Big Dog vs. Small Dog

Person_one

captainhindsight wrote: »

perhaps a small yappy dog would suffice... i know of one! lol

Isn't it hilarious to joke about hurting other people's beloved pets! :T

adouglasmhor

Person_one wrote: »

Still not remotely acceptable.

What are you going to do to prevent your dog picking up other dogs in future? You can't count on every other owner being perfect, you have to be just as prepared for the ones that aren't.

They don't have to do anything. I would rather a dog picked up or bowled over another to assert dominace than my dog was muzzled and then got injured by some spoilt prima donna's out of control fur baby.

adouglasmhor

Person_one wrote: »

Isn't it hilarious to joke about hurting other people's beloved pets! :T

I couldn't care less, maybe they should learn to keep their mutts under control. If they really loved them they would not put them at risk, their pet, their responsibilty not mine.

wannabe_credit_free

I have 3 small dogs, Shih Tzu, Lhasa apso and Chihuahua. Any yappiness has been trained out of them. If I had one off lead and she approached any other dog on or off lead to attack them. Then I would consider myself at fault, not the other dog owner.

If people kept their dogs under control, these situations would not arise. All dog owners could live in relative harmony, lol

Person_one

adouglasmhor wrote: »

I couldn't care less, maybe they should learn to keep their mutts under control. If they really loved them they would not put them at risk, their pet, their responsibilty not mine.

Well isn't that just delightful.

adouglasmhor

Person_one wrote: »

Knocked over and picked up in teeth are two very different things. If the dog went straight from walking away calmly to grabbing the other, I'd be very concerned. A growl, a warning snap, would be much more expected and normal, did that happen?

The dog that attacked my greyhound, first barked at it from a distance then when my dog barked back, it ran up and tried to bite his legs. My dog butted it off it's feet and growled over it - at which point it tailtucked and whined then ran back to it's owner.
The owner did not look at me or atempt to apologise, I will be having a word with the throbber if I ever see him and I have someone else to hold my dogs or am on my own without them.

My dogs are always on the lead unless in a secure paddock or fenced garden. The one that was attacked has a yellow collar witht the word nervous on it in large print as he is skittish around other dogs, having been attacked before.

adouglasmhor

Person_one wrote: »

Well isn't that just delightful.

No just realistic. life is too short to go around pandering to selfish stupid people.

skivenov

Well done to the OP for having such a relaxed and restrained dog.

The thing people don't realise is that big dogs can be very timid creatures when confronted with other dogs, regardless of how little they are.

gettingready

Person_one wrote: »

Training not an option?

Train what?

Your dog to be calm and not react when it is attacked by another dog?

What planet are you from?

krlyr

Person_one wrote: »

Yes, it has. Your complete disregard for the potential harm your dog could have done is very concerning.

There is lots of advice out there on how to train your dog to ignore others and calmly walk past even when they're noisy and close. Kylyr has worked hard with her reactive dog, maybe she could help, or maybe you could talk to a professional trainer.

If I were you, and my dog had done what your dog has done, the one thing I wouldn't be doing was acting as though it wasn't a problem and there was no fault on my part. I'd be mortified and desperate to avoid it happening again. I don't want an injury or worse on my conscience.

The fact that the other dogs owner was also at fault and needs to work on a better recall before letting her dog off lead is irrelevant really. We can't control how well other people train their dogs, sadly, only our own.

There's reactive and there's reacting. My fear-reactive dogs react inappropriately to other dogs. Lunging and barking at a dog across a field, like they have done in the past, is not proportionate to the incident. They're not under immediate threat, they just feel so because they are irrationally fearful. Therefore, knowing their reaction to another dog could be disproportionate to the situation, I ensure I have more control over them in the event they may one day react defensively (so far it's not been an issue, they would rather retreat behind me even if said scary dog was only the size of their head!)

Most dogs would react to being attacked. Yes, it was a little dog - but Huskies aren't giant (I was quite surprised how petite the lad I saw in Battersea was, the first Husky I'd seen in-the-fur) and could still be injured if bitten by a smaller dog. I've had a Dachshund go for me with serious intention - luckily it connected with my boot instead of my skin but I do think it would have drawn blood with the intensity of its actions.

Only OP knows how the little dog was behaving, whether it was aggressively trying to attack her dog, standing nearby barking at it, or just (as suggested) trying to incite play inappropriately. Hence my first post wondering about the finer details and saying the Husky's behaviour may have been reasonable dependent on the smaller dog's actual behaviour.

I don't think I would want to train a "bog standard" (i.e. not reactive/aggressive) dog to just accept being attacked. It feels to me like suppressing growls - you're teaching the dog to not use its natural body language to help itself in an uncomfortable situation, and that may just lead to the dog reaching breaking point and snapping in a severe way. If OP teaches her dog to just put up with a dog trying to bite it, one day it might get pushed over its tolerance and the retaliation may not be nice.

Also, as an aside, one of mine has picked up a smaller dog in his mouth before, when he met my mum's pup. He didn't do anything to hurt her, it was as if he thought she was a stuffed toy, just picked her up around the belly and tried to trot off with her! Obviously it was something I became a bit more wary about - he just gets so focused on and exciteed around puppies, I don't think he realises they're dogs. So I know from that experience that a bigger dog picking up a smaller dog in its mouth isn't always an aggressive thing, and the little dog in this situation seems to come out of it unscathed too. It's not a behaviour I would want encouraged in a dog, but I don't see OP saying she would. It was just a reaction to the situation.