I hear you. Our previous dog was a rescue, and was quite reactive to other dogs (for unknown reasons in her past). We worked very hard with her, and with a trainer, but she was never off leash, and dog parks were simply a no-go area for us.
But… It happened frequently that we were in an area that was clearly posted MANDATORY LEASH, and an off leash dog would come bounding up. We’d hold our girl close, giving commands to “leave”, and the owner would call from a distance “Oh, he’s friendly! Oh, he wants to play!”. We’d tell them “Please call your dog, ours does not want to play”, and they would frequently be unable to call them, or control them. Meanwhile, our dog is getting increasingly anxious, not wanting Fluffy The Idiot Dog to bounce on her head or lick her face.
It was all I could do to yell “Put your fucking dog on a leash in this LEASH MANDATORY AREA!”
I’ve been taking our Caribbean rescue, Simi, to a local trail for walks. Dogs on the trail have to be leashed, which is good. When I’m walking Simi I’m trying to teach him to keep his attention on me when dogs/bikes/people walk by.
When I see someone walking toward me, I say “stop” and we stop. I say sit and he sits. I say wait and he waits looking at me the entire time. After the person passes by, I tell him he’s good and give him a treat.
He is excellent with people, be they walking or on bikes. I’m still working on him ignoring other dogs, which is rough because many of the dogs we encounter are reactive, freaking out as we pass each other. But, he is 80% improved from when we first started.
My point here is that all the people on the trail with reactive dogs should be doing something like what I’m doing, but they are clueless.
My nine month old lab mix (male, 50 pounds-ish) got sexually dominated by a husky at a dog park last year. I’m grabbing this thing by the throat/collar trying to separate it from my poor submissive pup, who was flat on his back, and who looked very confused by the whole thing. I’m glad this husky didn’t bite my face as it was probably only 9 inches from his mouth. The owner just stood there and watched me struggle to get his fully-erect dog off of mine.
I finally yelled at the guy to get his dog off of mine which he did. No apology, just a “He’s not gay, guess he just really likes your dog, hyuk hyuk.” I said something, but from my adrenaline rush i don’t remember what it was. Before i walked away the guy said back to me, “Your dog didn’t seemed to mind it.”
I find that reactive dog owners in my area are pretty good. It’s the clueless ones who let their idiot dog with no recall run up to others in a leash only area that are clueless (see my rant above)
In my rich fantasy world, a larger, burly man would have then come up to this guy, pushed him to the ground and mounted him while fully (and largely) erect, while yelling out “comeon man, relax - you seem to be enjoying it!”
We stopped going to dog parks at least a decade ago, because of the irresponsible owners who failed to control - or even pay attention to - their dogs. IIRC, the last time I went was when some yahoo brought 2 intact Ridgebacks who did NOT play well with others.
I recently had an unpleasant experience in someone’s backyard. They had 2 rescue greyhounds. We have a 38# golden doodle. The guy and I took the dogs for a very pleasant long walk. As we got to their house and were entering the yard, we took off the leashes. The guy did not tell me to keep my dog leashed or anything, and he did not keep his leashed. My dog took off running, causing one greyhound to chase and tackle him. In my ignorance, I perceived that as play. But when my guy got tackled, he started squealing, which turned the switch and put the other greyhound into major predator mode. Fortunately, my guy did not get injured, but a really ugly situation I was entirely unprepared for.
(The next day, the owner had the greyhounds kenneled for a wedding. While kenneled the one. greyhound mauled the other, leading them to get rid of it. Dogs are unpredictable, and irresponsible dog owners are horrible.)
I hate little happy dogs and owners who let them off leash, but I personally cannot imagine the appeal to owning such a dog.
I stopped taking Sammy to the dog park after I’d lost count of the number of times I’d heard “Oh, my God. He’s NEVER done THAT before” (only once was Sammy the victim (two ear piercings), but I heard the same thing over and over from no end of owners concerning no end of dogs that had become aggressive and violent with no obvious provocation).
WOW, that dog definitely shouldn’t have been off leash.
And as if you didn’t have to worry about untrained dogs at the dog park, what about people who let their kids treat the dog park like a playground? >.<
Oh man, kids in the off leash dog park is scary AF–some clueless wonders turned loose their barely walking toddler in a park chock full of racing huskies and pitbulls and proceeded to pay zero attention to where the kid was for a really long time. Seeing the handwriting on the wall I took my hellions down to the far end of the park so they wouldn’t be part of the scrum that would inevitably crash into that kid. Sure enough, four or five dogs running and chasing each other smacked right into that kid and knocked him down real good and the parents got all pissy, then the dog owners suggested that maybe they should take the kid over to the playground which is specifically intended for small humans. They were damned lucky the kid didn’t get bit.
I had a favorite dog park where there used to be a very chill group of humans with dogs that regularly played together–everyone picked up after their dogs and brought chairs and bowls for the dogs to drink from. Unfortunately a bunch of asshole pitbull owners discovered the park and turned it into freaking Doggy Thunderdome so I don’t take my guys there any more. I didn’t pay for an AKC registered puppy to have some dog pit reject kill him for fun. Big nope here. My dogs do love playing with others and are super chill at the dog park but unfortunately there are those who make it impossible for us to have nice things.
I both love and detest all the stories from everyone. Just got back from game night, and Thorin is more or less back to his old terrorist self. Will definitely have to keep an eye on him next time we go to the park, just to make sure he doesn’t become reactive.
And as I wasn’t exactly in the best head space last night, I didn’t give my usual warning. When dogs are fighting, or even just one attacking another, don’t reach for the collar. There’s teeth on that end. I fully expected to get bitten in my internal best case scenario. Best response is to grab one or both back legs of a dog, and pull them while spinning. Not twirling them like a ballerina, but keep them stepping sideways. It keeps said angry dog from turning around at you (they’ll fall over), and forces them to look away from the other dog, which usually helps to calm them down. It works best when there’s a person for each dog. And I hate to say it, but choking a dog out with their collar also works. And it’s fucked up and I guarantee I’d cry, but they can’t hold on to something when they’re unconscious. Tasers and mace are also very handy if you’re less confident you can manhandle a dog.
I don’t know if this happened to anyone else, but I got a “security violation” message from my phone’s browser when I clicked the link for the dog rescue in the bottom of your post.
ETA: I took a screenshot of the message I received.
That can happen with legitimate websites run by people who aren’t expert at running websites. Typically, it means either it’s http (rather than https) or they let their security certificate expire.