How should a dog greet another dog?

A calm, confident, respectful dog will not be approaching copious amounts of random dogs for no reason. Not every dog wants to say hi and they need to respect that. If your dog is insisting on saying hi to every dog they see then they might be friendly, but they are not being polite. Appropriate On-Leash Greeting includes Both dogs consent to the interaction, Short and Sweet, Dogs greet with loose body language, lots of curves through their necks and backs, They initially turn to sniff each other’s butts, If one dog turns or moves away the other dog does not follow, If one dog does not want to interact a polite dog will see this and continue walking without stopping to say hi. If you are unsure if your dog is about to have an appropriate or inappropriate on-leash greeting you should air on the side of caution and opt not to stop and say hi. Remember, just because your dog is friendly does not mean he is being polite. He needs to not only be friendly towards other dogs, but also be respectful of other dogs.

The way dogs commonly greet each other is the equivalent of a person spying a random stranger in the street or park, yelling “OMG, HI, HI!!”, and rushing over to give them a massive bear hug. If it actually happened, it would probably freak you out. It doesn’t tend to happen in normal social interactions between humans, because we know that it’s not a socially appropriate thing to do. Luckily, it is possible to teach dogs to greet other dogs calmly, with proper manners and without doing the equivalent of bear hugging them. It starts with developing their ability to listen to you and accept your guidance even when they’re excited and want to do something else, which gives you the ability to teach them right from wrong in any situation. The most important things to teach are: Your dog’s self-control and Your dog’s ability to listen to you, even when they don’t want to. Once you have a good training foundation, and your dog has learnt self-control and how to listen even when they’d rather do something else, you can start teaching them to greet dogs calmly close at hand. This means you can closely monitor their behaviour and step in if they make a bad choice, to teach them what is and isn’t appropriate. As they get more practice, they develop the habit of greeting nicely and eventually, you can trust them to greet new dogs politely, even without you right there.