My dog wanted to play with another dog a lady was holding at the dog park. My dog eventually got the other dog's tail. The woman became angry and said I was unable to control my dog. What do I do in a situation like this?

I am probably going to offend you, but sweet talking this issue is not going to change the facts.

The lady who had this other dog is DROP DEAD CORRECT. Either you chose to ignore the facts or you truly don't understand dog training and dog behavior.

Now, I do give you credit for searching the internet and finding my web site. If you are looking for information on what you need to do to fix this problem I can offer that. But if you’re looking for someone to support your disillusions you came to the wrong place.

Your dog is not trained. If it were you, would be able to call your dog back from a distraction (like this small dog being held in its owners arms)? A dog that is not under control in the face of any distraction is UNTRAINED. A dog that bites another dog while it is ignoring the handler is not trying to play. Jumping up and trying to drag another dog out of the arms of a handler is not PLAY BEHAVIOR.

So what to do?

You stop taking your dog to dog parks or parks where there are other off leash dogs. Read the article I wrote on dog parks.

You keep your dog on leash ALL THE TIME until it is trained. From the gist of your email, that could be it's entire life. Fixing a good deal of your issues comes down to proper management. I recently produced a short video on Management for one of our recent newsletters. It's free to watch if you can watch streaming video on your computer. I suggest you watch it. Good management is just as important as good obedience training when it comes to living with a dog.

You need to train this dog with a balanced dog training system. Simply put that means you train behaviors with motivational methods followed by training that shows the dog that there are consequences for refusing to follow commands that it fully understands.

Many people can't bring themselves to correct a dog for bad behavior. They think a correction is punishment when in fact the purpose of a correction is to change bad behavior. Those people need to wake the hell up.

I obviously don't know you, so I can't say which of those people you are.

Regards,
Ed Frawley