If you are walking along a road, past a house guarded by an unfriendly looking dog who seems to be paying too much attention to you, stoop over and pretend you are picking up a rock, and cock your arm as if to throw one, and make threatening eye-contact. The dog will stay back and not come within accurate rock-throwing distance, at least until you get beyond what the dog thins is its protective territory. If you can find a real rock, so much the better – you will not need to throw it. Dogs seem to have an instinctive fear of bipeds armed with stones.
This worked very well for me in South America, but I haven’t had many occasions to use it in this country.
You haven’t really been reading, have you? The OP doesn’t approach dogs, ever - her problem is with the opposite, being approached by dogs (or worse, having the owner push the dog on her).
I’m not a dog person, yet dogs seem to love me to pieces. My brother thinks I must smell like chorizo or something. One of my earliest pictures is in the playpen, doing my best to get as far as possible from Jaun, the dog my uncles had at the time. I’m sure he was a nice doggie… he was also twice my height! I know how to read doggy body language so I know which dogs are being friendly and which not, but as Voyager said, it is not self-evident which gestures are “hello, nice human! May I smell you?”, which are “oh hello can I push you to the floor and lick your face?” and which are “get away you!”
I find the two bolded statements to be contradictory. As I was bitten by the neighbor’s dog in my own backyard as a child, I find the first one to be wrong. Dogs can be trained to be perfectly safe. They can also be trained, or MIS-trained, to be dangerously violent.
I was reffering to the fluffy ones the OP referred to in the elevator; yes I should have said so in my post. My access time to the Board has been sporadic & limited of late. Deadlines and timed interactions are anathema to a good post.
Correction: dogs can be perfectly safe & most dogs are, given positive circumstances.
Generally accepted good advice from prior dog threads has always been don’t interact w/o the owner’s permission or when the owner isn’t present.
Getting over fear of dogs can rely a great deal on opportunities to interact in a positive situation with a dog well trained by a good owner (and in that owner’s presence). The person with the phobia, the dog, and the owner must
all feel positive, safe, and not threatened.
It will take a lot of practice and effort, but if a person with a phobia is willing to try & keep trying, a phobia can be beaten.
Or the dog-walker is just plain clueless that their dog is approaching someone who is becoming more & more uneasy as the dog gets closer.
My SO wasn’t afraid of dogs until the St. Bernard/Beagle mix we took in turned on us. Animal Control took the dog and we were treated in the ER, her for a single puncture wound on one leg and me minor abrasions for my thumbs. It’s been about five years since then and small dogs don’t bother her much now but large ones, especially loud large ones, still freak her out.
During a time when any dog caused her to freak out if it got too close, one of those clueless idjits passed us while we were waiting for a bus. She backed up as far as she could without actually going in the brambles, urging the idjit to reign in his medium-sized mutt. Idjit continued walking blissfully along and she started yelling at him for being so clueless. Idjit was well into the next block when he turned around, came back, and tried to force the mutt on her, exchanging words the whole time. Finally, idjit says, “You’re both crazy!” I’m like, “Yeah. What was your first clue?” With that, the idjit and his mutt went on their merry way.
She’s seen the idjit and his mutt at least once since then and he still tried to force it on her. She simlply kept crossing the street until he lost interest.
A friend of mine who walks a lot had a pack of small dogs come out and barkbarkthreatenbark… So she came home and thought (something I highly recomend)… The next time she carried a small amount of dry cat food … when the dogs came raceing out she scattered a bit of the food behind her and kept on walking with no reaction… Suddenly she wasn’t a threat,she was the the person who had yummies! She’s had no problems since…
:eek: I sure hope the Beagle was the father in that pairing!
So, a guy walks past you walking a dog, he doesn’t stop at the bus stop with you but just continues walking, and when he’s a block away she is yelling at him that his dog is too close.
Ok, now here’s the quote. I’m going to change the colors to demonstrate a point only.
I read the sentence in black as one event. I read the sentence in red as potentially different events at different points in time. I know that you may read it one way, but I read it the other. Either of us could be right and I’m not slamming the OP or demanding clarification. I’m explaining my POV as I wrote this and I’d like that small nit-pick dropped based upon this. Thanks!
At that point, she was yelling that he’s a clueless idjit. Yelling that the dog was too close was limited to when the dog really was too close for her comfort and after asking nicely that the he heel the mutt.
I’m afraid of all animals. I attribute my continued life to a constant sense of fear and paranoia. I don’t feel this is a problem; I draw an odd feeling of satisfaction out of it.
I’ve been afraid of dogs as far back as I can remember. My mom told me when I was under a year old a dog knocked me down and got in my face and scared me witless, so I guess it stems from that. I always avoided dogs after that. When I was 8 or so I was attacked on the way to school by 2 Dobermans who had been trained as guard dogs. I managed not to get bitten but they ripped the back of my dress as I climbed a tree.
When I was 12 I made friends with a daschund, and when puppies became available, my mom bought me one. Having that dog friend helped a lot but I still got panicky when dogs barked or acted hostile. I’ve owned a few dogs since then and have gotten along well with them but I’m still VERY WARY of other people’s dogs.
I used to be really afraid of dogs, and during this period, which was most of my life up to the age of 20-something, dogs had a way of messing with me. I would have a friend with a dog who was perfectly friendly, and that dog would growl at me, causing me to be afraid, causing the dog to growl or bark even more. Dogs seemed to go out of their way to scare me. I did manage to befriend some dogs if I was around them for awhile–my grandmother’s dog, a friend’s collie. But this was counterbalanced by another friend who had a vicious Chow Chow mix who barked and growled at everyone and who was kept on a chain in their garage (I don’t know why they didn’t get rid of that dog*) and a literal ankle-biting dachshund.
But then one day some friends from NY showed up with their big black dog to stay at my place for three weeks. I had said they could stay with me because I had benefited from their hospitality when I was in NYC, but I hadn’t counted on the dog. And he was such a sweety that he redeemed dogs for me. Shortly after that I got one that some friends were going to send to the shelter–she was 8 years old, overweight, and not even spayed, and I figured that was a death sentence and I liked her. Since then I have always had dogs. I’m still cautious about unknown dogs, for the most part. On the other hand when I see loose, lost dogs running around my neighborhood, I’m not afraid to go up to them and check their tags. If they are going to bite me they’ll warn me–by growling and snarling–and I will back off.
*This dog was an actual menace. He had bitten everybody in the family “when he was in a bad mood” and bit any visitors he had a chance to bite, and he barked constantly. They always had an excuse for him. Unfortunately he was very cute and fluffy and looked friendly. What a psychopath.
