rev:text
| - We were quite excited to find a facility that offered 'puppy socialization' but the excitement quickly turned to disappointment last week when we brought our 16-week old to a session (BTW, our pup is only about 22 pounds, hardly a "bruiser"). The idea is to allow the puppies to play and interact with each other; however, before the class began, the owner took our dog, along with another puppy (about the same size dog) and, without explanation, kept both puppies on leashes, severely limiting their ability to play with the other dogs. Note - neither our dog or the other showed any sign of being aggressive or too 'physical' - they were both showing normal if not subdued behavior for puppies. What was most distressing was that, while he was limiting their ability to play, he actually dragged our dog (flipping him over a time or two against my puppy's will) while he was looking elsewhere at other dogs. He kept the two dogs on leashes for the entire session so they barely had a chance to play without any explanation why. What was particularly galling is, halfway through the session, he gave our dog back to us to keep with us (doing the same with the other puppy) while he and his staff sat on the floor in the middle of the room with all the other puppies and played/interacted with them. We were made to feel like our dog was abnormal or a problem - it was quite insulting. The advice I would give is, if your dog is over 10 pounds, don't bother....they doted on the very small dogs.
|