What Can I Do About My Dog’s Bad Reputation?

My dog Bonnie is perfect. She cuddles up with her family at night before requesting to go to her crate to sleep. She brings a balletic grace to fetch, and we swear she can understand full sentences in English. To me, she’s a sweet angel.

But, a couple of months ago, I realized that not everyone sees her that way. I was out with Bonnie when a familiar neighborhood dog walker approached and bent down to pet her. On his way down, he asked me sarcastically, “Am I going to lose a finger?” I didn’t know what to say. He added, “We’re not so sure about Bonnie,” as if he were part of a co-op board gearing up to reject her application. A couple past interactions suddenly came into focus. A dog park friend scooping her foster puppy into her arms when she saw us approach. Another tugging her dog to the other side of the park. Was the dog community in our neighborhood talking about my sweet, angelic Bon? And were they talking about her as less of a sweet angel and more like a digit-threatening gremlin? 

Admittedly, my perfect dog does some not-perfect things. She had a period of lunging while on the leash (we’ve gotten some help from a qualified trainer for that), and will bark at dogs who have a rambunctious play style at our dog park. These behaviors may have led to her infamy in the neighborhood, and I had no idea how to deal.

If you, too, have ever confronted a gap between the way you see your dog and the way others see them, or are simply struggling with your dog’s conduct while out in the world, here is some expert insight into determining whether your best friend’s behavior needs to be addressed—and how to grapple with your very human feelings about others’ perceptions of your pet.

Why judgment at the dog park can hurt

Jess Adam, a therapist who specializes in mental health for dog people, told me that judgement at the dog park can affect us so deeply “because it feeds the fear we already have that we’re failing.” 

We may have a narrative in our head about our abilities as dog parents or that we’re not doing enough for them, and “When someone else judges you as a guardian or a handler, that feels like confirmation—and that’s really hard.”

It’s something that Maddie Messina, a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist and founder of Paws for Thought Dog Training in New York City, has observed in her clients. Pet owners, like parents of human children, can find it hard to separate themselves from their pets. “We are so concerned with how we are perceived and the reflection of our family members, including our dogs, that we have a need to control everything,” she said.

Sometimes, creating separation between your identity and your dog’s “bad reputation” can be harder than managing the behavior that gave them that reputation in the first place. 

“It’s hard to see someone judge your baby based off of five seconds of interaction,” Adam said. “You understand who they really are and love and appreciate all of the aspects of them because you share your life with them, and someone sees this tiny aspect of their—I don’t even want to say their personality. They see a tiny moment in time.”

Examine your expectations

Adam came to her specialty through personal experience. She adopted her dog Dio as a puppy in 2011 in hopes that he would work as a therapy dog alongside her. As Dio grew, he presented as anxious and reactive in certain situations. Adam tried everything from training to socialization to doggie acupuncture, but noticed that her own feelings about Dio’s challenges were going unaddressed. 

“I felt very isolated,” she said. “My friends all had ‘normal’ dogs or ‘easy’ dogs, and I did not.”

Dio eventually passed the certifications to be a therapy dog, but Adam noticed that he still wasn’t totally comfortable in the setting and with the work. The job wasn’t right for him, and Adam stopped bringing him to work.

Adam recognized that she’d brought a suite of expectations to the idea of having a dog. This is typical among her clients, she says. We have expectations that we may not even notice until we have a dog who doesn’t meet them. And these expectations can come from so many sources: previous dogs we’ve known, cultural depictions in pop culture or on social media, how we were raised, and more.

“I was pretty hellbent on making him a therapy dog,” Adam said. “And he is not, you know? So I had to grieve that expectation and the dream and find other meaning in our life, which I’ve found tenfold now.”

Get your dog the help they need

Janis Bradley, Director of Communications at the National Canine Research Council, a canine policy think tank, told me, “If you’re dealing with people responding to your dog because of how he or she looks, for example, that’s a problem for everybody, right? That never works.”

But if your dog’s behavior is causing anxiety for others, is putting them or someone else in danger, or is hurting their quality of life, you should tackle the issue with some help—not only for the general public, but for your dog’s happiness as well. So many of these behaviors, like leash lunging, come from a place of fear in the dog, that getting some help for them is the kindest thing to do for everyone involved.

Bonnie’s leash-lunging and barking at other dogs at the dog park is, Bradley said, “something that [most people] probably [would] want to address—and happily it’s addressable. You just need a good trainer to work you through it.”

Sometimes management works fine

Generally, if your dog’s behavior doesn’t present a danger to anyone—meaning yourself, them, or others—you can let them do it. 

“It’s contextual. It’s really not about dog ethics,” Bradley said. Your dog is not morally “good” or “bad” because of the behavior they display. It’s only a problem if it negatively affects other dogs or people, or is causing your dog distress. 

Messina puts it like this: “[W]e’ve moved dogs from free-roaming animals [to living] inside. They’re enclosed in these tiny, little apartments. They walk on leashes. They don’t have a ton of freedom. Often, they’re really not receiving the right amount of exercise and enrichment on a daily basis,” including physical and mental stimulation.

If it’s safe, Messina told us, she said sometimes it’s fine to let “dogs just be dogs.” She offers the example of a dog barking and jumping. If you’re walking your dog on the street, and need to make sure they don’t startle or hurt others, you’ll need to train them not to jump. But what if they jump as people enter your home, before settling down to greet company? Could you, for example, put them behind a gate for a while? In that case, your dog could still bark and jump, but not on your guests. As long as your solution works for all of the dogs and people involved, it’s fine.

Have a script ready

Even if you’re helping your dog via training and management, and even if you know that they and those around them are safe, you might still hear a comment every now and then. In those situations, it’s good to know how you’ll respond.

If you’re working on reactivity or something that would require people or other dogs to keep their distance, trainer Denise Herman of Empire of the Dog suggested you say, “Oh, he’s not feeling well today,” when someone tries to approach. 

When you say they’re not feeling well, or something like it, “you haven’t given your dog a character that’s immutable,” she said. “And you haven’t answered a question that’s too broad and had to have, like, a manifesto about it. You’re not pigeonholing your dog.” 

You can help your dog, and help yourself 

The goal through training your dog and training yourself is, yes, to ensure that your dog functions well in the context in which you both live. But it’s also to reorient your expectations and find a new, deeper, and authentic relationship with your best friend. 

“You can feel better about life with your dog, even if your dog isn’t better yet,” Adam said. “That was really the shift for me. It wasn’t like I did this inner work and then his behavior was fine. But I just felt differently about him and about life with him.”  

When confronted with disparaging comments about my dog, have I been able to consider the source? Use a couple of pre-loaded phrases? Separate my own identity from my dog’s? And address Bonnie’s offending behavior through thoughtful training at the same time? Not completely, no. It’s early yet, and these things take time. But I already feel better knowing that there’s some relief on the way for both of us. The point is, after all, to get back to what I love: hanging with my dog, who is, if you recall, a literal angel. You actually can’t tell me otherwise.