Approaching other dog owners

When I had my last staffy I used to walk her round a field just down the road and I plan on doing the same with the new pup I get.

Now I haven't had a great experience walking my last staff, she was a good girl and good off the lead. One of the last times I walked her over 2 years ago now but the incident still haunts me.

I was walking round the field with blaze and some guy entered the field with another dog already off the lead, the dogs clocked each other and went over to each other. I wasn't worried about blaze as she was good at meeting other dogs, anyhow this guy starts running towards the dogs so I run on over to get blaze thinking that he didn't want the dogs to play.

This guy starts flipping out, get your f***ing staffy away bla de bla and starts to attack me and my dog by swinging a blank of wood at us, the wood was the size of a floor board. I was 9 months pregnant too. Anyhow get blaze on the lead and stumble out of the field and collapse on the floor having a asthma attack. I thought I was going to go into labour! Police called etc but nothing ever done.

I now know where this guy lives and that he's a junkie.

So as you can see I'm very nervous about introducing my new pup to other dogs.

How do you go about approaching other owners and dogs to try and socialise your pup? They all seem a bit stuck up around here with the above exception.

Any advice.

OMG what a total * wipe how dare he and been pregnant as well for gods sake !!! hope you were ok and ur little one !!

the guy for a start has no right to tell you to get ur staffy on a lead as his is off one so glad i was'nt there i would of ripped him to bits the *

i owning a 9 month old now keep him on a lead only had his just under 2 weeks but is there any way u can walk another place ? or get a retrackable lead so puppy can play but u have him secure .

and if u can drop that bag of poo in it i would do it it can't belive he treated u this way and been pregnant as well just shows what a crap world we live in.

hugs to you xxxxxxxxxxx

I wouldn't let 1 idiot worry you your last dog was well socialised so you know what your doing, don't let that incident ruin your confidence.

if you want to socialise your dog in a more controlled environment take him to a training class or dog socialisation class

good luck and i'm sure you'll do a fine job as you did with your last dog

When I'm out with Charlie, he's always off lead cos his recall is pretty good and he's great with all dogs and people we meet. However, if someone approaches with a dog on the lead, I put Charlie on his so he doesn't go dashing off to greet the dog just in case it's on the lead cos its dog aggressive. I then ask the owner if their dog will be happy with mine saying hi if I let him back off. If a dog is off lead and approaches, I keep an eye on it but dont worry too much cos most people keep their dogs on lead if they dont like other dogs round here.

I want to be able to let her off the lead and be able to give her that freedom, once I've trained her to come back when called of course.

What I'm thinking of doing is getting an extendable lead so she can still roam whilst I train her and get to know the other dog walkers. And see how that goes.

Hopefully the other dog walkers the not so aggressive ones will be more pleasant as she will be a pup and no one can reisit a pup, whereas my other staff was a full blown staffy so people were weary.

best place i can think of for you to start would be a puppy class if you are worried about the locals reaction

aawww that wasn't nice what happened to you and no wonder your nervous about introducing your next puppy to other dogs ><


I used to have bruno off the lead, but lately he is on a retrackable lead, as when he jump up at old man down the field, the man wasn't friendly and said put you dog on a lead, i thought what does it look like i am doing ? ffs, but Bruno was in deaf zone that evening, since then i have keep him on this lead and when noone is about , we leave on a long lead and then quickly pull him back when someone is in sight.

But when we see other dogs, we ask first if their dog is friendly and if so would they mind if bruno met their dog. we do the same with our daughter ask if the dog is friendly and can our little girl stroke it