I’m not sure. I think you could probably disarm her with peanut butter, a steak, a burger, chicken, or a squeaky toy. Unless I was right there and scared. She might sense my fear and go into protective mode and gnaw off a limb or two for lunch.
Recently, I was walking her and this sketchy guy walked up to me for a conversation. I wasn’t afraid, but I didn’t like the line of questioning. I was doing some verbal fu to get out of the situation when my dog chose that precise moment to give the dude a snarling growl. Boom, conversation is over, we’ll be walking along now, thankyouverymuch. I think she sensed that I was getting uncomfortable and let the dude know she wasn’t going to tolerate any threat toward her leader. I walked her out of earshot and gave her a “good girl!”
My cats aren’t really a threat to anyone. Unless that person has ham, or tuna juice, or canned cat food. Then that person will be the target of kitty hollering and mugging.
My parents used to have three Maltese. These little dogs have been bred to be companion animals for ages, and are excellent alarm dogs. However, they don’t really guard, except in play. Maltese are convinced that every stranger is just a friend they haven’t met yet, and will yip excitedly when someone shows up.
I have never been much of a dog person, and they used to give me a lot of trouble when I went jogging (mostly from behind fences, but some of them looked like they wanted to rip my throat out).
Then one day I was in the supermarket and happened to walk by some dog biscuits on sale for like a couple bucks for a big bag full, and thought, why not try them?
Worked like a charm. Most of the dogs on my route now look really hurt if I don’t stop and pet them. And these are really cheap dog biscuits, not tasty meat.
I remember one incident in particular. I had just finished a hard workout at the track, and was walking home to cool down, so I looked really grungy, wearing old torn sweats and dripping wet. A family I didn’t know was just exiting a van in their driveway, and a HUGE dog I didn’t know, like one of those castle mastiffs, saw me coming and approached me before the family noticed me. I stopped and reached into my pocket. I could have been going for a gun, or mace, or whatever, but the dog somehow seemed to know (maybe he smelled it, but if he did, it was over my tangy BO) that I was going for a cookie, and he just sat in front of me and smiled, like he had known me forever. The family had by then noticed me and maybe feared for my life, and frantically called him back, but he ignored them, happily accepted the treat, and begged for more.
I’d guess the treats work on most dogs who haven’t been deliberately trained to be hostile to strangers. Obviously that’s unscientific enough that I wouldn’t want to stake my life on it, but if you happened to be dealing with burglars who plan ahead, i.e. scope out targets ahead of time and take a day or two to make friends with the dogs before they hit a house, they could probably remove just about all risk of dog attack.
Just an FYI, as I know you certainly mean no harm. But you could really tick off a dog owner by feeding their dog without permission. They may mistake your handouts as you trying to harm their dogs, or the dogs may just be on a restrictive diet for any number of reasons (ranging from health concerns to trying to avoid horrible doggie diarrhea), and those cheap treats are pretty far down the “healthy things for dogs” scale (they give my dogs pretty terrible gas).
BUT, I think it’s a great idea to have on hand for those situations you think you may need a way to diffuse a potentially aggressive dog, stomach ailments be damned.
Not to mention you’re probably really going to mess with anyone that’s trying to train their dog not to approach random strangers walking down the block.
Fuck 'em. These are the same owners who allow their dogs to growl and snarl at anybody who has the temerity to use the sidewalk by their house. One of these nice families has a couple of large dobermans who start barking when somebody is still a block away, and they don’t stop barking until they are a block away in the other direction, and they are not friendly barks. And they are not tied, they are just behind a picket fence that isn’t even as tall as the dogs. Even I could jump it.
They can’t possibly be unaware that kids walking to school swing out into the street to avoid their dogs, and that their neighbors are treated to the sound of barking dogs all day long. But they don’t care.
I don’t go into people’s yards. I can’t give a treat to a dog unless he is either completely loose, or loose behind a fence short enough for him to put his head over. In either case, if he sees a stranger running past his house, his chase instinct is likely to be triggered, and I am not going to worry about ticking off assholes who think a dog owner’s responsibility begins and ends with giving them enough food that they don’t starve, and otherwise just let them run around loose, with no training or even much companionship.
I have nothing against the dogs; they are just being dogs. I don’t give a rat’s ass about ticking off the owners.
But they don’t jump it, right? So other than barking at you, these dogs aren’t doing anything wrong, and are adequately contained behind a fence. Sorry, but it’s a dick move to be feeding them unless you feel you’re in danger. You’re also making them more likely to approach people at the fence, and to expect something from them. IMO, you’re being extremely counter-productive to dealing with the situation.
I wouldn’t say it’s a dick move to feed dogs behind a fence, but if I saw someone doing it to my dogs, I’d nicely ask them not to do it any more. Many people just don’t realise that not everyone appreciates it.
(A dog I owned a long time ago was killed by well-meaning neighbors who thought he’d enjoy a cooked chicken carcass. He did enjoy it. Until a bone pierced his intestines and despite surgery and 3 days on IV drugs at the vet hospital, he died of systemic infection. So I had a dead dog and a massive vet bill.)
And no, I’m not the type of dog owner who leaves their dogs out in the yard to bark at every passerby! But I have three dogs and a huge fenced yard and sometimes they go outside without me. Only one of them will bark anyway, on the rare occasion someone walks by. If he does, I call him inside.
Are you kidding? The dog we had when I was growing up could have easily been ‘disarmed’ with a hamburger. If it had cheese and bacon on it, she would have gone the extra step and cheerfully shown any intruders where the jewelry and good silver were kept.
You are welcome to your opinion. In my opinion, it’s the owners who should be training the dogs, not me.
If they just want to let them run loose in the yard with no attempt at training them, I guess there’s no law against that, but they should fence them off into their back yard (and where I live, there are large back yards).
And if I am inadvertently training them to expect kindness from strangers, rather than considering them as chew toys, then I have no problem with that, either.
In my development, years back, we had a dog poisoner. Last year a nearby town had several (fatal) cases of deliberate dog-poisoning by some mean-spirited whacko tossing poisoned food to dogs. This is not an imaginary fear.
It is particularly an issue when the dogs in question are large and/or potentially regarded as scary; when they are a breed with an unjustified reputation (pit bulls, Dobermans, German Shepherds, Chows, Rottweilers) or any dog someone might mistake for one of those breeds; black dogs (for some reason people fear black animals); or when they are small breeds perceived as yappy, irritating, and therefore expendable. As you can see, that list covers just about everything except Golden Retreivers.
Our dogs have had the “diarrhea from bad food” issue in the past. They’re also pit bulls, and they live in a place where dogs were poisoned years back. You’d better believe we don’t let anyone feed them crap.
We also don’t leave them alone outside ever, for any reason. Perhaps we’re unusual in that. I worry when other people leave their dogs out unsupervised for long periods of time. But still, it seems inappropriate to be so angry at people for having dogs in their yard. If the dogs get loose and come after people, sure.
Returning to the topic: as I mentioned above, ours are pit bulls (well, one is a mix) and thus famously friendly to strangers. All an intruder would need to do is knock in order to find them competing for his adoration – no food is necessary. Not sure what the response would be if someone barged in angrily, though – Sadie has on occasion been protective of my wife.
Giving them treats IS training them. If you give them treats (read: rewarding them) when they bark at you as you walk by do you want to take a guess at what they’ll do the next time someone walks by?
So, if it’s the owners who should be training the dogs, why are you taking on that responsibility, and doing a really bad job of it?
You said in your first statement “Most of the dogs on my route now look really hurt if I don’t stop and pet them” so you must realize that the dogs come to learn what to expect from you, but you might not realize that what they do immediately before they get a reaction from you (be it a pat on the head or a treat from you), in their mind, is why they are getting the reward. So even though in your opinion you’re just giving the dog a treat to shut it up, in their mind they’re being rewarded for barking at you.
I think you misunderstand me - I’m not suggesting you train the dogs. I’m suggesting the dogs are already trained (as exhibited by the fact that they don’t jump over the fence). What you are currently doing IS training the dogs (and giving them diarrhea), and I’m suggesting you stop.
You’re not training them to expect kindness from strangers - you’re training them to expect ANYthing from strangers. For an extreme example, look at the problem park rangers face when people feed wild animals from their cars.
If your dogs are out in the front yard getting agressive towards strangers not doing anything abnormal as they pass by…well too bad so sad that someone is giving them treats to shut them the hell up and calm them down. Actually GET em trained before you put them in the front yard or move them to the back yard. And that goes double if the front yard has a fence they could easily jump if they choose to do so. I hate dog owners (and I is one). They are often worse than clueless parents with bad children. And more easily offended.
While I’m sure plenty of dogs running loose in yards are untrained, just because a dog is alone in a back yard and barks at passersby doesn’t mean it’s untrained, neglected, or has owners that don’t care. My dogs might be in the yard without me being with them (ie to go potty at 6 am when we all get up) but they’re never left out when nobody is home. And they are well-trained and socialized. In fact the noisiest one will be a therapy dog in March, and she has several working titles. (The Lab has had the least level of formal training, but he never ever barks and is a laid-back goof-ball, go figure.)
I know lots and lots of extremely well-trained dogs, and many of them are let out into yards, where they will - as dogs do - sometimes bark and run the fence. I think you’re making some rather wild assumptions. Obviously a dog that is chained, or in a yard 24/7 and bored out of its skull, is most likely untrained and neglected. But just a: being in a yard unattended while you walk by and b: barking at you doesn’t necessarily mean that c: it is untrained.
Also, dogs that “act like they’re going to eat someone” while inside a yard are quite likely to happily accept any and all visitors. They’re having fun, or telling the world someone is walking by, or frustrated because there’s a barrier between them and someone who might pay them some attention.
There’s also barrier aggression in otherwise perfectly well-behaved dogs. Unless these dogs are ACTUALLY attacking someone (and brocks has given zero indication that that’s the case), you should just leave them the fuck alone.
