Off lead walking

[heatseeker14]

We were out walking our puppy in a quiet field, not many dogs cross it. We had been in the far corner practicing recall and decided to take a slow walk home. Another couple were walking their dog off lead and headed towards us, so I thought their dog should be okay with other dogs. They could clearly see we had a puppy. They both said hello to us no warning that their dog didn’t like puppies. The dog ran up to ours and growled loudly in his face. I thought okay fair enough,
and was about to recall him when the lady picked up our puppy and handed him to me and said our dog won’t hurt him, but he doesn’t like puppies and might scare him.
I’m confused because if I see a dog on a lead I will put our puppy back on a lead.
I get that other dogs might not want an excitable puppy jumping at them but they walked straight at us. They could have walked another way. Or were we at fault?

[Floralnomad]

If her dog doesn’t like pups she should have put it on the lead , sounds like she just wanted to pick up your puppy for a cuddle .

[DeborahAnnabelToo]

No you're not at fault at all but as you just experienced, some owners really don't follow the "dog code" at all. I think it's probably best practice that you always recall your pup to you when you see any other dogs and train your pup to basically ignore other dogs (hard I know) because there's always a risk that you'll come across dogs with owners like these.

[GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]

She sounds a bit of a twerp. One of my dogs can be a bit of a barky thug, and he goes on lead if we see a puppy. The other one is everyone's mate but I will keep her close if we see a dog on lead in case it's restrained because it's ill or unfriendly.

[MsAdorabelleDearheartVonLipwig]

We had this yesterday, our dog was off lead and minding his own business when another off-lead dog ran up to him and growled and chased him. I did mutter that perhaps it ought to have been on a lead. Bit tricky as ours was off lead, although perfectly well behaved, but some people are just clueless.

[LadyGuffers]

All dogs should be under control at all times. It depends on the dog whether that means a lead or not.

However, if and when genuine mistakes happen the out of control dog's owner should apologise profusely and the in control dog's owner should accept graciously.

In my world, anyway

[Delatron]

I think the problem is half the people obey the ‘dog code’ and half don’t.

So today I had my 10 month lab off lead for a while on a path by the river, when I saw people approaching I popped him back on the lead as he loves to run and play with other dogs. But others don’t do the same. So he ended up at one point surrounded by three off lead dogs, one growling at him, not under control. He was petrified and as he was on lead.

My dog is actually better and happier off lead around other dogs (apart from wanting to play). With the lead on he is submissive, crouches and won’t move. So today I would have been better not bothering putting him back on the lead as nobody else was. Dog code is tricky!

[heatseeker14]

Thanks for all of your replies. On reflection at least our puppy wasn’t hurt and although it was a strange experience it wasn’t a negative one. I’m now attempting to train our puppy to ignore other dogs. I need to get this sorted because it causes him to pull when on the lead. I plan to use the command ‘leave it’ followed by ‘let’s go’. This worked yesterday when we had a large group of people walking behind us. Does this sound okay? I have been working on his eye contact with me which has massively improved loose lead walking, so I guess overtime this will also help.
It doesn’t help though when other people let their dogs run up to him when he is on the lead. Makes training him to ignore other dogs extremely difficult! Yesterday a massive dog came bounding over to us. Thankfully he was very friendly, but it is hard to train our puppy to ignore dogs when they are in his face! Our puppy didn’t mind at all 😂