Finn: The Bully?

And on the fifth day, the clouds parted and the sun appeared.

Finally, after four days straight of rain and cold and just plain ickiness the sun finally came out. In the last few days Finn has gotten increasingly restless. Combine cabin fever with puppy teething and you get one aggravated puppy dog. We tried to keep him active by playing Frisbee with him up in Ryan’s office but nothing tires him out quite like running amuck and wrestling around in the dog park.

Today we swore, not matter the muddy collateral damage, we would take him to the park. Finn had his last lesson with our trainer, Cody, at two this afternoon so he wasn’t entirely bursting with energy. You wouldn’t have known that, however, if you could have seen him at the dog park. He was out of control. Our sweet, quiet puppy turned into a sweet, very vocal dog this afternoon. I don’t know what got into him.

Seeing ten or so people in the small dog park, we headed there first. Usually Finn sniffs around, hangs back, greets the people first and then will find a few dogs to play with. He almost always lets other dogs instigate the play.

The difference today is that there were some very young puppies in the park. Very young, like, 10-weeks-old young. Because they were puppies and naturally playful they would approach Finn and bat at him and Finn would…roll them over.

Of course, the reason Finn rolled them is because these puppies had no muscle tone yet. Older dogs would have just swayed and then grabbed hold of Finn’s ear but these puppies went done like a WalMart worker on Black Friday.

To top it off, Finn was being unusually vocal. Generally, he does not do a lot of growling and barking but these puppies today were very vocal, which prompted Finn to growl as he wrestled with them. The whole thing combined made Finn come off as a bully and it was kind of embarrassing.

We finally left after he started taking down this quite small shepherd mix. The owner didn’t seem to care but it made us uncomfortable as the pairing was clearly unmatched. At one point, I knelt down to pet the shepherd mix and the puppy nearly fell over at the pressure of my hand. I asked the owner how old the puppy was and she said five months. I know I’m new to this whole dog thing but there is no way that puppy was five months old. Finn will be five months old tomorrow and the differences are enormous.

Anyway, the whole thing left me feeling uneasy. Should we only take him to the big park now (as opposed to the “small dog” park)? Is he starting to get a little aggressive? Was it just a different group of dogs there that Finn wasn’t familiar with? Was he just too amped up after having spent four days straight in the house?

Ryan’s answer to all of this was, “It’s just like when you have kids. Sometimes they embarrass you and it’s frustrating because you know they are better behaved than how they acted. He’ll probably be fine the next time.”

Still, I worry.