How to defend your dog while walking

I noticed that I’ve been getting quite a few visitors from people searching for “how to defend your dog while walking”. It’s so important to be safe when walking your dog. Keeping your dog safe is your responsibility as its owner and protector. Your dog relies on you to make sure nothing happens to it.

I’m going to assume that the visitors that got to 1 Fit Mutt by searching for ways to keep their dogs safe while walking mostly referred to dog attacks, or their dogs being pestered by other dogs – not people. If people are attacking your dog while you’re on your walk you have a whole another problem.

Please note that this post will express my honest views on how I would defend my dog while walking if she was attacked by another dog. I am not condoning violence or hurting animals here, and different situations will call for different solutions. These are my opinions only and I’m in no way encouraging anyone to break any laws.

In my view, there are two general options you have when your dog gets attacked by another dog on your walk:

Let your dog loose and hope it runs away

I read about this happening a couple of times – an owner was walking their dog. The dog got attacked by a loose dog. The owner let their dog off-leash and told them to “Go Home”. Their dog ran full speed ahead toward the house. The attacking dog either couldn’t catch the other dog or didn’t bother chasing it. The owner’s dog got away safely, nobody was hurt.

The problem that I see with this is that you never know if the attacking animal will follow your dog or not – and you don’t generally know if it will outrun it. Not only this, but you also don’t know how your own dog will react. Will it run? Will it stay and fight? Maybe if your dog has a really reliable “go home” command this might work…assuming you’re sure your dog can outrun the attacked. In other words, if it’s a super fast greyhound with a super great “home” command you might be able to get away with this.

Physically defend your dog

This option is probably one of the most dangerous to you personally. You could get injured trying to defend your dog from attack. Personally, I think this is instinctively what I would do. If it comes down to it and my dog is being attacked, I wouldn’t hesitate to use physical force against the attacked to get him/her off of my dog. I’d try to get Keeda behind me and step between them – often dogs that are dog aggressive actually won’t bite a person, but this is in no way guaranteed. I don’t like the idea of hurting anyone’s dog, but if I have to choose between letting my dog get injured and mauled and hurting my dog’s attacker to get it away I’d choose the latter option any day.

Let them sort it out on their own

Sometimes dogs get into scuffles when they play and owners let them sort it out on their own in “dog language”. This seems like a good idea for small issues, but if another dog is seriously putting my dog in danger I, personally, would not be watching them go at each other. Not only am I not confident that Keeda could defend herself properly against a decent-sized dog as she’s on the smaller-medium side (think a little larger than a Beagle), but I also don’t want to risk her getting any more hurt than she otherwise would in the scuffle. In addition, having your dog injure another dog, even if the other dog started the fight, can mean a whole lot of trouble for you and your pet and I would not want to risk any chance of my dog being blamed and put down for the event. I’d rather step in and take care of it myself.

I’m lucky because Keeda and I live in a decent neighborhood. We rarely see loose dogs running around here – we do see dogs off leash, but the vast majority are either keeping to themselves or are friendly enough to where Keeda and I don’t mind being approached by them. If my dog did get confronted and/or then attacked by another dog I would not hesitate to use physical force if it got that far to defend my dog. I would yell, kick, hit the dog if needed to get it away or off of my dog. Of course if we can just walk away that would be the preference, but if this dog is enroaching on our personal space in an aggerssive manner and/or attacking me or my dog, I wouldn’t hesitate. These are my views on defending your dog while walking if an aggressive dog attacks. Thankfully Keeda and I haven’t had to deal with a full-blown fight yet and I hope it stays this way.