When out walking in the forest with Alfie who is 5 months old I let him off the lead but if I see a dog approaching then I pop him on the lead to stop him running up to dogs and people that we don't know.In the last two days we have come across two different people who had their dogs off the lead and even though their dogs(both labs would you believe)ran straight up to Alfie and were pushing him around,neither of these people called the dogs off or made any attempt to help the situation even though my son and I were struggling because of course Alfie was on the lead because I thought that that was the right thing to do. When I did puppy training classes we were told never to let our dogs run up to people and dogs while out walking. Any advice gratefully received. I hope that I have put this in the right place but am not really sure.
More people than not (where I am in the UK anyway) let their dogs run up to other dogs even dogs on lead. There isn't much point in expecting this not to happen, it does happen, all the time. The only thing you can do is work on your own dog being able to ignore an off lead dog when it runs up. This is difficult but not impossible. I found with my dog, it got a lot, lot easier to do as he got older - he was too silly when he was younger - but he is still not 100% reliable.
I've always put Harley on lead if I see another dog on lead. If they are off lead I leave her off lead but have taught her to wait until I signal that she can say hi after I've checked with the other owners. It was difficult at times when she was little as she would often go to run up to say hi, but she learned really quickly to ignore other dogs unless I said she could. I done this by making myself highly exciting jumping about, waving her ball around, running in the opposite direction etc.
@Alfie and me, unfortunately where I live I get more people than not allowing their dog to run up to mine. Which at the moment is a nightmare as she is week 9 of restricted on lead exercise and is feeling very frustrated. I too also have the rule, if we see an on lead dog she is popped on the lead and as much as possible she is not allowed to say hello on lead. Off lead she is allowed to say hello once I've checked with the owner. She is 21 months and it is one of my biggest challenges, like everything consistently and patience gets results
This is the strategy I like the best and used with my dog. If he was off leash and approaching other dogs, I'd either say "don't touch" which meant keep on walking in a heel next to me and ignore that dog, or "go play". This took a long time for him to learn and be bullet proof on the "don't touch" part, so until then I used a leash. Other people letting their dogs go whacky off leash is unfortunately just par for the course, rude (and sometimes dangerous) as it may be. All you can do is control your own reaction and manage your own dog's behaviour.
