Lifestyle

Why dogs have to give up their instincts to survive in NYC

Last Friday, Rudy, a 3-year-old husky-shepherd mix, stood in the middle of Tompkins Square Park. Around him, skateboarders darted and swerved, tempting the dog with every smack of the pavement. Rudy eyed them anxiously, but before he could raise a paw in pursuit, a piece of cheese fell before him, and the sound of a clicker brought his attention back to Anna Jane Grossman, a certified trainer and an owner of School for the Dogs.

“That was so good!” Grossman says, heaping praise on Rudy. “That, a year ago, would have been impossible.”

RudyZandy Mangold

Like many dogs in the city, Rudy has a chasing problem. Loud, fast-moving objects — skateboards, scooters, bikes and even children — are a nearly irresistible temptation, beckoning him to come running after them. Last month, one particularly ambitious city dog even went chasing after a Metro-North train — and tried to outrun it.

“It is a hard-wired behavior,” says Garrett Rosso, training director at Village Dogworks. “It’s related to a prey drive. That drive was bred into dogs years ago, because dogs were working animals, and you certainly wanted to breed a dog that could chase, shepherd or hunt,” he says. “Nowadays we don’t always put all these drives to work, we just want a dog we can hold and hug.”

That’s especially true in the city, where Fido’s urge to run can spell disaster for skateboarders, kids on scooters or delivery men on bikes. The Big Apple’s potpourri of stimulation can also make dogs more prone to chasing than they might be elsewhere.

Rudy was adopted from an Atlanta shelter and was quite mellow in that environment. But, “he started wanting to chase as soon as we got to New York,” says owner Gautham Mallampati, 41 and a radiologist. “It’s scary because if he were to bite a skateboarder I’d be very wary of the city demanding he gets put down.”

Kate Perry teachers her Puppy Socialization Training Class.Zandy Mangold

Chasing can also be dangerous for the dogs doing the chasing. Not only can pups that pounce escape their owners and get lost or be hit by oncoming traffic, but trying to rein them in can cause serious injury to a dog’s trachea, neck and back.

Zandy Mangold
Situations where the chasing is controlled — say, playing fetch in a dog park or running quickly alongside an owner for exercise — are generally safe, vets note.

With training, the urge to chase can be tamed. The key, says Kate Perry, an NYC dog trainer and author of “Training for Both Ends of the Leash,” is starting young.

“The most impressionable age is between 6 and 16 weeks,” says Perry, who teaches a socialization and training class where puppies are exposed to potential triggers, including a skateboard, a hair dryer and, because many dogs are tempted to chase kids, Perry’s 7-year-old son Blake.

A Shibu Ino named Lady, listens up during Perry’s class.Zandy Mangold

The training has worked for Kevin Kim, a 27-year-old motion graphic designer, and his 4-month-old Shiba Inu pup Lady. She used to bark and run after skateboarders; now, in her third week of training with Perry, Lady appears indifferent to them.

Older dogs can also be trained to avoid the chase, but it’s a slower process. Grossman has been working with Rudy once a week for nearly a year to quash his chasing compulsions.

On the way back to the dog’s East Village apartment, a passing skateboarder barely phases him. Rudy has come a long way and Grossman is quite pleased with how he has adjusted to city life.

“If a dog can make it here, it can make it anywhere,” she says.