It's an off lead dog one.

[Maluki]

I walk my dog in the local park every day. There are sections where he is on lead and sections where I let him off. He is extremely used to people and dogs and generally very well behaved.

As we arrive at the park I always let him off lead and he does a poo. This is on a field area beside a path.

Today he did his poo in the field about 6 feet off the path as usual. I noticed a man in a suit approaching along the path. My dog then went back on to the path to wait for me and I leaned down to pick up the poo.

Very very unusually, my dog started to bark - he barked 4 or 5 times - and I saw he was now behind the man (who had walked past him). I was about to apologize, my dog almost never barks at people (he sometimes barks at really unusual things like a person wearing a sombrero or riding a tricycle, and this guy wasn't wearing anything unusual, except a slightly dishevelled suit on a Saturday morning). The man totally lost it at me. He started screaming that he had been bitten on the back of the leg by a dog, that my dog and dogs like him are aggressive and that it would bite my children and kill them (I didn't have my kids with me). He told me to get the dog away from him or he would kick it in the head. My dog is a bloody 10 lb cavapoo!

I appreciate that my dog should not have barked and that the man was triggered. If he had shouted to put it on a lead, before he walked past it, I would gladly have done so. My dog has excellent recall, and is completely reliable on the "wait" signal. He's actually a dream to get back on lead - but I hadn't called him over as there was no sign of what was about to happen. I do wonder if this man inadvertently spooked my dog or even kicked out at him in fear or something as it's so unusual for him to bark at people like that.

Aibu to think that the man, in his fear, may have inadvertently caused the dogs reaction? And that my dog behaved badly but it could have been avoided if the man had just called out for me to hold the dog?

Firstly, sorry for your loss.
Secondly, on to the other points.....

• Dogs can and do live perfectly happily without being off lead, and even if you feel they do need to be off lead then go to a dog park or a place designed for that sort of thing, not a public area!
• As for comparing runners and dogs, both can be annoying and dirty - what is your point?
• In this scenario OP perhaps didn't intentionally do anything wrong, but allowing her dog to go over to a random person and bark at them isn't exactly ideal either.

My uncle had 4 labradors and always said 'arms up - dog up =arms down = dog down'.
Shouting and shrieking and behaving like a twat will wind the dog up, especially if it's young - it will think it's a game. Walking on by or turning your back - chances are the dog will ignore you.

He was scared of your dog barking at him.
His reaction was OTT because he was scared.
All the comments about dogs not being allowed off are OTT too. Dogs are allowed off lead in public (not in all places). Mine aren’t allowed to approach dogs on lead or people they don’t know.

It doesn’t matter what caused the dogs reaction, what matters is that your dog frightened the man for whatever reason. I don’t think your dog needs to be on a lead if it had good recall etc but it does need to be beside you really especially if you can see someone approaching and you’re 6 foot away leaving your dog unattended there. I have a Labrador who’s absolutely soft as clarts, so dosey and extremely friendly, he’d never do anything to frighten anybody or any dog as in he doesn’t bark/growl/run at people etc, and he has perfect recall so my dog would have been off lead in the situation you described, but I know that someone who is scared of dogs is probably going to be scared just walking past my dog even if he does do nothing to prompt that fear. So the difference is I would have called my dog to me so the man didn’t have to pass what is essentially an unattended dog on the path, your dog should be waiting with you, not waiting 6ft away, part of that is actually about protecting your dog as well- if he had tried to kick, attack or steal your dog, you were too far away to immediately prevent that.

You can never know who is afraid or wary of dogs, the best you can do is keep your dogs under control and out of people’s way wherever possible x

I think a lot of people are labelled 'dog haters' simply for standing up against the tide of 'you must love my dog'. Of course keyboard warriors exist too.

The PP stated her opinion as if it was fact.

Mumsnet is a discussion forum. Anything you post here is up for debate.

If she'd said "in my opinion dogs should always be on a lead" - we have different opinions, but that's fine. That's not what she did though.

@Sehenswürdigkeiten Thank you for your kind words.

My point is that consideration and tolerance are the way for us all to get on whether we are runners or dog owners.

As a dog owner who has spent a lifetime knowing dogs who have had freedom to exercise off lead I would say that it's very hard for me to understand that a dog who is never off lead is able to live their best life, but that's only my opinion and I have no evidence other than my own experience to back this up.

I don't think she said it was a fact, just stated her view, if a bit succinctly.

A similar thing happen to me with my dog, Labrador, for no apparent reason he started barking at a random man when we were out walking. He was at a distance but definitely barking at the man . Totally out of character and hasn't happened since so I've no idea what it was about that particular person that my dog just did not like. It was embarrassing but luckily for me the guy wasn't remotely bothered

Ridiculous over reaction to a barking dog.

The dog didn't run up to him barking. That was part of the weird thing. He just returned to the path while I picked up the poo. The man was a metre or two away and by the time I picked up the poo he had passed the dog and "made him" bark. I don't know if he did something to the dog or the dog just sensed his fear. Dog had already passed 10 people en route to park (on lead) and not reacted, and subsequently passed a couple of hundred (on and off lead) and didn't react to any of them either. It was all a bit weird.

YABU
you should not have your dog off lead in public.
You literally said your dog behaved uncharacteristically so proving that dogs can react in a way you don't expect at any point.
The dog not being big enough to rip someone's throat out is not carte blanche to allow it near people
People don't want someone else's stinky dog coming near them

Where do you stay that has dog free areas? I might move there.
I would love to go for a walk in a park without encountering a dog but we have no dog free areas.

I didn't say your dog ran up, I said he barked.

Dogs can and do live perfectly happily without being off lead, and even if you feel they do need to be off lead then go to a dog park or a place designed for that sort of thing, not a public area!

Dog parks are an American concept, and don't exist in the same way in the UK. They're also much hated by American dog owners.

In the UK, most public parks are designated for use by off lead dogs (so long as they're under control - will come back when called, for instance).

If you're thinking of secure fields then
A) They're really useful for owners of dogs that cannot safely be walked near other humans or dogs

B) they're never big enough for the sort of ground most dog walkers need to cover to tire out our dogs - I can easily do two hours of off lead walking, which is up to 6 miles, and that's with a small middle aged dog. Most dogs also need to be able to socialise with other dogs.

C) there's not that many of them around, and capacity is limited. We're all safer if we keep that capacity for dogs with safety issues.

D) There never will be enough capacity. If you assume they're usable for 12 hours per day, 1 hour per household, that's 1 field for every 12 dog owning households. There's 10 million such households (34%), so we'd need 833,333 dog walking fields. The nearest secure dog fields to me are 2.5 acres, 8 acres, 7 acres and 4 acres - an average of 5.375 acres. So, to make your idea come true, we'd need to dedicate 4.48m acres to secure dog walking fields. That's an area almost as large as Wales (5.1m acres). That's before we've come onto the practicalities - like how urban dog owners would get to such fields, and how we'd grow enough food once we'd turned the land over to dog fields.

Public spaces are for everyone - including those we find inconvenient.

I was lead walking my 7ish stone dog in the local woodland earlier in the week. There were several off lead small dogs barking and yapping and running amok. When they got closer my boy started barking at their excitement, and the other owners looked at me like I was the devil. He stopped barking very quickly but I know that in their minds I was the one with the dangerous out of control dog because he looks the part 🤷‍♀️ He never barks at people, if he did I would avoid going where he had the opportunity, mainly because of his "dangerous appearance". I don't let him off lead in public for the same reason.

YABU. Keep your dog under control.
And your following comments keep pointing at the man for "being weird", "out of the ordinary", "doing something"...
What is weird is you absolutely wanting to justify your dog bad behaviour on a random stranger who was just walking by. You are kind of right though, it's not the dog's fault, it's yours for not training them.

This is a genuine question not a criticism but why is it that every time I read a post like this it's always "the first time the dog has ever done it", "first time the dog has ever behaved this way".
my toddler was bitten by a dog recently and the owners said it was completely "out of character" for the dog.

It’s a tricky one. I was bitten by a dog as a child and had a fear response for years. Got over it but still don’t appreciate people’s excuses for their dog running at me (“he’s just being friendly” thanks but I don’t want to be friendly with your dog). I was bitten last year by a dog that came out of nowhere and went for my ankle (now have a lovely scar) and I have that fear response all over again - heart racing, adrenaline rush, panicking. I have no control over that response. The problem now is that that could trigger a dog to attack in response to my response to it. Only one of us would be put down so I’d suggest caution at all times. Doesn’t matter if you think your dog is cute and harmless, not everyone shares that opinion.

If you'd have gone and got your dog instead of picking up the poo he'd have complained you weren't picking up the poo.

Some recent experiences with dogs in a park.

Woman sitting on a bench and her large dog running around on his own. I'm walking through the park and he runs over and jumps on me, knocking me down. I called out to her that he should be on a lead. She was very upset, didn't move to put him on a lead or call him over and said he was 'friendly.'

Yesterday I'm sitting on a bench reading. A man comes by with his 2 dogs off lead. They run up to me and jump up, knocking my book out of my hand. He apologised but subsequently didn't think to put his dogs on a lead.

Not life threatening experiences but it worries me that I could have been with my 2 year old grand daughter and neither dog owner thought it was their responsibility to keep their dogs on a lead even after proof that they could not be trusted off lead.

The previous week I was with my grand daughter walking to the shops. A man was walking his 2 Rottweilers off lead along a fairly crowded pavement. Yes it worried me though they caused no problem. But, surely they should have been on a lead.

I have a dog and am used to dogs. I was walking in a park the other day and an off lead dog - a biggish one - came up towards me and started barking and growling. I was very nervous. I took a step forward and the barking and growling escalated. About 30 seconds later the very apologetic owner came running up and put him on a lead. I don't give a flying fuck that according to her he was a teenage dog who was just being friendly - that was not the impression I got.

I never said he has never barked before. I said he does bark at people occasionally but usually there is an obvious reason (like wearing a big hat). It's the first time a person has threatened to kick my dog's head in or told me he is an aggressive dog and will kill my children!

Bold of you to assume he's not trained!

In fact it was the 1:1 trainer who taught me off lead walking. And recall, and wait, lie down, settle, sit, drop it etc.....

Dogs can and do live perfectly happily without being off lead, and even if you feel they do need to be off lead then go to a dog park or a place designed for that sort of thing, not a public area!

No thank you.

Enclosed dog fields are boring. They'd do absolutely nothing in terms of enrichment for a spaniel so we don't use them.

I'd rather keep walking ddog offlead in the Country Parks, woods, hills and beaches near us. Which I'm allowed to do thankfully.