As well as having a keen interest in behaviour and what drives it, I am also the mother of a small and mostly angelic, even if I do say so myself, 3-year old boy. He has inherited his parents love of animals, and seldom will walk past a dog on a leash without asking the owner if their dog would like a pat.
My son doesn’t seem phased what answer he gets, if they say no he wanders off looking for the next interesting thing. If the answer is yes, he will pat them for a few seconds, say something nice about them and wander off looking for the next interesting thing. It does my child absolutely no harm to be given a polite “No, sorry.” or such, better still if it comes with an explanation of why; “My dog doesn’t like strangers.”, “My dog gets scared easily.”, “We are training at the moment.”, “We don’t have time.”. Whatever the reason or no reason at all, it is fine to say “No.”. Not only can there be benefits for the dog involved, but it is a great learning experience for my son as well!
Firstly, my son is learning about consent, the answer is not going to be yes throughout his entire life. Saying “no” builds his resilience and sense of personal boundaries.
He can also learn about dog body language and how to spot the signs that a dog is anxious or uncomfortable like licking its nose, blinking, yawning or looking away. Even if the dog is friendly and the owner has said “yes”, if the dog does not show interest in being patted, he can learn about respecting others autonomy and walk away. In the case of dogs that have a tendency to be overly enthusiastic, an owner saying “No, he isn’t great with small people” can help him learn that dogs that are bounding towards him may not be the most suitable to be around, without having to get pushed over and licked.
Advocating for your pets can benefit them too. A dog that is nervous around children will appreciate being left alone, it might even make the dog feel slightly better about children in the future.
If a dog is just not interested or is distracted, having a small human following and reaching for it could lead to startling or feeling uncomfortable around kids. A normally friendly dog may even be feeling off colour which can change it’s behaviour. It is best to avoid giving your dog a potentially bad experience around a kid and save the dogs tolerance for those situations which can’t be prevented.
A dog being restrained by the owner to be patted, especially after the owner has said that it doesn’t like to be patted is not a good learning experience for a child or the dog. The child is being taught to disregard the dog’s body language and the adult is modelling a behaviour that would be extremely risky for the child to imitate. The adult is also giving the child contradictory information. For the dog can be even more unpleasant, as it is unable to remove itself even if it is uncomfortable being there, despite signalling that it does not want to participate. Let’s take a moment to expand on that. I am scared of snakes, if someone is holding a small and very tame python near me my heart beats faster, my palms sweat, stomach feels funny etc. Basically my body reacts without my conscious mind coming into the picture. Now if they ask if I want to touch it, I may pluck up courage and touch it’s tail or something, but if they trap me in a corner and shove it at, me my heart rate goes through the roof! I know a snake sounds scarier than a child to most of us, but everyone has different fears, some people have the same reaction to small birds!
Another problem that can occur from ignoring an animals communication and forcing them to comply is that the animal learns that the subtle communication is not effective. They are more likely to escalate to the signals that are higher up the pathway of self defence, like growling or snapping, especially if these have previously been taken notice of.
Not only do I have a child under 4 years old, but in a moment of complete thoughtlessness we adopted a border collie puppy- a rash decision I made, and a combination which I would not wish upon my worst enemy. You can know all the relaxation protocols in the world but trying to teach them to a high energy puppy while your child is running around the house making ape noises is nearly impossible.
Our new dog is exceedingly enthusiastic about everything and particularly loves jumping on people who greet her, so I am now experiencing the other side of the equation. After a few weeks of almost everyone we walk past wanting to pat her, and going through the process of getting her to calm down, sit or lay down, then having to explain to people they need to step back mid pat if she launches herself in a frenzy and that my dog will soon weigh more than my kid etc, etc I have run out of energy for it. I could also see that my dogs greeting behaviour was not improving with people outside of our family circle. For the last few weeks, I have said no to most people who ask to pat her as we are in training and one of the most important aspects being not to jump on people. The majority of people notice that I am busy trying to keep the dogs attention on me as we pass them and don’t interrupt. I have only experienced a couple of unpleasant reactions and only from adults. I think most children are sensible enough to see that several kilos of frenzied puppy leaping at them isn’t going to be that much fun to pat anyway!
At the end of the day, it is your right and responsibility to take care of your dog, physically and emotionally. It is your right to say no to anything that makes you or your dog uncomfortable. It is your superpower, use it freely and wisely.