Click,

It's kind of like watching a train wreck. You want to stop it, but what can you do?

It might be possible to talk to the adult that is nearest to draw their attention to the problem, but it is just as likely that the intervention would be too slow and mainly serve to distract the adults more from what they should be paying attention to.

I'm glad it worked out reasonably well in the end. Too bad for the little one falling down, though.

 

If close enough I would say something, probably to the dog. Just enough to distract him a little, and call his owner's attention to what is happening - "Hello, you handsome lad! Aren't you gorgeous! What can you see that is worrying you? Oh, just a silly puppy, nothing to bother about." Most owners respond well to praise of their dog, and it gets the message across without antagonising anyone.

At a distance it is more difficult - yelling loudly enough to be heard is likely to upset everyone without improving matters. Thank heavens no one - human or canine - was seriously hurt, and let's hope they have all learned a lesson.

 

If close enough I would say something, probably to the dog. Just enough to distract him a little, and call his owner's attention to what is happening - "Hello, you handsome lad! Aren't you gorgeous! What can you see that is worrying you? Oh, just a silly puppy, nothing to bother about." Most owners respond well to praise of their dog, and it gets the message across without antagonising anyone.

I like this approach - communicating your concerns to the owner via the dog. I've used it before when I see people obliviously dragging a desperately pooping or tangled dog, or ignoring the signs of pain while walking their dog on a salty winter sidewalk.

Reading about this situation really put a sick feeling in my stomach, as I've been feeling more and more frightened lately of neighbourhood dogs. Or, more accurately, of their ill-equipped handlers. Almost every encounter I witness on our street feels like a disaster waiting to happen.

 

I tend in fjm's direction. A yell down the street would startle everyone and might make things worse by upsetting the alerted dog even more.


I think I would also check in with the family and maybe in the process of expressing concern for their dogs and their child slip in a little talk about what you had noticed in the hopes that they will take their walks in a more observant way.

 

A flexi lead on a bully breed are red flags to us, but not necessarily to a family outing of innocents. I saw a young family at risk in the dark last week from our cameras. Father jogging with a baby carrier, and two young kids keeping up on scooters. It was pitch dark out and a friend of mine was jogging with the first of her two dogs. One of the littles on the scooters aimed right at her, enthused to meet the doggie. Luckily, it was her calm, older dog, but she still warned, “Stay away from the dog”, to the child. Chrissie,her dog, had never seen a scooter. The dad was very relaxed and got his son back into their lane. But it was as if it hadn’t occurred to him, accordingly to my friend, that it might have been dangerous, never mind that no one had reflective gear for AM traffic. I learned the full story when she called later that morning to ask me to tell my neighbor that his Rottweiler was on the street again when she was out running with her young dog. Which is when I told her about the family rolling down the road in the dark and how worried I was for them. Here be coyotes, too, besides big dogs that should be behind gates.

 

I too like fmj response. I’m afraid I probably would have shouted out a warning before my brain would kick in with a more thoughtful action.

 

Thanks everybody. This is why I don't walk my dogs in my neighborhood. There are a lot of distracted dog handlers, and simply clueless ones. It really did feel like watching an accident waiting to happen. Next time, I think I'll just ask the handler what the worried dog's name is. That would snap the handler back into paying attention to her dog.

I don't know any of these people. They don't live on my block and I've never seen them before. I may never see them again. I'm glad it ended the way it did. That could have gone so badly.

 

Yeah, there are SO many stupid dog owners. I recently walked by a pickup with 2 massive mastiff type dogs in it, both barking loudly at me, leaning out of the box of the truck, spit flying. I hesitated and their owner yelled over to me (she had to yell to be heard over her dogs freaking out, and I still couldn't really hear her as much as lip read), "they won't bite!" I rolled my eyes at her and went the other direction. Thank heavens it's illegal to drive with dogs unsecured in pickup boxes here now, even though people still do because we have so few police officers here, it's not as common as a few years ago when EVERY truck had a dog in the box

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