To have commented on an unleashed dog

My dog is literally the size of my foot 😂 softest little thing ever but I still won't let him off because of that very reason. He loves kids, and he will definitely get excited when he sees one and jump up for fuss. I am aware not all kids like dogs so you just don't let it happen. You are not being unreasonable. He should of atleast apologized!

All dogs should be under control. Small dog owners are the worst for this as they think they can do no harm and they are rarely properly trained on bullet proof recall.

We have a medium sized dog and she is always under my control. She has been on lead before on the beach and a small dog has approached her at full speed, mine has gone for a polite sniff and the small dog has gone berserk, yapping, whining and barking. The owner screeched at me from meters away accusing my dog of attacking hers.
The same dog does it every time we see them and mine is always leashed but she shouts accusations every single time. Even when I'm getting my dog in the car and she's happily ignoring the yapper.

YANBU.

Yes, I agree. The bloke would have had an absolute bollocking from me if his dog had knocked my toddler over.

do you live on my block ? 😆 just the following week after the dog jumping on me incidents, there was apparently dog piss in the lift! I didn’t see it myself but an irate resident had written an angry message about it on the notice board.

I assumed it was the same dog but I did some digging and apparently it wasn’t - so there’s more than one irresponsible dog owner in our building! They were identified on cctv and apparently got a letter sent out to them too and it’s not happened since thankfully.

You’re right, those owners definitely encourage behaviour like that. That woman was standing there grinning while her dog ran at me both times. She didn’t say a word to stop her dog at all.

I recently pointed out to some complete twat that his dog met the legal definition of being out of control after he was very tardy at recalling his dog then failed to put it on a lead after it bounded up to a woman barking and jumping leaving her screaming on a bench.
He considered half-heartedly arguing back but decided that it was easier to humour this interfering little woman by temporarily using the lead until she buggered off out of his way. (Naturally when I saw him again 5-10 mins later the dog was off lead)

I'd say that leaving someone screaming on a bench is very much meeting the legal definition of out of control. He wasn't even embarassed by his dog having that effect on another park user.

I wish there'd been someone else to help out last year when a dog randomly took exception to me, ran up barking and growling, scratching my leg while its gormless human continued her phone call and just groped around one-handed. Being the person being threatened, I went in to freeze and quiet mode.

My children are rather cagey around dogs due to numerous incidents of being approached, sniffed all over, bowled over, sticks taken from their hands and food stolen through their younger years. Growing up, and getting bigger than dogs has helped make their fears more managable, but progress was slow and regularly set back byuntrained "friendly" dogs approaching them. I have been known to respond to "it's ok he's friendly" by growling "my child isn't"

It's no wonder these blithering idiots can't train dogs because they can't even recognise distress in their own species.

The more people point out that their untrained animals are illegally out of control, the better. Hopefully some of them may even have enough brain cells to be capable of learning. They're a bloody nuisence to everyone else in public spaces, human and other animals including well-controlled dogs.

Oh that'd be after I kicked the owner ....

Yet it's the owners fault the dog isn't trained sufficiently so why hurt the dog?

I have two dogs who I adore. One is a lovely natured small breed we rehomed recently. Whilst our other dog is great off the lead, our new addition thinks everyone is his friend. As a result unless he's in a contained area he can't be let off. He's in no way aggressive but we understand him being 'friendly' can be just as annoying. YANBU and I'm surprised anyone thinks you are.

No off lead dog should ever approach another dog or person without invitation. This is how dog attacks happen - some idiot’s ‘friendly’ dog invading the space of an on-lead dog or scaring / jumping at people.

I don’t care if the off-lead dog has no bite history. It’s not about them. It’s about the owner not having control should a situation occur due to their dog running up as it pleases.

All of my dogs went to dog training classes and were on long lines until recall was perfect.

YNBU. I have two largeish dogs who are well behaved, attend weekly training sessions with a professional dog trainer, etc and I still keep them on leash if we're in public/off our property. One of the banes of our neighborhood is a family with a small, untrained, and somewhat aggressive dog that they let run around in the street, approach people/dogs walking by, etc. They think because their dog is small, he doesn't need to be on a leash but he causes issues with other dogs and has bitten a few of us. Small bites, didn't break the skin, but know that they're the first to send a nasty email if someone else's dogs are barking. I'm out of patience for both these folks and situations like you experienced.

I don't have a garden either so it's important to me to have that space.

FFS you should be able to walk into your building without being jumped at by a dog. What is wrong with people! There used to be one in my block that would piss in the lift.

I've seen so many dog owners reward (often inadvertently) their pets for undesirable behaviour, like jumping up, begging, pawing at you, barking, licking etc. If you laugh and/or fuss over your dog when it jumps up, it will think it's doing something good and won't care whether it's you or some random person in the street. If every time your dog paws at you, you get up and get it food then of course it's going to continue pawing. If every time your dog starts barking you jump up and tell it off then it learns that barking gets attention.

I see it with cats too. Like people who get kittens and use their fingers as toys instead of an actual toy. The cat comes to associate hands with prey, then the owner wonders why they get bitten. This leads to cats ending up in a shelters and labelled 'aggressive', when the poor thing thought it was just playing.

Not unreasonable at all. too many just say 'oh he's just friendly' about their unruly dog never minding what the other dog or dog walker wants or if the other dog is even friendly. My dog was attacked by an off lead dog a while back and I got a few bites on my hand trying to help my dog who was a pup. A week later another off lead doing bounding up running all over my dog and that owner got an unbelievable bollocking from me. They were confrontational until I calmed down and showed them the mess my arm was and how that other owner also said their dog was usual fine also and hadn't attacked before but just decided that day they didn't like my dog. They were a bit sheepish and said I was right and they would be more careful too. Everyone thinks their pet is fine but the vast vast majority are not trained correctly to be off lead

Not unreasonable! This is something that really boils my piss. It's really frightening for a small child, especially toddlers.

I appreciate responsible dog owners like you.

Of course the man was BU but I agree with pp that your husband is a wet wipe! I would be more worried about that!

Is he protective of your child at all? Very worrying he seems to he ok with a “friendly” dog knocking your child over. Does he not realise the harm this can cause? How would he like a creature bigger than him knocking him over?

I used to feel neutral about dogs but in recent years I go out of my way to avoid interactions with them. I used to enjoy taking a blanket to the park and relaxing with a book but I don’t feel I can do it anymore.

I’m the same @kitteninabasket I am resentful because I pay a lot of council tax as someone who lives solo and doesn’t use many services. I don’t have a garden but I can’t even use the parks in peace.

And even though I avoid parks I was coming into my apartment building last year and an unleashed dog ran full pelt and jumped on me with its daft owner standing by. No apology from her despite my obvious discomfort/alarm. I later realised it had scratched me and I reported her. A few days later I saw her again with her dog approaching and I told her to make sure her dog never touched me again. She had a nerve to argue with me saying she can’t help it. I told her not leashing your apparently out of control untrained dog is a choice and made it clear that I wasn’t going to debate her dogs “right” to jump on me!

I reported her to the building management again and they ended up reminding all dog owners to leash their dog in the building at all times . I’ve never seen her again thankfully so I think she may have moved out.

I agree 100%.

It's high time the law was changed so that dogs are required to be on a lead in public places (such as parks, streets, pavements etc) and in all private places to which the public has access (such as common land, on public footpaths, bridleways, byways etc).

I would forgive a dog owner who made an attempt to stop this happening and/or recognised this is unacceptable. As this did not happen, I think the OP was very reasonable.

Dogs shouldn't be off lead unless you are 100% sure that they will be back at your heel the minute you call, even if there's a juicy steak in the other direction.

When I used to advise customers about training their dogs I always said the first command dog needs to learn is "leave it",particularly if there will be kids around. Then recall has to be constantly reinforced.

Teaching tricks like paw, stand up etc is just rewarding unwanted behaviour such as pawing, scratching, jumping up etc.

People rarely listened and the dogs were never what I would called trained but I'd see them out and about with them completely out of control.

Dogs should be on lead unless they are 100% trained and trustworthy which is rare. I'm a dog owner, and mine is always on

Some fucker walks his dogs off leash near my house and is usually 100 feet behind them. They routinely attack my neighbour's cats. I rushed out one day to find they had one of the cats at bay in a hedge. I screamed at the dogs and the owner like a fishwife. The dogs ignored me and the man thought it hilarious.

He was less amused when my neighbour got the dog warden involved.

I’ve had this quite a few times too and I’ve ended up having to get the coat dry cleaned. In spring one year, I was sitting on the grass in the park, took my coat off and laid it down next to me. A dog came bounding over and pissed all over it

This summer I was lying on a blanket on the grass in a quiet area of the park, and suddenly some sort of muscular bulldog breed jumped at me and started licking my face.

A few weeks later I was sitting in a similar spot and a dog came up and started growling and barking at me. I looked around for the owner but there was no one. After a few minutes I finally heard someone calling, and saw a man slowly wandering over from the other side of the park. I was furious and told him to keep his aggressive dog on a lead.

I used to feel neutral about dogs but in recent years I go out of my way to avoid interactions with them. I used to enjoy taking a blanket to the park and relaxing with a book but I don’t feel I can do it anymore.

I lost it with a little old lady in a park earlier this year. She had 2 little yappy type dogs. One on a lead that seemed older and like it wouldn't run away from her anyway. Another darting about the place which I don't really mind generally.

She had stopped to pick up one of their messes when the unleashed one spotted my 2 kids in the skatepark and started aggressively barking and chasing them.

She was doing the age old dog owner shtick shouting over "They won't bite! Just wants to play!" and all that crap - my kids ended up petrified and basically taking shelter on a raised bit in the middle of the skatepark that the dog couldn't get up. I absolutely lost my shit with her shouting that if she can't control the dog it should be on a lead. She was giving it "I've had dogs al my life I know what I'm doing" and I was like "Well you obviously fucking don't!!"

I've never had dogs but if I had one that was likely to go chasing kids around a park it would be on a bloody lead

We have a large breed very bouncy young dog and do absolutely everything humanly possible to avoid incidences like this, but if it were to happen (god forbid, but no one's dog is perfect) I wouldn't behave like so many dog owners do.

But it wouldn't happen if you're a responsible owner, would it?

Because you wouldn't allow your large breed, very bouncy young dog off the lead in public 😳

Not especially related to this post, but can I ask a question?

I see many posts like this where people are more pissed off at the attitude of the owners attitude more than the behaviour of the dog.

We have a large breed very bouncy young dog and do absolutely everything humanly possible to avoid incidences like this, but if it were to happen (god forbid, but no one's dog is perfect) I wouldn't behave like so many dog owners do.

I would not try and justify his behaviour, and TBH I'd be so mortified that I'd be bending over backwards in my apologies.
My dog would be back to square one in his training and you likely wouldn't ever see him off lead for a long long time.

So in this instance, if the owner had of got control of their dog and made sure your LO was not hurt or terrified, would it have made you feel 'better' with the situation ?

I guess I'm asking, who were you more angry (completely justified) with, the dogs behaviour or the handler?

YADNBU.

I love dogs and always thought I would get one at some point. Got utterly sick of badly behaved dogs like this when I had tiny children. I won't get one myself now until I know I have the time and energy to train it properly. So many people seem to get a dog and then not really give a monkeys how it behaves.