhelming new environment.
That's why shoving a tablet in their face is so effective -- it gives them something to do while simultaneously shutting out the outside world.
Once I had children, my breaking point for getting annoyed with other people's children skyrocketed. Now, I mostly feel bad for the parent.
You're right in that you can usually tell by the parents reaction the type of person they are. My emotions adjust accordingly to that, but I do still hear from people how annoyed they are when a child acts out, regardless of the parents reaction.
You still need to do stuff in life and with children, doing stuff becomes substantially harder. I'd bet a lot of parents with kids who act out don't want to go to the store with them, but simply have to because they don't have better options.
Not just that, but it trains dogs not to bark or growl when they are antagonized or upset by certain behaviour. Normally a bark or growl would function as a warning, but now he has no other way to go than bite without warning.
Now this animal, who was shocked into never using its vocal cords and antagonized until he bit a human or other animal out of desperation, gets put down because he is a danger to society. Job well done lads!
I've seen these used on rescue dogs that frankly have such complex psychological problems that they cannot be untrained to bark. The only other choice is euthanasia. They aren't so strong that the dog can't growl.
The dog also learns that aggressive responses are not so fantastic.
My own dog doesn't have one of these, mainly because we try to be very careful to manage how we respond to his barking. But if we couldn't keep up the late-night bark management, or if we lose control of the barking, I won't think twice about buying one of these. I've seen them used on other dogs and frankly they work just fine and are humane.
No. Shock collars are exactly how dogs get such complex psychological problems that they're abandoned in the first place.
They're not humane, if you force a shock collar on another human it's legally considered a torture device. If the legal system used them it would be cruel and unusual punishment.
Causing unnecessary pain and suffering is not compatible with being humane. It's as simple as that. There are better solutions with fewer side effects for every use case of a shock collar. If not every single use case, the overwhelming majority of them. (edit: I didn't realize you were the one advocating using shock collars on a rescue dog that barks too much. A shock collar isn't even in the right ballpark in that case.)
Dominance and pain based training methods are outdated and based on debunked theories, in the past three decades almost the entire field of animal behavior has moved on.
Ughmmmm no. Try to be getting up 6 times a night to find your dog barking at a hedgehog because one wondered into your garden(and a dog won't stop, if needed it will stand in front of a hedgehog for 12 hours and bark at it). The only other option was to tie the dog down each night,but in my opinion that's more barbaric. After a few nights of getting shocked each time he got even close to the hedgehog, barking at them stopped and the collar has not been used again. It's just a tool,and I have nothing against them.
I don't know why I got downvoted for stating that I would use that product... anyway...
I agree with you and the thing about "now they will bite without warning" is total bs. They somehow fail to see that if an owner cares enough to prevent his dog from barking they will, to a much greater degree, care that its dog will not harm to other people; quite the contrary, the type of guy that says "they're dogs, it's natural for them to bark" is the type of guy that later turns into a "they're dogs, it's natural for them to bite".
After being zapped by one of these myself, I had to tone down my disapproval of them. It was uncomfortable but not particularly painful, similar to a 'handbuzzer' gag gift.
My bigger problem was that it was not very effective at stopping barking.
My personal opinion: I don't have nothing against dogs but I hate to hear them barking. I know that you can't completely control that but way many owners do not teach manners to their dogs and they are barking all the time.
Now before someone says "what's up with this guy expecting manners from dogs" I actually adopted two dogs last year and without prior experience I educated them really well. Now I'm pretty sure that a messy dog is absolutely the fault of the owner's behavior.
And you're right about the social contract. The damage that irresponsible owners are doing to society far extends the trivial situation of "that dog is making a lot of noise"; that thing easily becomes a "I hope the owner gets it back" and those collective feelings fuel a more hostile society in general.