Our 30 lb. poodle mix just survived an attack on a hiking trail

[TorchTheWitch]

125. your dog will be fine as long as you blast it

directly in a menacing dog's face before that dog can get into your dog's face. You gotta be the aggressor and learn to recognize dominant or aggressive subtle behavior like how the unknown dog is carrying itself, etc.

I always err on the side of better safe than sorry. Having a large breed dog that is a formidable opponent my bigger worry is what my dog may do to an off leash dog in protecting himself from some lunatic dog trying to attack him. And of course I also have to worry how that would effect his future behavior. Yoshi's getting better about going back to accepting greetings from other strange dogs but he's still a bit hesitant and not nearly as excited about a potential greeting by a new dog that he used to be before. I'm encouraged though as just a few nights ago I noticed this adorable English bull dog approaching and saw that Yoshi was waging his tail and looking interested again. Not as flamboyantly interested as he used to be, but maybe he'll get back to that eventually. Now the only problem is that after accepting that cute bull dog he's decided he's in love with her and wants to go straight to her house to see her when we go on our walks and falls into total misery when she's not out on her porch to see him. LOL!

Anywho, better than pepper spray when you're walking in the woods might be to walk with a good solid walking stick to use to either keep a dog at bay or in a worse event give an attacking dog some good hard whacks with. I also found out by accident that a trashcan lid makes a good shield as well as a weapon. That what I did when that jackass with the golden retriever that is ALWAYS off leash and constantly menacing other peoples' dogs. Being that it was the night before trash collection day most of the neighborhood already had their cans at the curb since our area is first for collection in the early morning I happened to be just a few feet from someone's trashcan when that beast came flying at us, and I just grabbed off the trashcan lid and used it to get between the attacking dog's face and Yoshi's. I was just about to start beating the thing on the head with it when its owner FINALLY decided he should do something, but that dog was pretty relentless, and not only did it not have a leash it wasn't wearing a collar either, so the guy had to haul the dog off and away by its tail. And damned if I don't see that asshole at least once a week out walking his dog with no damn leash! I'm sick to death of having to walk Yoshi at different times to try to avoid that dog or seeing it out unleashed have to backtrack around another block and peer around corners trying to figure out where it is so we can just get the hell back home. It was that incident that made Yoshi wary of meeting other dogs since I wasn't quick enough with the trashcan lid, and the beast got in Yoshi's face before I could react.

You might find this helpful...
http://leerburg.com/dogattack.htm
The protecting your dog from attack is the second part half way down the page though the first part is an interesting read.