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Offset "(Emp) - a little heavy on the hyperbole."
The other week whilst out on my bike with my son I observed a woman with a massive dog.
She was quite far away but my son was adjusting his shoe lace so we were stopped. She let the dog take a huge crap about 1 metre from the path on the grass then just walked on.
We set off again and pulled up to the steaming pile of crap. The woman was 10 yards ahead. I pulled up to her with a big skid and reminded her that she appeared to have dropped something she looked around and then in her handbag. No I said that giant pile of shit back there I would like you to go and pick it up you are disgusting and so is your dog. She said I don't have any bags I told her to keep her dog at home. I pulled out my phone photographed her and told her I would call the police unless she removed the giant dump and herself from the park and take it home. She then produced a crumpled Aldi carrier bag from a coat pocket and walked back to the warm dump. We watched her pick it up and both gave her a big clap and I explained to my son why some dogs are more intelligent than their owners.
This dog "law" concerning food is bollocks. You probably have to provide an area for dogs, which a brand-new local bar/restaurant has done, but you are free to consume food in said area.
Hypoallergenic is also bollocks, these dogs just shed very little. We have a Cavachon (Cavalier/Bichon cross), and he's killing my wife more slowly than other dogs would, and much more slowly than the Ragdoll cat we had to give up.
My feedback thread is here.
I think the nasty stuff is in their saliva.
My feedback thread is here.
Bearing in mind that you seem to be aware that some of them occasionally bite children (that figure is around 0.01%, by the way, and it's usually neither the dog's fault nor the kid's)...
...can you see how this was a fantastically stupid thing to do? By racing up to her and the dog fast enough to do a "big skid" and making plenty of noise, you put that massive dog in a position where it could quite justifiably have decided that you're a threat to its owner, thus putting you and your son at significant risk of harm and and dog at significant risk of death as a result.
She might have been the asshole at the start of the incident, but you were by far the bigger asshole by the end of it.
These people leaving big piles of shit in our public places are parasites and need to be stopped.
I think my behaviour was entirely reasonable / polite and would be supported by the majority of civilised human beings on this planet.
I am surprised you are defending her to be honest. You are clearly ignorant of the law and unfazed by dog shit.
The simple fact is that any dog is capable of inflicting injuries well beyond a human's ability to stop it - because even big, docile-looking dogs are much faster than you will ever be, and their jaws are vastly stronger than anything a human could bring to the party. Your bravado aside, do you seriously believe that you could've got off your bike quicker than the dog could've clamped its jaws around your leg (or your son's, for that matter)?
I'll answer that one for you: no, you couldn't have. By which point, thanks to your showboating, your or your son would be injured, the dog's fate would be sealed, and there would still be shit on the ground. You should really be thanking your lucky stars that the dog showed restraint, and was well-trained enough to trust its owner to deal with the threat you posed.
It's that kind of idiotic attitude and behaviour which results in 90% of dog bites, and in almost all of those cases the dog is euthanised - not because of its owner and not because it was behaving out-of-character; it was just doing what dogs naturally do...protect themselves and their family.
You put everyone in the situation at risk because of your desire to be right, and your hilarious assertion that I'm ignorant of the law in defence of your behaviour only reinforces that.
For the record, I own four dogs - two of which are considered by the ignorant amongst the population to be "dangerous dogs" - so I've made it my business to be as well-versed about the law pertaining to dogs as I possibly can (short of being an actual lawyer) so I can protect my dogs against idiotic behaviour like this.
EDIT: Unless, of course, the whole "big skid" thing and the "I'm a hero!" tone of your post is just you embellishing for what you expected to be an appreciative audience. In which case...LOL.
let's see the photo you supposedly took, perhaps?
To be fair to capo4th he isn't the one with the dog. He hasn't bought into dog ownership so it's not really his responsibility to know exactly how to behave around dogs.
I like to think most dog owners who have a dog that is reasonably likely to attack someone who is being obnoxious would have the sense not to take it to a public place for the dog's own safety.
I'm sure it's frustrating for a dog (or cat, or snake) owner when people behave as if they don't know much about dogs (or cats, or snakes), but these people exist in large quantities. It's up to the pet owner to know how to deal with them in a way that doesn't get their pet killed.
That said, I don't like it when dogs jump up at me and the owner says 'he's very friendly'. Particularly when it is a pit bull or an american bulldog, they make me very apprehensive.
Out of interest @digitalscream , you mentioned that you own two dogs that are 'considered by the ignorant amongst the population to be "dangerous dogs" ' - which breeds are they and what is the attraction of having such dogs? Not a judgement at all, just interested.
Having been bitten in the past as a kid (by an Alsatian) I am still naturally wary of big dogs and wondered about why people like to have them as pets.
In a more general sense, it's the same argument I use when people refuse to control their dogs around our Coco (an Akita) - she's not dog-reactive and generally keeps her cool around threatening dogs, but the fact is that allowing their dogs to go bounding up to other canines is precisely how reactive dogs are made. It's the great (and frustrating) irony of dog ownership - people who complain about dangerous dogs being near their own are very often a big part of the problem with their own behaviour, but they're also the people least likely to change because they believe it's up to everybody else.
That's bad ownership, full-stop. If any of ours are interested in someone, we ask them if they'd mind being approached first - especially if it's Coco, because she's a big, imposing dog who can be quite intimidating to somebody who's not familiar with her or her breed.
One is Coco - she's an Akita/Akita Inu cross, who a lot of people who like to lecture others on the law believe to be banned (they're not). We've never had any reason to consider her actually dangerous; she's probably the most naturally polite dog I've ever seen when meeting both people and other dogs outside the house. If anybody tries to come in the house, she's an entirely different animal; somebody from outside the family trying to enter on their own will have their mind changed for them. Somebody coming in while accompanied by one of us will get a bit of a talking to from her, but she settles quickly and then just wants fuss and sits at their feet.
Essentially, that's exactly what you want from a big dog (and it's totally breed-appropriate).
The other is Mac, who's a husky/collie/GSD mix. Being very wolfy in appearance, people instantly assume that he's dangerous...he's a bit more of a borderline case in terms of that, though. He's a very anxious dog, owing to his history (he's a rescue who was badly abused and then wandered the streets of Leicester for a year), and his arthritis is playing him up during the cold so he's a bit more bad-tempered than usual.
He absolutely hates other dogs who aren't part of the family; he's totally dog-reactive, although we've trained him to warn first now. He's absolutely fine with humans outside the house, and he's cool with them in the house as long as they don't try to leave. That can be a bit trying, but it's up to us to work around it.
However, people often threaten to "call the dog warden" about him when I ask them to keep their off-leash dogs away when I'm trying to avoid them because he'll bite. That's happened three times in the last month.
Of the two of them, Coco has actually cured a couple of people of their fear of big dogs, one of them being my brother. We never, ever force our dogs on anyone though, and anyone visiting the house is warned that they should move on if they don't think they can deal with big dogs. The dogs live here, so they're our priority over people who don't
I get that some people are scared or have allergies and that needs to be respected too.
However fast forward 11 years, my dog was attacked by a French Mastiff (the Hooch dog for you non-dog people) out of jealousy, that dog did not like his owner stroking my dog so tried (and nearly succeeded) to kill mine. I'm 11 and half stone soaking wet, the other owner is a big guy, say 6'3 and 15 stone. Despite giving it everything we've got and a staffie fighting for its life and leaving nothing spare the three of us were fuck all compared to this mastiff, he dragged the three of us about with overwhelming strength. Something sparked in my head that I had read on the net that dogs are driven from the rear, it's their anchor point so I lifted his back legs off the ground and pulled him towards me in a bear hug, he let go of my dog leaving him with four fucking huge puncture wounds.
While I am against banning dogs because of their breed (Tosa, Argentinos, Brazillias) or what they look like (Pitbull, fucking give me strength) I do think it is incredibly unwise to own a dog stronger than its owner or whoever is walking it. Digital Scream you've already said this ginger thing Capo met could hurt him, what chance would you have against your own Akita? Regardless of the breed Capo met, I feel confident that your Akita is far stronger and more capable in a scrap.
I love my Staffie, he is wonderful but his upsides do not outweigh the downsides of being ostracised, he is nearly 12 so will pass soon, I won't get another for reasons that are not of his doing.
You're quite correct; despite being small for an Akita (she's about 6 1/2 stone, whereas a lot them can grow to 10 stone and beyond) she's incredibly strong and, because of her size, phenomenally agile. This is a dog who crossed the garden in one bound and snatched a bird in flight, over 6 feet off the ground.
This is one of the reasons I always say that the bond between owner and large breeds is essential; the dog has to want to do what you ask them to, because cooperation is the only thing that'll get you out of a situation going sideways with everybody unharmed.
There's not one single thing that'll get that result, though. She trusts us to keep her out of harm's way, and always looks to us for guidance; on our side, that means never acting with panic or losing our calm, and making sure not to put her in a situation where she feels she needs to act as a last resort. If the worst should happen and I had to wrestle her away from another dog or person, I'm pretty confident that I could put everything into it and while she'd try her best to escape, she wouldn't bite me.
Fortunately, she's blessed with particularly good decision-making skills. In the first couple of months of her living with us, I was walking her and this pissed-up woman threw a beer can at her. I had a go at the woman (perhaps not the best choice I could've made, with hindsight) and she came right up to me, shouting very aggressively. Coco didn't go for her; instead, she stood up at my shoulder, bared her teeth at the woman and growled. Looking back, that could've gone very badly wrong, but Coco warned her off instead of attacking.
As I said, though, it's 100% my job to ensure that never becomes necessary again. If it did, it would mean one of two things: either I've utterly failed, or I'm incapacitated to the point where her decision to act is actually the right thing to do.