This morning while the dogs and I were out for our morning walk we had a pretty unverving encounter with a strange dog. I live in a very rural area so there are miles of woods behind my house. Normally, we roam through the familiar paths interspersing obedience and play as we go. This morning when we were a couple of miles from the house, I noticed a strange dog approaching. However, it wasn't approaching in a normal direct fashion. It was going from tree to tree in a manner that was uncomfortably reminiscent of scene from animal kingdom just before the predator rushed its prey. Now I was alone with a 18 month golden who is field size (read small-50lbs) and my 8 1/2 year old chow cross. I called the dogs and put the golden on leash and looped the leash to a tree so he couldn't run up to the strange dog--he has no sense and expects everything to play with him. I then put Winnie (my chow cross) on a down and turned to face the dog. The strange dog was about 20 feet away and just standing staring at us. It was very large, some sort of malamute cross thing. So I picked up a rock and yelled "NO! Go Home! and threw the rock at the tree next to the dog hoping that the noise would scare it. Instead the dog started zig-zagging toward us. Meanwhile Winnie is now growling and the puppy is barking and I'm worried that all heck is about to break loose. So I'll called Winnie up to me and snapped her leash on to keep her close. Winnie may be older but I have no doubt that she would kill herself trying to protect the pack and I really didn't want this to happen. So now this dog is about 8 feet from us standing there with its hackles up, head down, teeth bared making short little rushes at us. And I'm between it and the barking puppy with Winnie on a short leash. Winnie was standing quietly watching the dog but every time the dog made a little rush I could feel her tense to meet it. And I was terrified to do anything that might fully trigger this dog--did I mention that it was really big? We stood like that for literally 10 minutes, before the dog turned and walked off. I waited for a while. Then took the dogs home as quickly as possible by another path. I've already reported the dog to animal control and apparently they've had some other complaints over the last week.

So here's my question--

1) Would pepper spray have been appropriate?
2) Should I have done anything differently?

Molly,
We have discussed the "how to protect myself and my dog on a walk from a strange dog" to death.

Please just either do a search or look through the older threads. Really, we've done this topic waaaaaay too many times ( and fairly recently, also ), so I'm going to close this thread.