06/09/2026
Who among us requires our dogs to be calm in order to interact with guests?!? 🙋🏼♀️
How would you all handle this situation?
To the dogs: If you can’t be calm, you simply can not interact with guests, period.
In our house we ask guests to ignore the dogs until we say they can interact with them and we command the dogs to either sit or “place” on their bed, depending. They calm down and then are allowed - one at a time usually, to sniff the guest. By that time they’re fine and they usually just go lay down, or ask for pats or whatever.
Recently we had a visitor to our home, a school employee, and asked our usual request.
Didn’t get many visitors often in Nebraska, so the dogs are in training.
We were giving the dogs their commands. Meanwhile, this person is leaning over, baby talking to the dogs, telling them to “come here, baby, oh! I KNOW!! Yes, oh baby, I KNOW!! You’re so sweet! Such a GOOD baby! Completely ignoring our requests and repeatedly contradicting the commands we’ve given the dogs. I explained that they need to be calm first, then they can meet you, with calm behavior.
She continued high pitched baby talking and increasing their excitement. The dogs showed increasing body language saying that they were very much not at all comfortable.
Three GSD, hackles half raised, wagging tails in an increasing state of arousal - all of which the guest is encouraging.
Then she begins to STICK HER FACE in their faces making kissy noises. The male was like, NOPE! And whale eyed and quickly went away from her, growling. 😳🫣 🛑
I FINALLY got her to stop.
The situation was complete chaos.
I don’t think I’ve ever had someone so blatantly ignore all directions. As an adult.
Bragging about her big overweight GSD mixes that she rescued and how, “Oh! YOUR dogs are so well behaved! Mine don’t listen to ANYTHING I tell them. They just do whatever they want.”
She returned another time while we weren’t home and our teen child had to deal with the same situation alone. Sounds like it was even worse.
She is not allowed back to our home. It’s our job to protect our dogs. If she comes back she will be denied entry. She is a face bite begging to happen and it’s not going to be one of our dogs.
IMO that’s not normal behavior, it’s dangerous, it’s disrespectful, and it puts her, our dogs, and us at risk.
And for the love of God, never EVER put your face in a dogs face! Especially a dog you don’t know. You are not showing the dog how much you love them. You are invading their space and asking for them to bite you, pretty please.
How do you protect your dogs from “aggressive” humans?
