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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Foundation’s podcast. I’m your host, Tony Peterson, and today’s episode is all about the decisions we make that we might not even really think about that make us bad dog owners. You know, sometimes inspiration for these shows is tougher to locate, you know, tougher than of finding a down rooster in the cattails after you’ve just tickled in with your second shot. But other times it runs right up and bites you in the ass. You’ll hear about what exactly lit the fire for this show soon enough. But honestly, a lot of dog training advice and info centers completely on us changing our dogs behavior, but not a lot of it centers on us changing our behavior with dogs. Now, if you have any off the record conversation with a decent dog trainer, you’re going to hear all about that. It’s no small part of being a dog owner, and we could easily slip into bad owner territory without even realizing it. This is what I’m going to talk about right now. Back in twenty seventeen, I boarded a flight bound for Houston, and once I got there, I boarded another flight that was pointed in the direction of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The trip was a combo hunt for ducks and doves, and it was something that I hadn’t even really dreamed of because it felt like it would never actually happen. But I did get the invite from Lacrosse Boots to head down there and test out some waiters and footwear, and since I’m no dummy, I said yes and listen. The duck hunting was incredible, if not somewhat gratuitous, while the dove hunting was just completely gratuitous. I can see why some folks want to hunt like that, but for me, it was just way, way too much. I’m just not angry enough at the dove population to chase a body count of one thousand in a day. Anyway, the outfitters we hunted with were top notch, and one of the partners had a wild job in his youth which he told stories about, which involved catching why animals in Africa for placement in European zoos. Now I’m not talking squirrels here, but big dangerous critters. This fella, who went by Junior, I don’t even really know if it was his name or his nickname, said that if you can get close enough to a running giraffe to grab it by its tail. It will instantly stop, and then you can pretty much do what you need to to capture it. He also said that for a while they fed young male lions in order to gain their trust over time, and eventually, I guess get him into a trap now. At one point, he recounted a story of carrying in a side of zebra or some other planes game animal into an area where they were conditioning a specific lion. As you can imagine from an operation like that, safety wasn’t a huge priority, but Junior said they always went in in pairs so that the feeder had armed backup. On this particular trip, Junior said, the lion walked up and when Junior looked him in the eyes, he said to his partner, you better get ready because this dude’s going to bite me. Must have been a not much fun instant. The cat did exactly that. It swatted him to the dirt with a big old paw, sunk its teeth into his backstraps, and picked him up to carry him off. Junior’s armed partner couldn’t get a clean shot off, and so Junior rode along for two hundred yards like a stuffed dog toy or I guess cat toy. Then, for reasons known only to that lion, it set him down and just walked off. Maybe Junior tasted like shit. I don’t know, but I do know that recently, I was in a hotel with a worn out lab when I realized my phone charger was still in my truck. So I walked down the stairs and happened to get to the door leading to the parking lot at the exact same time as a fellow struggling to get a cooler to his truck, and he had an off Leashweimerunner who didn’t quite look directly at me when I entered the scene, but seemed to become vaguely aware of me. The instant I saw that dog, I thought to myself, that dumb son of a bitch is going to bite me. I wish I was joking, but I’m not. For whatever reason, I’ve been around seven million dogs and have rarely, rarely thought that. But I looked at the disconnected stare of that dog and it was just like plain as day that he wasn’t all there. Now, maybe I’m as dumb as I don’t know your average Wimer honor because I walked out there anyway, and when that dog started barking at me, I just kept walking while the owner started yelling. I don’t remember if the dog had a collar on or not, but I know it wasn’t leashed. The guy had no free hands, and after making a run at me once, the dog made another run and bit me right on the ass. I again wish I was joking, but I am not. When I turned around, thinking I might have to kick the second dog in my life right in his face, it ran off and I just looked at the guy and said, Jesus Christ man, this guy wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. Now, before all of you high flying Wymer on her owners try to mobilize and cancel me, remember this, I don’t care what you think. I have no doubt there are great Wymer Honors out there and that they are the as absolute best dog for certain people. I actually have no hate my heart for that breed or any breed really, So you can relax. But that owner, I hope he zips his nutsack up and his Jean zipper like I did one time when I was very hungover and heading off to hunt bears in Canada. You guys and gals all know where this is going. It wasn’t that dog’s fault. I can promise you that owner and knew his dog was as smooth brained as they come, and he still brought him down a hotel hallway and out into a hotel parking lot without any way to control him. An absolutely zero chance of a recall if that dog set out to do what it wanted, which by the looks of it was a very likely scenario. Now, it was a light bite on my ass, which was fortunate for all involved. But what if it hadn’t been or it had not been a dude who’s six too and was wearing brush pants but instead of four foot tall kid wearing pajamas. That town I was staying in is right in the heart of some of my favorite pheasant country, and it’s one of the few places that still allows dogs. That hotel is kind of a rare find these days. Now, imagine if that bite had been worse and the policy that hotel had changed because of it. Literally one bad dog owner could have kept countless good dog owners from heading out of town to chase roosters around or at the very least made it a lot harder to facilitate such a trip. What does it make that guy, well, you decide. But the off leash, no handle on a dog thing is always indicative of owners who’ve made a poor choice, who are making poor choices. Look, we all love our dogs to death, and we view them with the rosiest of glasses. But our heavily biased perception of our dogs doesn’t alter the reality in which we live, and we have to tamp down that love fest when it involves other people and other dogs. The amount of times I’ve had people’s dogs run up to me off leash while I was running in the park by myself is dozens. And most of the dogs that actively run up to you in that situation display some aggression, you know, unless they’re just puppies looking for love. I don’t expect much out of the general pet owning public, honestly, But folks who decide to buy dedicated bird dogs and then train them to some level, I just hold them to a higher standard. So not only is it incredibly rude to let your off leash dog run up to strangers, it’s also dangerous to your dog. While you might have the most lovable Golden Retriever or German short hair on the planet, the dude walking his pitbull through the park might not have the same vibes. If there’s one thing that can trigger a quick nasty response out of some dogs, it’s a strange dog running straight at them, especially when they are on a leash. And look, we all make mistakes on this front. I was mortified one time when I was working with my lab Luna in the front yard when she was I don’t know, maybe seven eight months old. A woman who runs in our neighborhood a lot went sprinting right on by, and I wasn’t paying attention to Luna enough so that I had no chance to get a hold of the check cord before she took off and tried to get a little scratch behind the ear. But this woman didn’t know that, and I still feel a little embarrassed when I see her, and it’s been like twelve years since that incident. It happens, but we should try not to set things up so it’s guaranteed to happen, especially in a place where you have no idea who you’re going to run into. Not everyone loves dogs, which is weird, I know, but I’ll never forget one. And Sadie was a little puppy, like maybe a three month old type of puppy, and we took her to Cabella’s to get her a little socialization and to get me a whole bunch of bass lures. When we were standing in the checkout line, Sadie was just milling around at my feet on leash by the way, and the woman in front of us turned around and absolutely lost her shit because she didn’t know she was within like seven feet of a dog. I guess I’ve never seen someone scream louder over something less threatening other than the times that a cottontail rabbit jumped into the side of my buddy Ryan’s bike while we were riding through the neighborhood in sixth grade. In his eyes, it was like a Monty Python level rabbit attack or something. Some people don’t want your dog in their business, you know, like at parks, at beaches, at anywhere public, and you know what, that’s fair. I don’t really trust non dog people much, but I know they exist partially because I was raised by one, and it’s just a sign of a good dog owner to recognize that and live as if that’s true wherever they take their pups out into the world. We had a neighbor a few years back who thankfully moved away, but he and his family were terrified of dogs, all dogs. We have a pretty loose policy in our neighborhood with dogs in our yards because there are several of us with bird dogs and they are all pretty well trained. But one of our neighbors has a catahula, which, if you’ve never met one, makes the average whim runners seem like a well adjusted, super intelligent dog. Again, guys, I’m kidding. Louis. The cata hula casually wandered over to the new neighbors one day and it didn’t go well. There were death threats, which felt a bit extreme to me, But as Eddie Vetter said a long time ago, some words, when spoken can’t be taken back. It kind of sucks, but as dog owners, we are responsible for how our dogs integrate with the world, not the other way around. The world doesn’t have to accommodate us, and so we have to read situations, try our best to train them well, and just maintain a level of common sense with our dogs. This goes for a lot of things too. Have you ever stepped into an unexpected pile of dog shit. If you’re listening to this, I bet you have literally not once in the history of humankind has anyone ever enjoyed that. And there are some sick bastards out there. I once woke up in the middle of the night to my dog panting really heavily in my ear, which is when you know that your lab has a two inch grip on a sixth sinch turred and as I quickly and very athletically leaped from my bed to get her out, I stepped in a large, cold pile of dog poop with my bare feet. If there is any sensation that’s worse than that, it probably involves the zipper of your jeans and a part of the male anatomy. You definitely don’t want caught in a zipper, especially after you drank way way too much at a wedding the night before. Not cleaning up after our dogs is a great way to piss off neighbors, lose privileges to bring your dogs to different places, and it’s just bad owner behavior. That hotel I stayed at where that demonic whimer on or viciously attacked me, has a huge grassy area in the back of it that’s fenced off from the nearby highway, which means it’s just a perfect spot to let the dogs out to do their thing in the morning. It’s all so littered with piles of dog poop, which is insane considering there are bags available in trash cans literally right there. The thing that pisses me off the most about that is that I know a fair amount of those piles come from bird dogs. This is kind of like when there is a private land open to the public hunting program, you know, in some different state, which is you know, just generally always a net benefit to hunters, except that some hunters leave gates open, some hunters use screwing steps to put in their tree stands, you know, when they’re not supposed to, and just generally don’t treat the place with a modicum of respect, and then everyone loses out. It’s just a good idea to have some poop eggs handy pretty much, you know, wherever you go, so that your dog doesn’t leave land mines out for folks who really don’t want to have to wash their shoes when they get home. It’s simple stuff mostly, but it seems to be lost on a lot of people. I keep going back to that hotel as an example because it’s one of the few places I interact with a fair amount of strangers in their dogs, so I apologize for that. But you know what else is a huge sign that someone is a bad dog owner that I learn over and over at that hotel when their dog barks and barks and barks and barks and barks around other people in a hotel, that is just insane to me. If your dog does that once and you figure it out, okay, If you keep going into settings where your dog can hear people in the hallways and hear your doors closing, and it’s the kind of dog that will never stop barking at those noises, you should figure out how to stay in an airbnb er somewhere else. The amount of people who allow their dogs to just bark and bark is amazing to me, and not like, you know, the Northern lights are amazing. I once spent a couple of nights in a tent in South Dakota wall hunting pheasants, where I listened to a pair of setters bark all night long, and the dude who owned them could not have cared less that literally everyone hated him and his dogs. We have a cabin at a lake in Minnesota that is close to a large campground. The amount of times I’m out there fishing at sunrise and I can hear someone’s dog just barking away while families try to sleep in tents is insane. And often you’ll eventually hear someone finally screams some not PG related suggestions at the dog owner. Again, if that’s your dog, don’t go camping where other people are in close proximity to you, or at least make an attempt to figure out how to shut them up. Now, I realize all this stuff happens, but I think a lot of these bad dog owner behaviors come from one of two places. The first is just that some people suck and they don’t care about others. Not much we can do about that crowd, but maybe the zombie apocalypse will hit and we can stake those people to trees to occupy the undead while we make our break for it or something. The other reason is that people just get in over their heads with dogs. The bad behavior that we allow is the bad behavior that we allow. If that makes sense and much of that comes from having just a little too much dog to handle. Not everyone will admit this, especially us men and our giant, fragile egos. But if we are of the couch potato variety and we get an absolute burner of a breed, we’re bound to have some problems. Even when we go for the perfect breed, you know, based on a million factors just for us, we can still mismanage that relationship, or the dog’s energy level and whatever else, and eventually end up with a dog that will exhibit bad behaviors while we grow increasingly frustrated because we don’t know how to get a handle on something that we could have addressed early on successfully. Good dogs are a work in progress. But so we’re good dog owners. We not only owe it to the public at large just because it’s the right thing to do, but we owe it to ourselves and our dogs to try to not be bad dog owners. I don’t really know how to put it any other way, and I don’t know how to make it any more simple than that, I guess because if we don’t do that, we just might find ourselves in a mortifying situation where we are clearly very bad at owning dogs and when that happens, it can bite us lightly on the ass, or, if not us, some innocent stranger heading to be struck to get a charging cable for his phone. That’s it for this week. I’m Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation’s podcast. As always, I just want to thank you for your support. Truly means the world to us. You know, here at meet eatter Without you guys, we have nothing. We need our audience and you guys are the best, So thank you for that. If you want some more content, maybe you need to be entertained, maybe you’re looking for a little education or a nice mix of both. We have a huge podcast network with a bunch of different really good shows. We drop new hunting films all the time, tons of articles. 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