I’ve been in several situations where dogs come out of no where acting like they wanted a piece of me and my dog or dogs.
One morning I was walking at a park and had one of my most dominant highly aggressive females with me. When all of a sudden a pack of five or six dogs (lead by a pit bull) came out of no where. Since I am not one to get excited, I just reeled (retractable leash) my dog in close to me and kept walking. The dogs were baring their teeth and barking their fool heads off as they surrounded us.
I think by keeping calm, my dog went on my reactions and did not see the other dogs as a threat. I did not do any yelling or talking, just kept walking for a few paces. Then when I assessed the body language of the dogs around me, I slowly let out the retractable leash and let the dogs all sniff each other. They followed us through our entire walk and when we went to rest at a picnic table, all of them laid down close to where we sat.
A couple days later when I was walking another one of my Rotts, I saw those same pack of dogs surrounding and trying to charge an older man with some kind of poodle looking thing. He was scared and yelling. I walked over to where they were knowing quite well those dogs would be distracted by my dog and come running my way. Sure enough they did, but this allowed the shaking man and his poodle dog to get away.
All the dogs came charging my way, but I used the same behavior as I did the previous day when encountered by these dogs and just kept walking while controlling my dog, then released the retractable and let the dogs do their sniffing.
Animal control had been called on these dogs for quite some time, but so far they were not successful in capturing them till months later.
My theory and what seems to work for me is to stay calm in these type situations, but stay alert and in control. I have had several different situations similar to this one when out walking my dogs, but I use the same calm behavior and so far have been able to defuse the situation.
Another time when I was out walking at the park, I had my dominant female again with me and a huge black dog came out between some bushes and snarled and salivated at my dog and me. I used the same behavior, but when I tried to retract the retractable leash, my dog’s collar broke. When my dog realized this, she went after the dog, which took the other dog off guard and my dog chased that dog a few yards and made the dog jump accidentally in the creek. My dog stood her ground and kept that dog in the creek until I called her back to me……now I thought that was as funny as hell and I had a good laugh that day.
I praised my dog for her recall abilities.
