My dog was with other dogs for the first time today

Title is a bit of a lie. We’ve had him about 3 years and have tried meeting up with other dogs before and we see other dogs on our walks but every time we see them, he barks uncontrollably and sometimes even gets scared and defensive. Because of this, we mostly keep him at home and honestly have never been to the dog park. I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of not being able to take him with us, especially on family trips to the beach with our kids. I know he and our sons would love that, it’s something we like to do every summer and one of our goals for next season.

Some context, our dog is a shiba mix, he’s a medium sized dog. SUPER stubborn, heart of gold, yapper at home. He’s amazing with our kids, that’s actually one of the reasons we brought him home; he walked right up to us, sat, and waited to be pet by our oldest who was 2. That being said, he’s always had a problem with other dogs and often would act really out of character around them so we avoided going to parks and saved our walks for the morning or later in the evening.

Then today after us being out running errands for half the day, I felt bad for him because he’d been cooped up. Usually he lays under the bed all sad when we’re gone. So while my husband and our sons built some new furniture, I took our doggo out on a walk. I had forgotten some older people in our neighborhood meet up in the early evening and let their dogs run around the field portion off leash. Me, I will not let him run off leash, his recall is horrible. It’s like I don’t exist when he’s out. We ran into them and I decided to try and let him socialize, watching him closely just to be sure to bail when he wasn’t feeling it anymore.

It was AMAZING! He was scared at first, I even saw his scruff pop up, but he meshed with a lot of the other dogs. Did some greeting, did a poo, even got a little too friendly with another dog if you know what I mean lol. He even tried to run with some of them at one point! I dropped the leash halfway in (we have one of those super long ones for roaming) and he was calm and exploring. I didn’t have to chase after him! I was so proud of him.

By the end he was drooling and I could tell he was getting a little too stressed so we left and said goodbye. He is so tired now. All of this to say I think we’re one step closer to those family beach days with our fluffy guy.

Congrats to my baby, Echo.