[Discussion] Best way to deal with an off the leash angry dog?Dog Talks

I was running in a park I often run on my road (UK), it's a large park and I see a lot of other walkers, runners, football matches, drone fliers and dog owners, 50/50 mix of on-lead and off-lead. As far as I know they are allowed to have their dogs off the lead in this park.

I'm not familiar with dogs having never owned one but am looking for advice on something that happened last week on my last run, i like to run weekly in the same park.

when I run i avoid people as much as possible but on this occasion I was approaching a woman dog owner stood to the side of the park in order to overtake her, giving us a good 10m distance when passing when all of a sudden a very large staffordshire bull terrier locked onto me from the middle of the park, obviously the pet of the woman I was passing and made a bee line for me, it made one pass from the front extremely aggressively, getting right in my face and barking loudly, going back on its haunches then leaping forward and back, snapping its jaws, it then proceeded to follow me from behind again snapping its jaws at me. I've since read that I should have turned to face it and crossed arms so as not to appear as prey? But this dog was ANGRY so I don't think that I would have done that.

In any case I trailed my arm away in a balled fist to draw the dogs attention away from my body as i was certain it was about to dig its teeth into me (i have been bitten by a dog before and had to attend accident and emergency , get rabies shot, I didn't want to have to do that in our current covid lockdown).

The dog was drawn to my balled fist and so I punched it firmly on the nose and it yelped a little and backed off away so I carried on with my run, I am sure the dog wasn't hurt, it was more of a biff than a Tyson uppercut.

What should i do better in a similar situation?

Would spraying it with water from a bottle have made any difference?

Again this dog was too angry and frankly large to turn around and face it down rationally. I called out to it's owner who paid no attention whatsoever and made no attempt to help the situation.

I realise my approach could have gone down wrong and got my hand chewed on so want to be ready with a better approach, I don't dislike dogs, just off the leash angry dogs attacking me! I often take my kid walking in that park and don't see why dog owners can't keep their dogs on a leash if they can't control them but it is what it is and I suppose there will always be irresponsible dog owners.

What would you dog experts suggest?

Submitted November 12, 2020 at 01:00AM by igivup https://ift.tt/3lpoX6q