Q&A with ‘The Paw Man’ (477) – Defending Your Pack Sandy Charlebois Thomas Aloha, I have four small dogs I walk daily on leashes. Occasionally we will see a large loose dog. (Boar hunting dogs & pit bulls are common here) could you suggest some sort of deterrent I could carry in the event of an attack, Several dogs have been mauled or killed on this island in the past months. Paw Man There is no single deterrent device that will reliably deter all dogs….. if there was one then Police would carry it. :) The answer to this question always boils down to what the laws of your country will allow you to carry. There are too many variables on the dog side of things to steer you toward anything to carry….. mace, tazer, ultrasonic screamer, walking stick…… all of these things ‘could’ assist you to deter an attacking dog…….. ‘could’ being the operative word there. Any number of those devices may work on any individual dog but I can’t guarantee you that any of them will work on any single dog. The risk you run if you are dealing with a pig-hunting dog and you confront it is that it may redirect its aggression from your dogs toward you and then you have a much greater problem. Your greatest defence tool is intelligence…. Recognising potential problems early and taking action to avoid them is by far the best. Things like….. if you’re walking your dogs down a suburban street and you see a stray loose dog ahead of you then turn and walk into someone’s fenced yard to place a barrier between your dogs and the stray dog. It really is one of those situations where you have to deal with it at the time and just see what is available to you at the time…… some people have come up with some interesting solutions on the spot. Such as; One dog owner whose dog was being harassed by an angry wandering Staffy picked her dog up and held it above her head initially but then the Staffy started jumping on her aggressively so she dropped her dog into someone’s empty rubbish bin and put the lid on it. Another dog owner at a park picked up her Labrador and threw it into the lake she was walking beside and just kept throwing more sticks to keep the Lab in the water…. The harassing dog didn’t like water and walked away. But one of the best things to have with you is your smart phone so that you can take a picture of the harassing dog for evidentiary purposes…… otherwise it just boils down to your vague verbal description of the dog if you decide to make a complaint…. Which I always suggest that people do.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 00:33:35 +0000