Hi, I would like to ask a bit of advice from you all about our dog and his interactions with other dogs. He is an almost two and a half year old male, and the usual crazy cocker - really lovely, a bit hyper, prone to zoomies and enthusiastic about everything
. He's so lovely - cheeky with us, but never in a bad way...we have never had guarding issues or aggression towards us.
However he is intact and we live in London - the one thing I failed to think about when we got a dog was the density of the dog population here - and we seem to have aggressive encounters with other mostly male dogs every couple of weeks. I am really worried it is only a matter of time before our dog (or I suppose, another dog) is hurt. I tend to keep him on the lead when I can't see who is around the corner, so for example on paths through the wooded bits of the park, but I mostly take him to open spaces for our walks where he can run around off lead to his heart's content and I can see there are no unknown dogs around.
Our dog is pretty uninterested in other dogs, and is happiest either focussed on us - we have always played lots of games with him so he is always keen to do this - or just sniffing around, so he tends to ignore other animals. The problem is other dogs who approach him, and there are always some who do, often who are far from their owners. Our dog, due to past experiences with aggressive dogs, is very jumpy when these dogs approach, especially if they are larger than him. I don't know whether his anxiety encourages them to attack him, or if it is the fact that he is not castrated, but it happened again yesterday with a Weimaraner which approached and immediately attacked him until his owner reached him and pulled him off. This dog was castrated, so again, I am not sure how much difference this makes.
Are there some dogs who just attract negative attention? I feel like our dog gets more than his fair share of aggro - and I wonder if we did the right thing leaving him intact - our vet was all for castrating him but our dog trainer was against it so I feel like we saw both sides of the argument. I am not keen to do this now as I know that this can make a dog more fearful and may increase his aggression....maybe we should try chemical castration? I am wondering if this might lessen the effect of his hormones on other dogs.
This is going to sound stupid but is there anything we can do to lessen the likelihood of unwanted attention from other dogs....I feel like I am asking an impossible question! It's obviously horrible for our dog when this happens, and I worry about the impact it may begin to have on him, and it is also horrible for us as I find to hard to relax when I am out with him.
I would really appreciate any thoughts about this....I know this forum has such a wealth of experience with literally every aspect of owning a cocker! Thank you,
Lou