Jealous dog won't let husband and wife dance

[frauenfelder]

Originally published at: Jealous dog won't let husband and wife dance | Boing Boing

…

[jonboy_nemo]

my dog just barked incessantly until he succeeded in driving my spouse and i apart.

[Papasan]

The dog is on to something in this situation, never doubt the dog.

P.S. My doggo completely concurs with this statement.

[Grey_Devil]

Our old family dog used to get jealous as well, he’d bark to get people’s attention on him. It didn’t really matter who was hugging who, he wanted everyone to be loving on him.

[Loren_Pechtel]

Reminds me of a dog I knew. My wife had been in the house several times around the dog, this was the first time I was there also.

As I typically do I put my arm around her and the dog went nuts, yipping like crazy and jumping up and down like it was on a trampoline.

Some experimenting showed that if she touched me the dog would pay careful attention but that was all. If I touched her it went nuts. Apparently she had become someone the dog defends and the dog didn’t know the difference between affection and hostility. (Which says something about the relationship of those living there.)

[prwade]

You can’t dance
You can’t talk
Only thing you get to do is take me to walk

[xhonk]

To be fair, however, they’re reinforcing the interruptus by giving the dog positive attention.

[timd]

The lesson is do not indulge the dog in the first place and she wouldn’t think it is a fun game.

[anothernewbbaccount]

Yep - they need to tell it to sit and stay and put up the ‘stop’ hand. If that doesn’t work, but it behind a closed door. Do not reinforce the behaviour by letting it think it got its way.

[Grey_Devil]

I agree, owners often find certain dog behavior cute and inadvertently end up reinforcing it until it becomes a problem. It is doable to train the dog to change their behavior but first you gotta train the humans to be on the same page

[jdaniel30]

This reminds me of a time that my wife and I were play rasslin’ and the dog thought we were fighting. She had a bit of a meltdown and we both had to stop and reassure her that all was well.