Ginger leaves a dust cloud of sand behind her as she bolts through the park. Her owner, Corey Landis, 55, sits on the bench at the Possum Creek dog park, milking the last few minutes of daylight so that the Vizsla-hound mix can get her exercise in.
Especially in urban areas, dog parks are one of the few places that dogs are allowed to exercise off leash, said Sue Sternberg, a dog trainer, author and inventor.
Sternberg recently declared a “Catch A Human Doing Something Great at the Dog Park Day” for this weekend. She asks that dog trainers go to a local dog park, without a dog, and when they see someone praising his or her dog for returning when called or just enjoying a game with his or her dog, the trainer is supposed to go to the person and acknowledge how great the behavior is and why it’s important.
Another behavior that Sternberg asks the trainers to look for is a person interrupting bad or dangerous behavior. To help with this, Sternberg mailed cards with pictures and descriptions of what she calls “red alert behaviors” that are common in dog parks and can lead to dog fights.
Too often, dog parks are horrifying places where dogs are under extreme stress, Sternberg said. There’s a subculture where people think they are supposed to just let the dogs work it out.
“Most owners use bloodshed as a barometer,” she said. As long as there’s no blood, they tend to overlook dangerous behavior.
“As a mother, you would never go to a playground and let your kid be bullied,” she said, adding that if dog owners realized that this is what was happening to their dogs, they would be more inclined to intervene.
Dog trainers in 36 U. S. states, as well as a few in Australia and Ireland, have committed to participate in the event. Sternberg said she believes that human behavior is highly contagious, and that by having a professional acknowledge a dog owner doing something right, it can change the culture at dog parks, and make them safer and more enjoyable places.
In October, Sternberg released a smart-phone application called Dog Park Assistant. It’s designed to help people understand dog behavior and when to react. The application, which costs 99 cents, has been downloaded over 1,000 times.
Well-known in the animal rescue community, Sternberg is the inventor of the “Assess-A-Hand” tool, an imitation hand and arm mounted on a handle, which is to determine how quickly a dog becomes aggressive when his food bowl is touched or removed. She said she invented that tool because when she visited shelters, she saw workers kicking the dog bowls, or using a broomstick, which she found to be stressful for the dogs and an inaccurate way to gage aggression.
She also developed a Train-to-Adopt program, and she travels the country giving demonstrations to rescue groups on how to train dogs while they are in the shelter. During her demonstrations, usually held at an animal shelter, she typically asks someone to bring her a dog. As she speaks, the dog is given a treat and lots of praise each time he sits. Within just a few minutes, the dog learns that people reward him when he sits. Sternberg then tells the audience to imagine a family coming in to adopt a dog, and how impressed they will be by his good manners. The family, seeing how smart he already is, will likely be interested in teaching him more tricks, not only increases his chance of being adopted, but, Sternberg said she believes it will lead to a better bond between the dog and the family.
“I want to affect dogs in this world so they have great lives, great quality of life,” said Sternberg, describing her life’s goal.
