Watching visitor behavior

Good morning, what a busy weekend so far. Lastnight was UFC night at our house; every month we have UFC night. Which means we have a full house. About 95% of the people in our home on UFC night are between 17-23 years of age so it gets loud and pretty rowdy. Typically I have the dogs in my bedroom where they are quiet and comfortable. This lets me enjoy the night and watch the fights; with pizza on the menu every fight night it is hard for me to watch the dogs and visitors and watch the fights.

There are definite things that you do and do not do when you enter into a dogs home. You do not act like the dogs are your dogs, you do not pick up dogs, you do not hug dogs and you do not kiss dogs. But this goes against what most humans do; for some reason we; or I should say they feel the need to treat other dogs as their own. And in dog terms that is a big no, no.

But lastnight I decided to leave everyone out; the poodles had been on their canyon run in the morning and were exhausted and that just left Jessie (the eating machine) to keep my very close eye on. The house was full as usual; loud and very active but the dogs were pretty content laying in their beds and watching the goings on. That is until the pizza arrived. It didn't take long for Jessie to kick it into gear and be making the rounds.

I told Luke and Tilley to get back to their beds and they did; being the good poodles that they are. Watching three dogs amidst all these people is a job; but it is much more a job of watching what the people are doing and how the dogs are reacting to the human behavior. Lastnight was a great example of humans acting inappropriately; it was nothing huge, just alot of little things. First it was Jessie up on the couch with one of my daughters doing her best to prove to her and her friends that she was starving to death. While my daughter snuggled her; another non family member reached over and gave her a hug. With all the food around this was not a good idea so I kept my eye on the situation.

Jessie was in full begging mode which is not to be interrupted by visitors. She does not appreciate a hug from an outsider while doing her best to get the pizza from my daughter. Seeing that this was not a good situation I called Jessie to me and all was well. Then there was the guest who crawled across the floor, towards Luke and I which was really not a good idea.

Let me set the stage, I was on the couch with Luke right below me on his couch and he was very tired. He was going in and out of sleep because of the noise level but he is very relaxed. Then a person from the other side of the room decided to cross the room in a stalking manner approaching my other daughter who was sitting beside me. Luke in his half in, half out state saw this and reacted. A deep growl came from within and I reacted immediately putting my hand on him to stop any forward motion. Luke obviously saw this as a threat and being half asleep didn't realize who it was; and as soon as he did everything was fine.

It is so important to watch your dogs around other people. There are things that we can do with our dogs that they would never accept from an outsider. If people could read a book on how to and how not to behavior around dogs; that would be great.