Bumping into other people/dogs/the cat

[Flora & Molly]

My dog Molly isn’t very sensitive about walking all over others (literally). When I go out for a walk she and the cat goes outside with us she sometimes bumps into him when she makes room for me in the hallway. The cat doesn’t seem to mind and knows to watch out, but still I’d like her to be a bit more sensitive to the presence of other animals and people in tight spaces.

She never bumps into me like that, but sometimes will bump into my mother. This is usually when we go out and we have the other two dogs and two humans in the hallway. Molly tries to make room for me/get out of the way and in the process walks over/into the other dogs or sometimes my mother’s knees. I’m not sure if I unconsciously trained her not to bump into me like that or that I simply don’t put her in a situation like that usually. For instance, when my mum opens the car to let the dogs out she doesn’t make them wait, whereas I do, which means not getting run over by Molly. To be fair my mum’s dogs are a bit more... dainty and calm- Molly is a tank - so for her dogs it’s not strictly necessary to make them wait (only in situations where it is safe to jump out of the car of course).

I’m not sure how to teach Molly to be less of a “tank” mowing everything down. She just throws her ass around when reversing to get out of the way. It’s a great quality when she’s around sheep as she won’t budge or be intimidated by them. But around cats, small/sweet dogs, my niece and my mum’s old knees... I always have to watch out.

Any ideas how to train some body awareness? Or perhaps calmly getting out of the way? Staying at my side to manoeuvre out of the door when others are in the hallway?

[D'Elle]

It sounds as though Molly is trying to do her best, but being so much larger she bumps accidentally. I think in your place I would not focus on trying to train Molly not to bump, but rather train her always to wait until the smaller dogs, or your mother, goes out ahead of her and get all the way down the hallway, out of the car, whatever. Then when you release her she doesn't have to jostle to get where she is going.   My dogs are always trained to a "Wait" cue, so any time that I need to manage who goes first I just say that dog's name, and "wait" and that takes care of the situation.  

[Flora & Molly]

She is doing her best  trouble is she always wants to do things as quickly as possible and at a run if she can! Or she tries to get out of the way (mostly out of my way) when she doesn’t need to and bumps everyone in the process (imagine her walking backwards circling around me whilst hitting everything and everyone with her butt). Although I don’t think she really tries to avoid the other dogs. I’ve never seen a dog just step into other dogs as Molly does, she seems oblivious. 

I do try to manage and let her wait, but when I am dogsitting that can make it tricky. As she is great off leash and I live in a safe neighbourhood I tend to either let her out first and make her wait or go out first and ask her to come out later. She sometimes still manages to walk over the other dogs, who let her without so much as a growl, usually because she thinks I’ll ask her to heel next to me - and the other dogs are in the way. And sometimes I am lazy or forget. 

I can be more diligent in managing it.  
 

If I could teach her to slow down a bit that would help. When I release her from a stay she jumps to her feet and runs as if she is at a racetrack (impressive outdoors - especially at quite a distance!) Real eager to please, such a sweetheart and tries so hard she overdoes things sometimes. If that’s just who she is than that’s who she is. I don’t mind managing so the cat and the smaller dogs don’t get hurt. Just wondering, because we love to train new things, if there are things we can do.

I have been training her to walk up to her tennis ball very slowly, which is a great success. Not sure how to translate that to inside the house/hallway as I needed a long distance to the ball to make her understand what I meant - also wondering if I even should. 
 

54 minutes ago, D'Elle said:

[edit: somehow the quote is missing and as I am on my phone I can’t bring it back easily - it was about the wait cue]

I will have to practice this more when I’m at my mum’s house or when her dogs are with me. Molly is great on her own, but needs some practice in different situations and with different dogs/people around.

Thank you! It really helps to look at it a bit differently.