Other peoples dogs

[Burke1]

AIBU to ask that people with dogs that they can't control keep them on a lead in public? Witnessed one dog run towards a group of other dogs on a walk. He was much bigger than them and scared them by chasing them for ages and his owner did bugger all to get him back. If you can't control the dog, keep it on a lead, so it doesn't annoy other people and other dogs.

[Taz1212]

I don't think you can tell from the OP if the dogs were frightened or not. My 7 month old puppy (small/med sized) absolutely loves to be chased by large German Shepard dogs. If you saw him on the field being tackled by one of his doggy friends, rolled over and pinned down you'd probably think he was being terrorised. 99% of the time. He's loving it and goes back for more. The other 1% of the time he will let out a little squeal and the other dog immediately backs off.

[Taz1212]

I do think you shouldn't just let your dog race up to other dogs and this is something we work on every day over and over and over again!

[SunshineAndShadows]

Looks like OP hasn't come back - Just started a goady thread about a dog causing no problems to her, who was in all likelihood playing with other dog friends, so that everyone else can jump on the dog hating bandwagon with their own unrelated anecdotes.

Awesome. Thanks so much OP.

When dogs are friends they run, chase, play, growl and bite. If it goes on for ages without escalation then its much more likely to be friendly. There's nothing in the OP that indicates this dog was doing anything remotely antisocial, aggressive or upsetting.

But please don't let common sense or a an understanding of basic dog behaviour get in the way of judgement and hating

[EasyToEatTiger]

I agree with you Sunshine. It's lovely watching lots of dogs off lead racing around. I really miss it. Bad things rarely happen but when they do, they're bad. When we lived in London, there were sometimes dogs who were just roaming for the day. I don't like that much. We kept out of their way. There are an awful lot of dog owners out there looking for a fight. It's not difficult to distract from dogs on leads. Leads cause all sorts of problems to a dog, regarding communication/being able to get away etc, although of course we need to use them sometimes. Education, not ranting, I guess is key.

[EasyToEatTiger]

Rant over.

[Chiggers]

The default position I have with my own dogs are that although they are big soppy gits, I will never trust ANY dog/animal 100%. Chiggerdog was beaten, neglected and starved by his previous owners. When we started fostering him (6wks after he was taken into rescue), we could still count every bone on his ribcage. We started socialising him and found that he was quite aggressive, but with time and patience he now runs away from Chihuahuas in an attempt to get them to chase him. He's a big wuss though.

A wee while ago, I took Chiggerdog and Chiggerbitch (his adoptive sister) to the old running track up the road from us, for a bound around and play. A wee Jack Russell got into the grounds through a hole in the dividing fence that wasn't there the day before, and Chiggerdog bounded over gave a playful bark to try and coax the JRT to play. The JRT gave a low-level growl and Chiggerdog ran behind me, cocked his head to the side to look from behind my legs, as if to say "Mummy, mummy, mummy, that big beast is going to eat me". Let's just say the JRT was a fat wee doddery old man. Chiggerdog was about 4x the size of him and scared shitless of it Both the JRT's owner and I thought we'd need a box of Tena pads we were laughing that much at scaredydog .

Here's a photo of Chiggerdog and his big-little sister. The brown one is Chiggerdog BTW

[EasyToEatTiger]

Lovely dogs Chiggers! Well done you! And your dogs!

[tomandizzymum]

Cute dogs. My experience of our local strays, and the pets that a free to follow them is that the boss dog is not one humans would point out straight away. She's a manky old bitch, JR cross, what they call a paulistinho. She's mean though, my puppy respects her. She growls at others who step out of line. But like klept said. They don't fight or cause injury by nature. When I first moved here and asked if the stays posed a threat people looked at me like I'd lost it. like "that crazy English woman, don't they have dogs in the UK?"...