Advice on muzzling my Staffy

A couple of weeks ago I was walking my two dogs, one a full Staffy male & a Staff cross female & as I walked past a neighbor’s front gate one of his dogs ran down the drive & shoved its head through gaps in the gate barking its head off & unfortunately my male Staffy went for it grabbing hold of this lip puncturing it. My dogs were on leads but due to the neighbor parking his car on the pavement in front of his drive space to get past was limited & I did not expect it to happen as I have walked past before with no problem although he has changed his gate recently & I can’t remember if he had mesh on his old ones

I offered to pay the vets bill at the time which I now have done & I noticed the neighbor has now fixed mesh on the gate to stop his dog poking its head through in the future, if he had done this in the first place the incident would not have happened & I have done this to the gates in front of my drive years ago to stop anything like this myself
He decided to call the police & I am still waiting to see the officer as when he came around I was at the dentist & spoke to him on the phone & apparently I have to sign something although I don’t know what it is

I was walking my dogs again today & he questioned why the male was not wearing a muzzle as I did say at the time of the incident I was going to try one on him but I did a a couple of days ago & after a half mile into our walk me Staffy was making a really bad noise as he was trying to breath but the muzzle was restricting the amount he could open his mouth as he does walk with his mouth wide open normally so I took it off before carrying on the walk after he had a rest & he was then fine

I’m now worried about putting a different one on in the future, I had bought a Baskerville Ultra & gone by the measurements of his snout length & circumference for the correct size but it seemed very small & restricted his mouth too much & the neighbor walked away shaking his head which annoyed me as I had paid his vets bill only the day before. I’m now a little worried he will have rung the police again complaining about me & what they might do

I always walk my dogs on a lead as I would not trust them off lead just in case they went for another dog & now it’s happened while they were on one. I have to use chain leads as he can be an idiot when out walking biting the lead & walking backwards tugging it but I suppose that’s him being a Staffy although I’ve not seen it happen to anyone else. After the first few minutes he settles down walking calmly without much pulling on his lead

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Hi from me & Katy, welcome to our forum Sorry to hear about your problem with your boy, I expect the neighbours dog startled him & unfortunately that was his reaction! Katy is reactive & our neighbour up the hill has a dog aggressive staffie who goes ballistic at the gate when we pass. Katy also goes reactive but if I meet her in the lane with him on lead not a peep out of either of them!
I would suggest getting him used to the muzzle 1st, put some peanut butter in the end of it & just let him get used to putting his nose in it, then progress slowly to get him used to it being clipped on behind his head.
This seems to be possibly more comfortable option so he can open his mouth to breathe & drink but not bite

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gentle-Muzzle-Guard-Dogs-Prevents/dp/B07VC8MNC1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3RK8PRN7M25OZ&dchild=1&keywords=muzzle+for+staffy&qid=1618948712&refinements=p_72%3A419153031&rnid=419152031&sprefix=muzzle+for+st%2Cpets%2C160&sr=8-4