My guess is that he gets a lot of confidence from takes a lot of social cues about the "okayness" of humans from other dogs, but I'm interested to hear what other people think!
That's what I guess, too. It's like, complete freaking 180 though!My guess is that he gets a lot of confidence from takes a lot of social cues about the "okayness" of humans from other dogs, but I'm interested to hear what other people think!
I have tested it! He does still enjoy the presence of the human if the dog has left. Once he has interacted with the human and gets to know them, he 's fine. The party I mentioned before was a prime example. All the dogs had gone home, except for Ralphie, but he was still soliciting attention. However, how he reacts to that human again in a separate encounter can be iffy. If he hasn't seen that person in a long while and only met them and interacted with them for a few minutes, he might not remember them and therefore not want anything to do with them. If he's spent a longer amount of time with a person, perhaps been fed some treats, and they come around more frequently, he will remember and greet them happily, with or without a dog.Another thought, it could also be an accidentally learned context... classical conditioning. Like perhaps he had fun with a dog, playing with the dog put him in a very loose and social nature, and HEY the human in that situation was fine too. And if it happened again, and again, and again... He could have generalized "when there are humans around dogs they are awesome."
This would be easy to test. See if removing the dog would still illicit the same response towards the human. This would tell you if the dog IN the context is a variable, almost like an environmental cue... or if dogs simply trigger this social state and if their absence after the fact does not change Ralphie's behavior.
Maybe. I guess I don't really have many of those types of people to try. Funny thing is, the people we have over the most often, like close family and friends, he has never ever been afraid of. Accepted them at once. He's generally not concerned about strange kids and gives them a "puppy pass" sort of. He also knows most of our neighbors, and all of them have dogs, lol.Mikee has a similar issue. He's very sweet and friendly with people that he knows, but he's tentative with a "medium" alarm bark with strangers and kids that approach and pet him before he's ready. People who know dogs can see that the bark is not a 'warning' but more of an "excuse me we haven't been properly introduced, yet." ;-) Like Ralphie, He also gives a free pass to people with dogs. Behaviorally, Mikee seems to need an extra minute or two to explore and sniff the stranger before acceptance. Food does not help - he'll take treats AND he'll do tricks for the stranger ... but then bark at them. ;-)
People who are slow and gentle [good manners for meeting strange dogs ], giving Mikee more than a few seconds to sniff them, seem to have the best long term results. However, Mikee is a beautiful, Lab/Golden looking dog, so everything thinks he's friendly and well-socialized, and they don't give him any time.
My belief, following Dr. Ian Dunbar's advice, is that as an adult rescue, Mikee was not fully socialized with a large variety of kids, adults, and other strangers ... as well as normal situations, like some electric doors, etc. So, over the past two years, I've been exposing him to lots of different situations in a calm interaction. I haven't yet reached his 'everyone is friendly' threshold or 'kids are safe' threshold, but I have passed his ALL people are strangers and strangers are danger threshold. This summer, I plan to have some "puppy parties" for my 80lb dog with a collection of dog-friendly adults, and then a collection of dog-bullet-proof kids [we have a few kids in the neighborhood who have large, rambunctious dogs, so they are not scared of a non-aggressive, barking dog].
A similar set of parties, according to Dr. Dunbar's protocol, may help Ralphie also?