Poorly Trained Dogs – and Rude Humans

My kitty Cayenne spent much of the day at the vet’s office yesterday and it turned out she had to stay overnight.  I ran over there before they closed to see her for a minute and to drop off a nice fleece blankie for her that smelled like home.  I happened to arrive at the same time many owners were picking up their dogs from doggie daycare.

Yes, my vet has a doggie daycare.  It seems to do a booming business.  It seems like most of the daycare doggies are big dogs and perhaps they tend to destroy the house if left home alone.  After observing a number of them this evening, it would not surprise me if they did eat the furniture and stuff.  Most of them seemed pretty poorly trained.

For instance, one rather skinny older woman was picking up a beagle-type dog and it seemed to be dragging her around on the end of its leash.  It came over to me and licked my leg, then went on to the lady sitting next to me and licked her leg.  I was thinking that the dog should have been trained how to walk nicely on a leash, not to pull like that, but I was also thinking that its owner should have known better than to let her dog go up and lick people.  Some people don’t like to be licked by strange dogs.

Then there was this man, who was not that skinny, that had what appeared to be a large German shepherd on a leash.  It was dragging him around, too, only instead of licking people, it was sniffing their butts.  Again, I wondered why he hadn’t taught it to walk on a leash properly and why he thought it was OK to let his dog sniff people’s butts.  I imagine many people do not like very large dogs coming up to them and sniffing their behinds.  I was sitting down so my butt did not get sniffed, and I was glad because I don’t want strange dogs sniffing my butt!

These people have enough money to send their dogs to doggie daycare.  They could afford a basic obedience class.  I assume they care about their dogs if they are willing to take them to daycare.  So why not teach them some basic doggie manners?  And why don’t they have enough manners to know that it’s rude to let your dog sniff and lick strangers?