Should you 'mirror' other owners?

[WinkyWinkola]

I walk my dog (black lab) in a field. Occasionally there are other dogs there. He likes to greet the other dogs and run with them. If they aren't interested he leaves them alone.

Today he ran up ti golden retriever on a lead. I got told off by the owner because her dog was on a lead(had been attacked before) and was nervous so my dog should be on a lead.

Is this right? My dog bounced up to hers, hers lunges and growled and my dog runs back to me and goes back again and then leaves her dog alone to come with me.

Apparently dog owners mirror others.

Agreed, Leonard.

I used divert and reward with Devil Dog as I had never heard of BAT back then either, however I did inadvertently use a form of BAT with him, if he was too focused upon trying to kill the approaching dog to be diverted we would turn and walk away and then he'd be rewarded the instant he gave his full attention to me and stopped trying to turn around to see what the now-behind-him dog was up to and whether it fancied being lunch.

BAT is much quicker, but would be much easier if people would just call their sodding dogs back when they see an on lead dog coming. Off lead dogs are so much harder for whippy to deal with, we don't get as close to them before she freezes, sniffs the floor and then I click and turn away before she gets the chance to do her whole crouchy-stalky thingy which is the lead-up to her frothy dog act.

Off lead, she will curve around and come up behind a strange dog and greet, once she's done that she's fine to play. She's happy for other dogs to arch around to her too, so long as she's off lead and knows she can run if she needs to.

Moose
Have a look back at some of the previous posts and then tell me again about leg pulling.
The naughty step is funny, that's why I said it. Some of the other posts have been pretty vile.
I'm off now.

To be fair though - there's a massive difference between I don't see why I should have to put my dog on a lead because other dogs are badly behaved and I ask the owner and call my dog back if I need to.

The first makes it sound like you let your dog run up to other dogs no matter what and the second is no different at all to what anybody with an on lead dog would ask for.