As a dog owner, here are 5 situations that freak me out

[TrogL]

20. I'm gradually teaching people

I've got three dachshunds (2 crosses) that I walk together.

The original full-breed dachshund used to have a lot of socialization issues and we had multiple incidents of people getting challenged. In one case the police chose to involve themselves to tell the approacher to back off.

The second dog was bought primarily as a companion to the first dog. He's a happy-go-lucky foxy-doxy who will allow anyone to approach, or more accurately will drag me towards them. The other two take their cues from him so usually things are OK.

The third dog is a rescue from a puppy mill. The breeder said take her or I'm putting her down. She does surprisingly well, but she does have food issues, primarily caused by the first dog trying to steal her food because she's used to eating slowly and protected inside a cage. If we're out in public and somebody tries to give her a treat and the first dog looks at her wrong, she'll start a huge snarling rolling fight, then the second dog will try to rescue the situation, then I have to wade in and separate all three, so I've got all three dogs on separate leads each with their own yellow ribbon.

When strangers approach, I immediately point out the ribbon and explain what it's for, then explain how to approach a pack of dogs (basically, you don't - let them come to you).

I've still had some incidents. A few weeks ago I was bending over to retrieve dog poop and somebody walked up behind me and the dogs decided to defend me. He got bit on the cuff of his jeans but he just walked away without acknowledging any of it.

I was driving down the street and saw a couple of kids acting strangely, so I watched them in the rear view mirror and suddenly one of them jumped of the neighbour's car so I backed up to give him shit and discovered two dogs running loose - the kids was terrified of dogs. I got out of the truck, one of them ran past me so I stomped on his leash. The other one stopped to see what was going on and the owner came around from the back of the truck - blind drunk. She yelled at me to leave her dogs alone. I yelled back that I was helping her catch them. Instead of retrieving her dogs, she spotted mine in their cage in the back of my truck so she stuck her hands through the bars and promptly got bit, which she failed to notice. She retrieved her dogs and staggered off down the street. The yellow ribbons were clearly visible, but obviously she wasn't perceiving much of anything.