To have kicked an old man’s dog?

[itsme189]

This morning I was walking my 2 very small elderly dogs on lead in the woods near me where it’s nice and cool for them.

they love people but they don’t love when dogs run up to them and get all in their face, valid I wouldn’t like that either. If a dog on or off lead just walks past or gives them a quick sniff they don’t mind. I always tell people not to let their dogs come right up to them.
Theyve never bitten just growled and I just don’t want to risk anything.

there was an old man walking a large greyhound type dog off lead and he’s miles away from it it runs at us very fast so I stick my leg in front of my dogs and the dog doesn’t stop runs straight into my leg. He then excitedly throws his foot on top of my smallest dog he squeals in pain and my other dog starts growling and showing teeth.

so I picked them up and then the big dogs starts jumping up at me to get to my dogs so I kick it away.

Old man then starts screaming at me for “abusing” his friendly dog and a lady walking passed then said to him “I saw her kick the dog”

and now I don’t know if I did too much but I was so overwhelmed and worried it would become a fight and there’s no way my old boys would do well in that situation. To make it worse the lady made a post about it in our local Facebook group (luckily no pictures) and everyone’s saying awful things but they only know one side!

For the record the dog was not hurt didn’t even squeal!

General rule where I used to walk my old dog, was if you saw someone with an a dog on a lead, you recalled yours until you were past, if you can't recall your dog then it probably shouldn't be off lead. It makes sense for everyone's safety, dogs included.
I had a friend with a batshit boxer, lovely and not aggressive, but far too in other dogs spaces, it ended up with a terrier literally hanging off its snout !

I have a French bulldog and a big dog came and wasn’t friendly at all and properly growled and tried to attack her. I picked her up and held her against me while the owner ran up to me. No way would I kick his dog. Dogs can be utter twats sometimes and I just accepted his dog was having a bad day and walked on. I did mutter to myself but that’s as far as it went. I think unless there’s a proper fight going on you should never think kicking someone else’s dog is ok.

Her dogs were on leads though the other dog wasn't and it wasn't leaving hers alone. She's already said she tried to call it off and also tried to get the owner to call it off away from them, neither worked so she kicked it out of the way, it's not like she's booted the dog and injured it. That man's dog is clearly not trained to behave around other people or animals if it was trying to jump up this lady to get at her dogs so maybe he needs to put his on a leash out in public

This is where we need VAR 4 Dogs.

Did your leg connect with the dog? Or did the dog connect with your leg? The difference is crucial to the vote.

Dogs have personal space.
Humans have personal space.
BEFORE a dog of human enters another dog or human's personal space it should have either

• the human's permission
• the dog's owner/walker's permission
• the human carer's permission should the human be too little/disabled to give their own permission.

If your dog or little/disabled person is unable to wait for your permission before it enters another's personal space, as far as possible make sure they are being controlled in a way that makes this impossible, or don't take them to somewhere where they CAN enter another's personal space. (Obviously there may be the odd accident, dogs, toddlers or even older mentally disabled children/adults, may sometimes slip off unnoticed, but this is what's generally respectful.) If owners refuse to do this, then other people may have to react to keep the dog away.

(

That wasn’t a “socialised” dog 🤣

Not wrong at all, loose dog growling at your small, old dogs? No brainer.

Why is it so hard to understand that because of their small size it might be very intimidating to little dogs to have large dogs rush up to them. A large dog can seriously injure a small one, even in play.

The OP also mentioned that hers are elderly so they might be frail and suffering with age related ailments. It's perfectly understandable why she'd want to pick them up to protect them.

My very small dog was friendly towards dogs of all sizes for years but now she'd prefer they left her alone - why? Because she had one too many encounters with dogs that rushed up to her, bowled her over and caused her to feel pain and fear.

It's not her fault or mine that she changed from a dog who was happy to greet and play with other dogs to one who now wants to avoid large, strange dogs. It's the fault of the "but my dog is only being friendly!" type of dog owner who can't recall their dogs and are too dim to realise they shouldn't let their off lead dog approach a dog that's on a lead.

My dog is now elderly, she has arthritis and is losing her sight and hearing, so having off lead dogs run up to her is very scary for her. She's still very eager to go out walking every day so I've changed walking routes and walking times to keep her safe, so she doesn't have to encounter the clueless dog owners and their untrained, rambunctious dogs. I'm not putting her through the stress of having idiot's dogs harass her.

Completely agree

But OP's dogs were touching her torso! So if she shoved forward with her torso, she would be putting her small dogs in the face of the big dog, which would defeat the purpose of why she picked up her dogs in the first place!

If that doesn't make sense to you then I despair.

It's a good general rule. But there seems to be a view among big dog owners on this thread that might equals right, which is quite disturbing.

I think removing your dogs from the situation by picking it up was appropriate. It's better than panicking, it means the smaller dogs can't bite the bigger dog in panic, it means the bigger dog can't hurt the smaller ones. This greyhound may have been being playful, but greyhounds do have a prey drive! If the greyhound had hurt your dogs then the same people criticising you for picking them up would have been asking why you didn't get them out of the way in time

And re the dog "only being friendly" when jumping up. I know someone who had her hip broken by her own (lovely friendly) Labradoodle. It wasn't trying to hurt her, just being exhuberant and knocked her over. Even if the greyhounds intentions were friendly, if you were unsteady on your feet you could easily have been knocked over and, with both hands full of dog, unable to stop yourself falling. That's why it's generally considered bad dog ownership to let your dogs jump up at other people.

yhink they were bring sarcastic

I am still trying to work out how pushing her torso forward would have helped in any way if she had turned her back on the dog and it put its paws on her shoulders. Hence my assumption that she kicked out backwards, or possibly sideways.

Yanbu. The other dog was obviously poorly supervised and has poor recall, so shouldn’t be off lead. It’s all very well saying you ‘shouldn’t’ kick a dog, well of course not and I’m sure you know that. But in a panicky moment like this you can be forgiven for acting a bit impulsively to manage what you perceived as a risk to your dogs.

Her dogs are small and elderly and she had to defend them. Greyhounds have a high prey drive and chase small animals. The greyhound is the dog that was out of control here. If the dog doesn’t have manners, keep it on a lead.

I think this man was in the wrong, and as someone with a dog that doesn’t like other dogs running up to it, I get it, I really do. His dog shouldn’t have been able to approach your dogs when the man was out of physical reach and the dog doesn’t have good enough recall to be brought back.

I think in the moment you were full of adrenaline and reacting impulsively so it is what it is, I would leave it now and hope you don’t see him again.

but - You have asked a few times what you could have done differently - I would suggest maybe turning around with your dogs in your arms so you had your back to the greyhound, moving away or up somehow? It depends whether you think the greyhound was aggressive and might hurt you (in which case don’t turn your back) or just trying to get to your dogs (in which case turning away may have helped)

Totally inappropriate topic to be sarcastic about, in a women’s forum of all places, imo. Minor altercation in which no real harm was done? Next logical step - be sarcastic about sexual violence? Idiotic.

I thought it was in front of her. If it was behind her obviously not. Even odder then to not just walk away. Why potentially aggravate a dog behind you that’s already holding on to you?

She did say she'd turned her back to try to get away from it, I think. Hang on.

Yup, her most recent post. Today 17:21: "It would not stop jumping at me I held my dogs, turned my back. Hard to walk away with a dogs paws on your shoulders tbh."

And obviously trying to kick it off her would be something she might not think of as dangerous; or at least no more dangerous then potentially being pushed over by its weight on her, and landing on her dogs.