Reply to PSA: please do not approach dogs and try to pet them without consulting their owners

Forum Index » Pets

Reply to "PSA: please do not approach dogs and try to pet them without consulting their owners "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We had children literally run up and start petting our dogs while we were on a walk.  Once a tall, male jogger ran up to me and my dog - causing my dog to bristle and become wary. I finally had to stop walking them because, while our dogs are friendly, having strangers run up to them is startling and I didn't want incidents like that to create a phobia in my dogs.

I honestly don't know what people are thinking.  Always ask before you pet a dog.[/quote]

Yeah, if your dogs "bristle" at totally normal and predicatable sidewalk encounters (joggers passing you) then you did the right thing to stop walking them.

I think a big issue here that we're not discussing is the terrible trend in people "rescuing" dangerous dogs in an urban setting.  I get that you want to be an animal savior, but maybe stop and think a minute about whether it's really a good idea to put your "rescue" in a setting where there'a no way to avoid close contact with a lot of people.  [/quote]

My dog became wary when a tall man ran up to us on a walk.  My dog was being protective of me which is totally normal for her breed.  She is a sweetheart and if that jogger had just jogged past us it would not have been an issue.  But running straight up to us like that was startling to both me and my dog.  I bristled a bit too, tbh.[/quote]

Oh, and for the record, we generally walk in the street.  So children were literally running out into the street to pet my dogs.  In the incident with the male jogger, we were walking on the sidewalk along a main drag in our neighborhood, not in front of houses, when a man who was jogging in the street suddenly made a beeline towards us to pet my dog.  He was bigger and faster than me so trying to get away from him was not that easy.[/quote]

As dogs grow up, they become more protective and less tolerant.  That means that some of them are no longer safe in public.

Don't blame a jogger for having a protective dog.  It sounds like you've adjusted.  But if you really need to blame someone, then blame your dog.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics