Reacting to certain dogs

[emma123456]

I have a beautiful 2 year old neutered male Labrador. He's a lovely dog, good with the kids, plays nicely with other dogs. However he has had run ins with two dogs. Both of these dogs have issues and have been off the lead and had a go at him. Now when we see these dogs in the field he changes, hackles go up, barks, growls and if he is off the lead ( & I haven't seen these dogs to put him back on) he will chase after them. Usually he will get so far and then come running back. Today however he ran straight over to a little black dog. It all happened before I noticed the dog was so close. All recall training went out the of the door. To be fair, when I got a hold of my dog, she said it was her dogs fault for starting it. I avoid these dogs where possible but sometimes they just appear. Any advice? My dog is scared, but he reacts aggressively. He's a big dog.

You can understand your dog getting j there first but I'd not want him to keep doing it as he may start generalising to other dogs. If it was me I'd not let him off if I couldn't be sure they weren't around and feed him treats to distract whilst getting past them (if possible). I'd also walk somewhere else if I could, I tend to avoid owners like that if possible.

I have a reactive dog , when off lead he will not approach any dog and is quite friendly with most dogs that approach him but he was attacked by a staffy earlier this year so is now not safe to be approached by any bull type dogs , so I put him on a lead if any are in the vicinity . On his lead he barks at staffy types , Huskies and any large yellow dogs but we are working on that . My main issue is that although he won't start a fight he will not back down so gets involved and as he's a 13kg terrier that generally means I have to save him and I have been bitten this year whilst doing so , although I'm not sure who bit me ,

I have a reactive one and he is much worse with dogs that stare or show aggressive body language towards him, maybe he is retaliating?

I would try and stop this straight away before it gets worse though!

Thank you for your replies. It's just so frustrating. We have beautiful woods behind our house and that's where I want to walk him. However, that's where these dogs are walked - along with lots of others who he can play/run with.

If they had a set pattern I would avoid those times. We have miles and miles of countryside where he should be able to safely run for hours. We perhaps bump into them once a week. If I see the dogs in advance I will turn around and avoid where possible.

Floralnomad - when you say you are working on the barking at dogs, what are you doing? I'm wondering if I need to be quicker with a pocket full of treats so he associates these dogs with food. although I'm not sure even food would distract him when these dogs are about.

That's what I'm doing taking out treats and getting him to sit and look at me when a dog that he will react to is nearby , its just so embarrassing when he goes off on one .