Today’s topic is: Running off stray aggressive dogs. Let me give a little bit of a backstory. So there are many neighborhoods where there are stray dogs. And for me, as a professional dog trainer, stray dogs are a very real problem when out with my clients and trying to teach their dogs how to walk nicely on a leash. So today, I had to run off stray aggressive dogs.
Preponderance of Stray Dogs
Most stray dogs are friendly. They want to come over here and interact with the dog and us. But some dogs are aggressive. It’s not too bad in my neighborhood, there’s not a preponderance of stray dogs all over the place, but there’s enough that you have to be aware. And I would say that there are even fewer stray aggressive dogs. Probably over the course of the past six months, there have been two dogs in particular that have attempted to get into my backyard on more than one occasion. One time they did. Luckily, my dogs weren’t there, but I’ve been able to run them off, and I’ve been able to give them pieces of food.
But I’ve also tried to shoo them off, and they’ve become aggressive towards me. They haven’t become aggressive to the point where they’ve tried to throw a bite. But they have become aggressive by showing their teeth and being unwilling to move away.
So the day before yesterday, I saw these dogs again loose in the neighborhood, running around, getting run off by people, but they just keep coming back. And so this morning, I was taking Alpha out to use the restroom, and lo and behold, there’s one of them as I begin to take Alpha out. So I quickly put Alpha inside the house. The previous day, after I had seen them, I had a starter pistol that we use to make sure that my German shepherds are conditioned to not respond to it. They really don’t need to be conditioned because they do great.
Nuisance Dogs
Anyway, I had the starter pistol in my garage the previous day, and I decided to pre-load it with eight blanks. So again, go back to today. I opened the door. The stray aggressive dogs are there, and I quickly put Alpha up for just a moment, and I proceed to head out where my neighbor’s mother happened to be in the street. I let her know that I had a starter pistol in my hand. It is not an actual gun, but I will attempt to use it to run off these nuisance dogs.
So I fire a single round from the starter pistol, which does not throw a projectile at all. It doesn’t throw a bullet. It’s just the loud noise from a 22 caliber starter pistol, and the dogs take off. They look back as they are running away, and I fire one more round, and they firmly tucked their tails and ran away.
At that point, I had a conversation with my neighbor’s mother and found out that yesterday when she was walking her grandson in the neighborhood, the dogs came very close to her grandchild and were very aggressive whenever she tried to shoo them off. So why am I sharing this story? Well, this is a story that might benefit you by knowing things that you can do to get dogs like this away.
Keep Ourselves Safe
Now, I don’t recommend walking around and carrying a starter pistol with you. But it was incredibly effective. It makes me think about how many dogs struggle with fireworks. And I guess it’s useful for us as humans. We can generate a way to keep ourselves safe using sounds like this to get dogs to go away without resorting to alternatives.
The alternatives are probably violence, which nobody wants to do. I know that I don’t want to hurt dogs. But what are you going to do if a dog is trying to attack your grandchild, maybe your puppy, or you? You don’t have a lot of other options besides violence. However, today, having the starter pistol ready and at hand for me to run the dogs off was a great way to handle this.
So that’s the takeaway, not a fun thing to deal with. But I was glad that I was prepared to deal with it in the way that I did. And I guess everybody is better because of it.
I hope you enjoyed that story and you found it helpful. Remember to visit my YouTube Channel for useful information like this. You can find more tips like this too right here at www.longoriahausdogtraining.com.
Happy Training!
