The dog park

The past few weeks we've been on a mission to make Murphy more social. One way we thought we could do this was by introducing him to other dogs in a safe and comfortable setting. We've although thought that he suffered from "leash aggression" and so we wanted to take him to an off-leash area where that wouldn't be a factor.

Unfortunately, our efforts have not been so successful. The results are not BAD per se , but not great either. The weird thing is that each and every time we go to the dog park, it's a totally new and different experience. It's impossible to see any change in the way of progress because each visit is so totally unique.

Murphy's first visit to the dog park - it started off so well!

For example, the first time Murphy went into the park raging mad, barking like crazy at every dog he saw (even if they didn't come near him!) But then two days later he went in relatively quietly and only barked when dogs came near him. Another time he sort of just wandered around on his own, sniffing the geological features (trees, rocks, ponds, etc.) but stayed away from the other dogs altogether. Once he stood up at the top of the hill by himself and just "BARK BARK BARK"ed like crazy, as if he was telling the park that he was king of the hill. Last night, he went into the park relatively quietly and instead of waiting for other dogs to come to him, he RAN after and chased other dogs and barked like the mean little asshole that he is when he's there. We were SOOO embarrassed. The other dogs were great and didn't try to fight back, but that almost made it worse for us, because then we were suddenly the parents of the asshole dog.

"Hi there, what's your name?"

This one woman kept yelling at her dog everytime he tried to come over to see Murphy, saying things like, "Get away from him Coda, that dog doesn't like you." After she yelled this 3 or 4 times (and clearly her dog was not afraid of Murphy), I said to the dog (loud enough for the woman to hear me), "It's ok buddy, our Murphy doesn't like anyone. That's why were here." I was trying to give her the hint that she was being ridiculous and that we WANTED dogs to interact with Murphy. But she was crazy, so whatever. Her poor dog. I hope she doesn't have children.

Anyway, we're not giving up on our little Murphy's ability to have friends in the future, but it shouldn't isn't looking good right now. He's been there over a dozen times with little to no improvement and doesn't seem to enjoy the experience at all. How do you make your dog become social? How can we get him to enjoy the dog-park experience???