Just wondering how most owners would deal with this situation. Inevitably it's going to happen to us again, I would like to be better prepared next time. In August of this year, my wife was walking Reuben around our road. A stray GS cross started terrorizing anyone with a dog. Luckily, my wife managed to get Reuben past our front gate just as the dog approached. Unfortunately it turned its attention on two lads with a staffordshire terrier. It latched onto their leashed dog and they both wrangled in the middle of a busy road. The two lads, (thinking the dog was ours), started shouting obscenities at us : and to come retrieve the dog. By the time we had got Reuben inside, grabbed a spare lead for the GS - it had disappeared up the road with the two lads pursuing it. I took a quick mobile pic after my wife had shut the gate, you can see it was a large dog. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was very aggressive. Also have to admit to being a bit wary of German Shepherds as I've only ever had bad experiences of them. I didn't think the two lads dealt with the situation very well but neither did we. We should have tried to help but it was all very on the spot and unexpected. I've come across a couple of strays since on walks, but they haven't presented any problems or been aggressive. What would YOU do, given this situation? Would you try apprehending the dog and your own dog? What about if you were in woodland away from towns or cities? Would you try to get away from it safely ? Any stories or advice? Thanks, Mark/
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? mark i think i would have heart attack.....i have been lucky i have not come across any stray dogs x
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? I think a call to the councils dog warden is the thing to do Mark , especially as the dog is aggressive , show them the photo and give details of location , with a bit of luck they will catch it and it may just be microchipped This dog should not be out alone to stray and terrorise other more responsible owners and their dogs x
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? Kate, the woman / warden in our area is useless. I don't know if it's her or constraints of local council (don't get me started). They don't seem to want to know unless someone has been injured and it becomes a police matter. They don't want to intervene in anything.
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? We found a JR once on our walk. I knew where it is from but had the two boys and Amy on lead pulling me trying to get to it. I don't know if it would have been aggressive, so wanted to stay away but didn't want to leave it either. There was no way i could have walked Amy where with it as she was been so jumping trying to play. Luckily another walker came and took it home.
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? So difficult - if there's risk of aggression I wouldn't go near it or let Riley near it. I would phone the police or warden when I encountered it. If it's unlikely to be aggressive I'd pop a spare lead in my pocket in case I encountered it again and then I'd drop it at a shelter. We've found a few dogs over the years, one went to a shelter, we called the owner of another who picked it up and the third one we knew, it's a rescue pointer cross and its owner was at the far end of the lane looking for it so we popped it on a lead and reunited it with its owner.
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? Stray was wrong term to use, sorry. I don't mean totally feral dogs that roam the streets. I think this particular dog belonged to someone but had got out. At a guess, I'd say it probably wasn't regularly exercised, trained properly or neutered. Also no collar on it.
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? I've come across several lost dogs over the years; luckily they were all friendly, and were fairly speedily reunited with their owners, who were delighted to get them back. An aggressive lost dog? Hmmm. That's tricky. You don't want to get bitten...
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? I feel terribly sorry for the dog it's probably very frightened. I would call the Police and tell them the Dog Warden is useless and won't do anything for this poor dog. The owners should be read the riot act as there will be an accident, it's just not right
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? Last year, I looked out of my window to see two GSDs sitting in my garden. I wasn't going out there - they had no collars, were the size of Shetland ponies and, like you, I've encountered some less than friendly GSDs in the past (my spaniel is terrified of them, having once been thoroughly bounced by an off-lead and out-of-control GSD when he was about 6 mths old). However, I had the advantage at that time of living within a gated army camp, so I called the guard room, who sent the dog trainers round (very handily they were on a course on camp at the time). Dogs were easily captured, but were not missing from on camp anywhere... Didn't ever find out where they came from. Only other time I've encountered a stray was in the playground of a school I was working at years back, slap bang in the middle of lunchtime. Sudden screaming children diving everywhere - staff too! - as some sort of staffieX in full studded-harness ran around in a frenzy, getting super excited by all these lovely high-pitched and squeaky new playmates. I caught it, it turned out to be the softest thing going. Dog warden was there within minutes - it's funny the difference it makes when a hysterical admin assistant calls from a school - and phoned a local family to reunite them with their lost dog, which had allegedly been stolen from them some three months before. Family appear, embrace dog, which licks them all over, dog warden says, Ahhh, you can tell how pleased it is to be back with its owners! The same admin assistant, now very brave as she had seen what a softie it was, says: 'I'm not being funny, but that is exactly how it greeted Clare.' Yep, you guessed it - turned out not to be their dog at all, wasn't ever claimed and subsequently rehomed. Oh, and then there was a neighbour's dog when we lived in the States - an American pitbull, which was usually chained or kept indoors. My 3 went out the front door to wait for the school bus at the end of the drive and reappeared instantly saying, 'Smiley's loose!' He really did have the jaws of a crocodile, that dog, and he was very much a one-man dog. Seeing as approx. ten of the neighbours' kids all caught the bus from the end of Smiley's driveway, and would all also be heading out of their houses any second, I reckoned I had no choice but to go outside and alert Teresa to the fact he had escaped. I will that time admit to being frightened, no, terrified - I ignored him completely, didn't even look in his direction, and Teresa called him in as soon as she came to her door. Her two-year-old had just leaned to open the door and had let him out... All of which rambling serves little purpose except to say - I don't think you can plan too precisely, you react according to the circumstances. I wouldn't trust a stray dog and would always err on the side of caution, except that sometimes, if small children are around, they may behave in the very manner that inflames the situation, and then you intervene if you have to. Clare
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? Yeah, I would just like to be more decisive. In this situation the dog seemed to appear from nowhere. I have never seen it before in the area, or since. Some people have jokingly advised me to carry a big hiking stick, or brolly (that's not going to happen). Others have told me to keep treats, pepper spray etc but there's no negotiating or distracting a frenzied dog. I dont even know what I was thinking, in trying to collar it. My wife just rung me in a panic and said it was locking on to any dog walking past. Reason I didn't bother with our dog warden, is that she takes 2 days just to get back and seems more concerned with chasing up fouling reports over anything. We made inquiries to her about another serious matter, she didn't even bother to get back to us.
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? [quote author=Reuben link=topic=3638.msg40916#msg40916 date=1386873940] Yeah, I would just like to be more decisive.[/quote] Ha! I could apply that to much more than stray dogs! Clare Sorry - just re-read this and had a horrible thought that it could be read as if I was referring to you. I wasn't - I meant I'm horribly indecisive in all sorts of aspects, not just canine matters! Must engage brain before keyboard...
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? I have never come across a stray loose dog. Only a local escapee in which case I grab a lead and encourage them home. I think I would have to observe from afar to assess risk but if you do round up a true stray where woild you take it? Vets for scanning? Do the police have scanners too?
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? We found a stray, called the police as it was out of hours for the dog warden. We were asked to deliver it to a shelter, they seemed to have some kind of out of hours rota. The dog warden picked the dog up from there in the morning. I guess it may vary county to county, we're in Hampshire. She was a sweet little staffie who vomited her dinner in the foorwell of my car :
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? I used to work in a petrol station on a main road, one day I was training a new person in the till and suddenly noticed some commotion on the road, there was a little terrier running around. So without thinking I just ran out of the shop and straight into the road to try and catch it. All the traffic stopped and a load of builders got out of their van to help along with some other people and we managed to catch it, I rang the number on the collar and the dog had only been rehomed the week before and had got out! So they got reunited and all was fine Also I saw on Facebook that there was a dog missing in my area and the other day wen driving to work I saw it trotting down the main road. No cars stopped to try and get it so I pulled over and was calling it and trying to get it but it jumped through a hedge into a field so I couldn't get it. I then went on Facebook to get the number of the owner and rang her and then went on my way, a mile down the road the polIce pulled me over asking why I had been parked on the verge back down the road, I explained about the dog and they said it had been causing havoc on the roads all day and which direction did it go in? I was so late for work and it was seeing a new client who I don't think quite believed my reason for being late!!
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? Oh Gosh mark,what a fright and you've all got a some concerning stories. I've met one loose dog .....it was a yellow lab so it wasn't too traumatic but it was during the worst period of Dexters tail recovery.I was just giving him little turns around the road to toilet and give him a change of scene and as usual it was 6 am in the morning.....it crossed a road and was trying to follow me and Dexter was leaping all over the place wanting to play,I was terrified he'd knock his back end.i put the yellow lab in a random garden and shut the gate and ran like the clappers down the road to get dexter home,so I could go back and see what I could do about the escapee,hadn't really formulated a plan though! 10 houses down I saw a lady coming out with a spaniel and asked her if she knew the dog....she did ,apparently he can open the gate himself wears no collar and takes himself off for a little jaunt round the neighbourhood she knew where he lived so she took her dog back in and went and took the lab home. When I told Chris the story,he was gutted......he thought we were in the running for a second FREE lab!!!As if! With an aggressive dog Mark,I'm really sorry but Dexter and my safety would be my first priority.....if the dog was in my neighbourhood I would get Dexter home before I'd see what I could do for the stray/escapee.are the RSPCA a resource for situations like this?
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? angela that made me laugh so much, putting him in some ones garden ;D ;D ;D
Re: How to handle a GSD stray on your walk? ;D ;D ;D ;D I know!i didn't know what to do Lynne! I just wanted to get him secure from wandering the streets!I knew the house though, there's an elderly beagle who lives there and is a soft as anything,I did do a little tap on the front door but it was the wrong side of 7 am so I didn't push it!i ! I was panicking because I didn't want Dex to split his tail.... Imagine opening your curtains and seeing a lab sitting ( Er probably destroying) your garden!I don't know who would be responsible for the damage...the dogs owner or me for putting it in the garden !!
