How to prevent or stop an attack while on a walk?

ORIGINAL: spiritdogs

Sounds like there is only one thing that can stop dog attacks - college.
That way you can make enough money to move out of inner city, redneckville, suburban idiotville, and into a nice affluent neighborhood filled with little wimpy weiner dogs... []

 
LMFAO!!!  This is killing me! You are SO bloody right!

ORIGINAL: g33

ORIGINAL: spiritdogs

Sounds like there is only one thing that can stop dog attacks - college.
That way you can make enough money to move out of inner city, redneckville, suburban idiotville, and into a nice affluent neighborhood filled with little wimpy weiner dogs... []

LMFAO!!! This is killing me! You are SO bloody right!

Yep. Can personally attest. I so rarely have this problem because I live in a city, in a really nice neighborhood. We don't encounter off-leash dogs on our regular walks and if we do go to the park that is plagued with them, 95% of the owners who have the off-leash dogs (still illegal but everyone likes to ignore that) have fairly well-adjusted well socialized city dogs. And they stay with their dogs. I'd rather people still not do this because even if your dog is very friendly there's still a lot of concerns and I hate it when people let their off-leash dogs just barrel up to mine (on leash) and try to play with them, but it's still not that huge of a problem compared to areas where people let their blatantly aggressive, totally untrained, large breed dogs just roam around the neighborhood with no supervision. That was the norm where I used to live in a more rural/suburban area. And the dogs had no collars, no tags, no ID of any kind. Seriously if you can't be bothered to contain your dog, at least slap a collar and a tag on it.

It's just a whole different mentality which despite living there for many years I never really got.

Usually being attacked while on leash creates a reactive/aggressive dog.  It's a cycle.

ORIGINAL: houndlove

Just to counteract all these horror stories!

There's a dog we encounter pretty frequently on our walks through our neighborhood park. The dog is large and either severely reactive/leash-aggressive or just plain old dog aggressive. The dog is terrifying with the lunging and the barking and the snarling. BUT! the owner always has a firm grip on his leash and when he sees another dog coming down the path, takes his dog far off the path and stops walking until you pass. This is also really pretty early in the morning when he's less likely to encounter other dogs. That's an owner who is responsibly managing his aggressive dog. Aggressive/reactive dogs need their walks and their excersie too, and there are responsible ways to handle such a dog.

Chewbecca, I once saw a full grown Great Dane on-leash at the off-leash park who was possibly reactive/not socialized well (it was his first time a the park, hence him being kept on leash, which the owners didn't realize was a bad idea just all around), and the person holding on to the leash? A child. The other peeps at the park pretty quickly sized up that situation and very subtly and quietly began to migrate to the other end of the park with their dogs.

I have this theory that has not really been tested yet that you can stop any loose dog from picking a fight with your dog as long as it's not charging. If the approaching dog looks dubious, you can often hold them off by acting aggressive yourself. I've found stiffly walking towards the loose dog, head up and staring directly at it is usually enough alone to give it pause for thought. When it hesitates, you drive home with a growly "GIT HOME!" or even a short run at it. It will give your own dog lots of confidence if nothing else, and two confident personalities in league against one nomad is usually enough to convince the nomad to go find fun elsewhere. It hasn't failed on me yet, and we have loads of large, loose dogs that will pick fights quite cheerfully around here.

Charging is a whole different matter, though. I don't think anything will stop a charging dog short of a boot in the jaw or something similar. My dog has been charged twice by large, aggressive dogs. We got through it by evading the first charge. Thankfully, in both cases rescue arrived before the dog could regroup and make another attack.

I've tried both. Once, while encountering a loose in the central part of town I was barking at him a few times, small charges at him, telling him to go home. He didn't care and he wouldn't listen. This part of town was his territory.
 
Other times, a "go home" will work. Once in a blue moon, the dog will stay where it is. But, 9 times out of 10, we have a fight looming ahead.

It probably helps that I usually walk with my mother and her two dogs at the moment. A confident pack of 5 is pretty intimidating. I agree that sometimes they don't go home, but it at least usually keeps them at bay so they might circle out of range, but never come in close enough to make contact.

Or maybe our loose dogs are just more mild-mannered than yours. Since that 3-legged beast that leapt 6 ft fences to run out and bite people on the street moved away, it's been fairly mundane. The loose dogs we deal with for now are more a nuisance than a threat. It also helps that a lot of the meaner ones are escapees and have a yard they belong in. They're a lot more unsure when they're not usually out and about.

I found a blog from a professional that talks about that situation:
 
[linkhttp://blogs5.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/dogwhisperer/?p=121]http://blogs5.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/dogwhisperer/?p=121[/link]

ORIGINAL: espencer

I found a blog from a professional that talks about that situation:

[linkhttp://blogs5.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/dogwhisperer/?p=121]http://blogs5.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/dogwhisperer/?p=121[/link]

 
Thank's so much!

This is from Leerburg...I know, I know. But for the most part this article makes a lot of sense, of course there's the always present Ed Frawley icing on top of it, but it's pretty obvious which parts are the good ones.