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no, that is good advice if you don't have a dog with you. if you have a dog with you, the aggressive dog is going to be focusing on your dog, not you. you have to step in between and very forcefully demand GO HOME! in your sternest, most powerful voice. say it like you just naturally expect that the dog will turn tail and leave, and it will.

Alice, thanks for the clarification on that, I couldn't figure it out! I think part of my problem is that I wait to see if there IS a problem (aggressive dog?) before I react... most times on trails you don't see people ahead of time by much, you just come right up on them. I would really rather AVOID confrontation with dog and owner if possible and will try to just step between the dog and my dog, and continue walking. But many times, their dogs are so fast, they are on top of us before I have time to think about it... hence wanting to develop a game plan <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Yep, 4 steps:

A. First, try to walk confidently past the loose dog & ignore it...

B. If A doesn't work, scare the loose dog out of its wits...

C. If neither A nor B works, discharge your stun-baton into the air so the SOUND will frighten the rank dog away...

D. But if even THAT doesn't work, zap the rank dog with your bat until it collapses & then get the hell outta Dodge (the attacker will recover after you're long gone, with no ill-effects, so don't hesitate or feel guilty)!

Hayley I could've written that post... sounds just like my experiences, except I seem to bring out the obnoxious in people. The dog owner would've yelled at me! <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> But I have no stun baton or pepper foam here! I haven't heard of the batons before, that definitely looks less worrisome to me than pepper spray which might disperse in the air or I might have the nozzle turned the wrong way in a heated moment. These encounters tend to happen *fast*, which is part of why they are hard to deal with. I *love* hiking in the woods and we are blessed with some amazing, beautiful trails here in Montgomery County, but it is like no-mans land out there... there is no park police presence (if they could patrol once a week... say on Saturdays!... it would make a HUGE difference!), and really no recourse if anything happens. You can call park police but by the time they get there, the offender will be long gone anyways, so what's the point? You can't follow a dangerous off-leash dog!

I might order one of those batons and start announcing loudly that I am pregnant and if your strange dog gets close enough, he will get zapped, so please get him! Maybe enough people will run into the crazy pregnant lady that they will realize they cannot protect their dogs while off-leash and start leashing them. But that is probably wishful thinking, right?

ha! i just had a great idea! spray any roaming unleashed dogs with orange day-glo paint on their sides so as to easily identify them as scofflaw dogs. if the dog catchers don't get them, at least you will have caused a major annoyance to their owners. <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

You might consider shooting the dog with a few rounds from a paintball gun.

It's non-lethal and the mess it leaves for the irresponsible owner to clean up might drive the point home.

I wanted to add my experience and how Ed's article helped me. I have a dog aggressive dalmatian and a jack russell terrier who isn't dog aggressive, but has at one time shown aggression when another dog FIRST approached us aggressively. Before I didn't really know how to handle that kind of situation, but then I found Ed's articles. Well, a couple of weeks ago while my wife and I were out on our nightly walk with the dogs we were charged by a very aggressive lab. The dog ran up growling, hackles up and teeth showing and went straight for the dalmatian. It didn't bite, but jumped on her and was standing over her growling and barking. I handed my wife the leash that I had (JRT's) and got in between the dog and mine and told my wife to keep walking while I stayed in between them. My dog aggressive dalmatian and egotistical JRT stayed very calm for the situation. I think it was because the leader stepped in and handled it. I was so suprised that they acted as calm as they did. We took our dogs home and I went back and told the owners what happened and they said "Fester wouldn't hurt a flea, I'm sorry". Next time I'll call animal control and I now carry a walking stick and pepper spray. The next week the PD put a article in the paper reminding people about the local leash laws. Wonder why that happened?

What a great suggestion!! Sending a dog back with paint all over it could possibly be a learning experience for some of these morons with IQ's lower than the speed limit, who let their dogs run loose. I also like the .38 buckshot mentioned above. Here in Utah we can shoot loose, threatening dogs-- although that would be drastic (but satisfying, I'm sorry to say). Thankfully, we also have sensible "concealed carry permit" laws.

I like the paintball idea too. Even a dog would be startled by a nice thwack of a paintball or three. Maybe enough to run away.

Ruth, I now officially envy you guys out West. We have very strict gun laws, which of course doesn't prohibit all the lovely, brilliant thugs and murderers in Baltimore and DC from getting their killer mitts on guns. The only folks here to get concealed carry permits are jewelers, bankers, execs from big companies and politicos w/insider contacts at the State Police level. Regular people are on their own - meaning, only the baddest of the bad get to conceal & carry w/out a permit, which are harder to get than finding hen's teeth.

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....... I now officially envy you guys out West. We have very strict gun laws, which of course doesn't prohibit all the lovely, brilliant thugs and murderers in Baltimore and DC from getting their killer mitts on guns. The only folks here to get concealed carry permits are jewelers, bankers, execs from big companies and politicos w/insider contacts at the State Police level. Regular people are on their own - meaning, only the baddest of the bad get to conceal & carry w/out a permit, which are harder to get than finding hen's teeth.

Actually, I believe that the loosest of all the states (insofar as concealed carry laws go) is Vermont, and I believe that the tightest is Wisconsin (and then Hawaii). I think too that Florida is known as an easy state in which to get a permit.

But I have indeed read that Maryland is one of the most restrictive, and that even death threats have been insufficient in some instances to get a permit there. <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif" alt="" />

Reading about the individual states' laws (and the actual instance of permits issued), it doesn't look like there's really much geographical clumping.