Why some people shouldn't have dogs

I was walking with Zeus and decided to do some work on his heeling. He listened at first, but started to lose focus and drift away. I gave his leash a light pop to get his attention, and told him "no". He immediately cleaned up his heel, so I praise him, and from across the street comes this crazy lady walking a lab.

This woman storms up to me and starts berating me for my cruelty! She said that dog training of ANY kind is cruel, because it uses either pain or the promise of food to "destroy" the dog's natural insticts. She said if I wasn't so cruel, my dog would love me so much that he'd learn to follow my body's "unconscious signals", thus training himself!

In the meantime, Zeus is sitting next to me in a perfect heel. The woman's lab is bounding around at the end of his leash, barking at my dog, and winding the leash 'round and 'round her body. I swear, even Zeus was looking at that hyper dog like "What in the heck is he doing??"

I should thank that lab; at least he made it hard for that crazy lady to talk.

Since when is teaching your dog cruel? Anybody else have an experience like this?

Did you ask her to please never have children?

It's interesting. On a French dog forum I also read, there are quite a few people who are also against training, and for encouraging dogs to behave like dogs. For example, they think you shouldn't have to call your dog if you want him to follow you somewhere. They claim that if he recognizes you as the master, you should know that he will come anyway, and he will. Same for sit, if you just tell them 'good sit' when they are sitting, it will be enough for them to sit on command... That by training them to sit before going outside, crossing the road etc, you make them lose their instinct and that they won't react as well to something imprevisible - ie, if a car slides and goes straight to them, they won't move because they feel they have to keep the sit to please us. It's interesting, but weird.

I asked them if they really think it's ok too to have the dog pee everywhere in the house and destroy furniture, because after all it's what dogs do, an they want the dogs to act like dogs, right? but they never answered me. I wonder why.

It does really make you wonder. I had a similar experience but it was with my daughter. I had her in a carrier (she was 5 months old) and was saying "you're so silly" while we were shopping and a woman stopped me and told me I shouldn't be saying such things to her b/c I was going to give her a complex! Some people need to think what they want, but not say it aloud!

Yup....strange. I knew a guy who thought I was mean to take Lyric on a leash...no freedom. We were walking in a place where there are cars... a country highway to cross to go to an area where he can go off leash. So, it's not like he never goes off leash. He does...on hikes way out in the woods etc. But around roads, he has to be on a leash. This guy is an idiot. He says that I should let my dog be a dog and let him do whatever he wants to do. Yeah...right.

It's obvious that alot of parent's don't believe in training their children either, as evidenced by alot of our young population these days, excluding the young people in here who seem very well behaved.