What to do if your dog is attacked?

[Crawling]

DP was walking our dog the other night when a pitbul x shot out of a garden and attacked our Labrador. Our labrador didnt fight back but was crying and trying to get away.

No owners came to help and dp found it difficult to stop them and was very concerned about the other dog causing severe harm to our dog so he is ashamed to admit he kicked it back into the garden and shut the gate (sorry please dont flame). He said he didnt hurt it but he had to stop it attacking our dog or our dog was going to get badly injured.

Now we know his actions were not the best way to deal, but in a moment of panic at protecting our dog he did it. So I have come on here to find a better way to deal with this should it happen again.

Our dog is ok BTW, dp stopped things before our dog got injured, but even after our dog showed submission the dog continued to try to attack him. What should he have done?

Thanks for all answers they are very helpful and thanks for any further answers all though for the sake of not aggrivating this thread I wont post again but will still read any replies and take on board any opinions negative or positive

Midori I am sorry I jumped on you earlier I think because I expected to be attacked I jumped on anything negative, of course we dont know it had any pitbull in it, it may have been a different dog entirely but when I said pit X you all knew roughly what the dog looked like and it was the closest description but I got defensive earlier an for that I am sorry. I thought it may be needed to know how DP should have dealt with things better. E.G different tactics for different size dogs. I dont scaremonger in fact I was badly mauled by a dog as a child and refuse to name the breed of the dog because I have seen hysteria levels go up, I didnt expect a dog on dog attack to be scaremongering.

DP should not have kicked the dog but his first thought was to protect our dog who we love very much.

Thanks especially to rizzo for your supportive post.

i read somewhere online (cant remember where) that if two dogs are fighting/one attacking another then the best thing to do is to grab the attcking dog's back legs and walk backwards but turning in a circle until you get to somewhere you can tie it up then go back to check the other dog or if the other dog is still attcking do the same with it except go in the other direction. difficult to do it you are on your own or have children/buggy with you but it is better than doing nothing and less risky than booting either dog. the turning in a circle is so that the dog is forced to walk sideways and so hopefully cant reach you to bite you.

That sounds like a good tip Boo. I always become a gibbering wreck in these situations so I'll try to remember that one.

(And forget the one about shoving a stick where the sun don't shine!)

I think in this situation, your OH probably did the right thing.

I would like to say though that most dog 'fights' (as identified by owners) are nothing more than 'handbags'. No damage is done, but it looks and sounds absolutely awful, and is very frightening to humans who aren't attuned to recognising it for what it is.

Dogs are armed with EXTREMELY sharp teeth and (in many cases) powerful jaws, and if they meant to cause harm, they would. Most scuffles are made infinitely worse by owners getting involved trying to 'break it up'.

In the past, when there has been a scuffle and the other owner was present I have run in the opposite direction calling my dog, and telling them to run in the opposite direction and call theirs. This has always worked well, as the dogs don't have any incitement (via owner involvement) to escalate the situation, and will generally run after their 'escaping' owner

Sorry meant to say - if you get involved in a dog fight or even in a scuffle, you're highly likely to get bitten. Possibly even by your own dog. Been there, done that, got the bruises

yes laska's tip seems like the safest tip of the lot! i think i will try that before i grab any doggie hind legs!! i like my fingers!

We had a rescue dog with issues.

She attacked my parents dog and I only managed to get her off by lifting her back legs and then eventually dragging her away by her tail.

She also fought with our other dog and when I separated them in the same manner her jaws swang round and she bit my leg (releasing as soon as she realised what it was).

She was only a spaniel so was just a little puncture wound. YOu wouldn't catch me doing it with any kind of bull terrier!

We are volunteer dog walkers at our local rescue centre and used to walk our own dog (off lead chasing ball mainly) with dogs from the rescue centre (always on lead). We walked all sorts - often huge staffies, greyhounds, lurchers, little terriers etc Never had any problems and the dogs were always quite separate anyway. Until one day we walked an akita x. She was fine until we sat on a bench for a breather and our dog dropped a ball at our feet. The akita didn't growl or provide any warning signs at all, but launched herself at our dog and was tearing at his head. It was horrendous - he was literally being dragged along the floor by her and there was no-one there but myself, DP and our terrified DS. DP had to kick and punch her because she was doing some serious damange to our poor dog who was yelping and crying. Eventually he tightened her collar so she had to let go to breathe and only then were we able to get her off our dog. He had to have an emergency trip to the vets and had numerous stitches in his head. The vet said had it been his neck it could have been a lot lot worse.

I worry about the same thing happenning again with my dog being attacked. It was awful and I never want it to happen again. We don't take our own dog to the rescue centre anymore but obviously he could be attacked while out on a normal walk. I am quite girly and carry my hairspray in my bag. I have questionned in my darkest moments that if it happenned again where we could not get another dog off him and it looked serious, whether I would use that to spray in the others dogs face. I LOVE dogs, all dogs, but if it was my dogs life in danger again then yes I think I probably would. I hope I don't get slated for writing that and it is not something I would do unless my dogs life was in danger, but I would always protect my own dog and certainly if it looked as though another dog wanted to do him some very serious harm.

HAIRSPRAY? Christ alive

Please take this OUT of your bag, or at least make the decision to NEVER use it. You can get bitter apple spray, dog stopper sonic devices, you can use water, you could even carry an expanding nightstick to use to prize another dog's jaws open in the unlikely event you ever need to.

I am really rather alarmed that you are in effect risking another dogs sight and respiratory function based on your own nerves.

I'm truly sorry you had an awful fright and your dog was injured, but there is every chance your actions caused this problem in the first place, and then exacerbated the injury to your dog. When you have dogs who don't know each other, you should really remove all toys so there's no opportunity for conflict. The fact that you didn't know to do this means you really should question whether you are (and I really don't mean this in a nasty way) experienced enough to be walking dogs which are anything other than already assessed as the easiest temperament at the rescue.

Sorry - I don't mean to sound harsh - just really quite shocked and somewhat concerned.

Laska - I carry hairspray anyway for my own use and always have. It is not carried as a defence at all but, as I said, if my dog was attacked again and another dog was going to seriously hurt him, then I would do anything to protect him, including using anything I had on my person or that was in the immediate environment at the time. I am not talking about a small scuffle, but if it was serious then who knows. If there are other things I can buy and if I decided that I needed to carry some sort of "weapon" at all times, then your suggestions are great and I would certainly look into them. A bit of background is that this dog had been deemed by the rescue as "soft, great with people and other dogs" (their words not my own). We got our own dog from the same rescue and were always very careful to walk dogs who were at least to some extent tested with other dogs and children, but she was obviously misjudged and mainly because she seemed ok most of the time and when she attacked there really was no warning. After she attacked our dog a couple of the other walkers who walked with their children decided not to walk her again, and when she was eventually rehomed she came back a few months later for attacking the owners partner . Our dog is a border collie who before and after the attack, keeps his distance from other dogs but needs to play with his ball (his ball is his life . Perhaps it was our fault for sitting down and therefore providing the opportunity for this dog to attack ours, but we had been volunteering for over a year literally every day before this happenned. The rescue knew our dog and of his ball obsession when out and never said it concerned them. not had it caused any problems before. I do take your point though and will hopefully never have to use it. Like I said it really would be a very last resort.

Bedlam - What you say makes a lot of sense. My friend and I found a stray dog once and were knocking door to door to see if anyone knew of him. We were confronted by a terrifying snarling dog in an alley that had jumped out of its own garden to bark at us, and my friend, without thinking shouted at him saying he should be ashamed at himself for snarling at a tiny puppy and the dog ran away tail between its legs. I am laughing at you doing a waltz with a rottie too. They are definitely not small dogs

My dog was attacked 2 years ago now and touch wood, has never had any aggression since. However, the whole incident terrified me more than him and I don't think I will ever forget it.

I'm not a dog owner but still wanted to ask:

Once you have done a collar twist/back leg walk back in circles how do you then re-leash the dogs?

OP - i think your situation is very different to the other thread so i wouldnt worry about getting flamed.

whilst not condoning kicking any animal and completely agreeing that fights usually sound a lot worse than they are i do think you dh did what he thought was best to get your dog safely out of the situation.

it is very obvious that you both care about dogs and their wellbeing

i think this thread has been very helpful for learning about different ways to deal with this so i thank you for posting