I have had my 3 year old rescue dog for just over a year. He is a very nervous dog due to being abused and locked away for the first year of his life.
With lots of love and patience and working with a behaviourist we are slowly helping him love life.
I am lucky to live semi-rural and walk every day over fields and woodlands. I purposely choose to walk most days around 10-11am and again at 3pm as I know less people are walking at that time. It’s a public accessed area so we do meet people and their dogs I know we can’t have the place to ourselves but in general it’s quite quiet. I keep him on a lead at all times with a bright yellow ‘Nervous Dog’ sign on the lead. Most people and dogs we meet are lovely, they will usually pop their dogs back on the lead if they see us or keep them off the lead if their dogs are very well trained and have good recall, which I have no issues with at all. We often chat and have had no issues with other dogs.
However, back in the summertime we were walking through the woods and a woman jogged passed me with her two dogs. One of her dogs, a young female Lab literally pounced on top of my dog as soon as she came into contact with me, with lots of yelping from my dog and growling from hers.
Thankfully, no broken skin but it left my dog cowering like Cringer in He-man (if anyone else is old enough to remember him? lol!).
Anyhow, the woman had jogged passed, when she heard the commotion she came back. I said ‘Your dog just attacked mine’. She looked bemused and said ‘No no, she wasn’t attacking him. She is female, he is male and she was just showing her dominance!’. I replied ‘Well tell that to him’ and pointed to my poor little dog who by now was trying to clamber up my leg. (Btw, my dog is a Yorkshire terrier/Jack Russell cross so much smaller than the Lab). She just Pfft’d and carried on her way.
Back to this morning, we were just coming out of the same woodland, onto the fields, minding our own business and loe and behold bounding out of the woods is the same lab. No collar, no sign of the owner and as soon as she reaches my dog she sets on him again. I shoved her out of the way and shouted at her to leave. She ran off back into the woods. I managed to see the owner through some bracken and shouted at her that her dog had just attacked mine. She started to give off the same spiel about dominance and I cut her short and told her this was the second time, it was not on and if she can not control her dog then it needs to be on a lead AND a collar.
My dog pulled all the way home and is now cowering in his crate.
It’s not in my nature to shout at random strangers and now I feel a bit bad but I was fuming at the time as it’s the second time. Surely it is simple responsible dog ownership to keep your dog on a leash if they are prone to attacking other dogs?