Dogs at Large: What to do When Approached by Loose Dogs

by Linnea on 09/16/13

Today was a rough day at work.  Dog-walking is not all sunshine and daffodils, and today was an excellent reminder of that.  The most important thing to me is keeping my clients pets safe while in my care which is why I'm a bit more 'heavily-equipped' than the average dog walker.  Although sometimes you're simply caught off-guard, having a great time with your walking buddy on a street you walk on all the time (you quickly learn what houses have the 'yard dogs', and thus decide your walking path) and a strange dog comes running at you out of nowhere...

In today's case, it was 3 dogs on 2 separate occasions!!  During the first walk, I was with my buddy, a young pitbull mix who just loves everyone but is not so fond of other dogs his size (or larger).  We were just 5 minutes into our walk, on our normal path when 2 large scruffy black dogs come running at us from a front yard.  I have never seen these dogs before so I'm guessing they might have just been resting in the shade of a tree.  My little buddy got mad ... real mad that these rude dogs were charging him and his favorite dog walker.  After having quite a bit of on-the-job experience with this, my first instinct was to use my 'mom-voice' and yell "NO!!" at them in a deep LOUD voice.  EVERY dog knows the word 'no' and it stopped them dead in their tracks no less than 20 feet from us.  I tried to get my little buddy behind me as much as possible (not easy with a strong pittie mix) and kept him as close as possible on the leash.  The dogs were clearly confused and would walk away and then come back to us, trying to get close and again I yelled 'NO!!"  I probably yelled 8 times or so and unfortunately only one person came out of their house see what the commotion was.  I had been standing in place with my buddy until I decided the best course of action was to slowly turn around in the direction we had come from.  The 2 dogs had decided they had enough of being yelled at and went on their way, but I still kept looking over my shoulder to make sure they didn't start coming our way again.

During another walk today, I was walking two dogs in a different neighborhood and a yappy pug came running out into the street to defend 'his territory' luckily the pug didn't mean much business and my 2 walking buddies really didn't care, and everyone went on their merry way.

Normally when I see a loose dog, I want to try to get them to come to me, leash them if I have one handy - I almost always do, and looks for ID tags.  But when I have a client's dog(s) with me, their safety comes first which is why I 'saddle-up' when I walk dogs.

Depending on the season, I wear 1 of 2 waist packs I have.  In the packs, I can carry my cell phone, poop bags, treats and citronella spray.  I have heard stories of people throwing treats at the charging dog in order to hopefully distract them - if they've been loose long enough, they might just be hungry enough to stop for a snack.  The citronella spray is a deterrent and can be found in most pet-supply stores.   I hear of many people carrying pepper spray but I also hear that pepper spray can kill a dog, so in a perfect world you can carry both sprays - one for annoying loose dogs and another for a loose dog that wants to kill you.

While charging dogs is a scary situation, if you try to flee from them, it might turn on their desire to chase. And if the dogs end up getting in a scuffle, be prepared to DROP the leash if needed.  While living on my own when I was single, I had just stepped outside my apartment with my 2 tiny dogs and an off-leash golden retriever charged us and attacked my dogs while we were still on our doorstep.  At that time I had retractable leashes (which I no longer use, for ANY walker) and my little dogs started getting their leashes wrapped around my legs trying to escape our attacker.  The leash can also get wrapped around their own legs, limiting their ability to defend themselves from the attacker.  

So in conclusion, you can never predict these things but you can be as prepared as possible.  Be prepared, be alert and be diligent friends!