Sorry, have a slight rant I need to share!
We live on the edge of a small town, and its mostly good, has the basic shops and a good Indian restaurant.
But....
We have 2 lurchers, one (Ash) is very well behaved, and Jenkins our newer rescue is pretty good, but when we got him had 'meeting skills issues'- he had lived with an aggressive dog and thought the right way to great other dogs is to bark and leap around excited because he may get to play!
We have been working hard on his 'interpersonal skills' and he has made great progress, and now walks past other dogs, or sit quietly most of the time and he really just wants to play with everyone!
But, our local town seems to have a massive collection of aggressive dogs, so going for a walk is a real pain, last night I went past 8 different dogs, and all but 1 lunged and barked growling at my pair! :blink:
Its so hard to teach Jenkins to relax and walk past other dogs, or sit quietly, when they leap, barking and growling and the owners just laugh, or say 'Oh he does that' Small dogs are the worst (and I totally blame the owners!!)
Ash has been attacked a couple of times by loose dogs, and I now always carry training discs (mini-cymbals) as these tend to work well at putting most dogs off when they go for our dogs!
I get really worried, as Jenkins is a staffi cross, and if there was a fight he will be judged on his breed, with people rarely looking at who attacked first!
Is this an issue people are seeing everywhere now, or are we just unlucky?
The trainer that we use has a theory that this is really on the increase as people are not walking their dogs enough and socialising them when they are young- or don't notice or care that they are aggressive! She also recons that when people used to let their dogs wander more the dogs learnt how to act around other dogs a lot better- not that she wants to encourage 'latch-key dogs' but attacks were less common!
I try to avoid walking the dogs in town when I am on my own, but especially as autumn heads in, I dont like wandering country roads as it goes dark on my own! And unless I use the car there are a couple of nasty bits of main road between me and the best lanes!
Sorry for the rant, just really annoys me, and stops walks being fun!