Please tell me your phrases to defuse arguments!

[BelindaLouisa]

I have a neighbour who is rather odd and currently looking after his daughter’s large Labrador. I can clearly see that he’s uncomfortable with the dog, the dog itself is fine albeit it young and boisterous, but he’s now shouting at me whenever we cross paths because I’ve got kids with me (the kids are also fine, the issue is that the dog pulls to go to them and the neighbour panics and today got pulled over.)

Details are tedious (we both live next to woods, I’m in the woods a lot with the kids) so, being super brief, I now want to pop in and ask how long he has the dog for and then we can ensure we avoid each other and hence avoid any issue.

The problem is clearly him rather than us but I don’t want to get into that with him, but suspect he might be an arse….. So give me your super polite, but firm, ways of defusing arguments. I have a tendency to overexplain or apologise when stressed so need to practise what to say first!

Personally I would leave it and I certainly wouldn’t be volunteering to curtail my activities based off this fact pattern.

He has shouted once when pulled over probably from shock so I would let that go. I would just say a cheery “morning!” if you see him and overlook him not responding.

In case he is deaf or unpleasant... why not drop a note or card through his door to say you hope he's ok after getting pulled over and ask if he'd find it helpful to tell you a set walk time so that you can avoid being on the track while he's out. Perhaps mention that you have a dog coming to stay and realise that might make his daughter's dog even more prone to over excitement. Frame it as being concerned/ helpful rather than confrontational.

We walk a neighbours lab when they are on holiday, lovely dog when it's at hime but it is reactive and pulls and tbh it's embarrassing when we encounter kids/ dogs, I bet he's just feeling embarrassed that he can't control the dog/ it doesn't behave especially well. If he's not a dog person he won't recognise that shouting / raising his energy when he meets you is probably winding the dog up even more!

All sorted! I did go and see him and he was really apologetic - he is massively stressed by the dog, said he knew he was rude with various things but the dog is now back with his daughter ‘at least until October.’