Thats a brilliant command to teach your dog. I was walking the other day and a dog came up to me, i asked the owner to call him as mine was on a lead and when he called him he went straight away. This is ok although i think he should have called him before i had to say. The problem i see in all of this is if you keep your dog on the lead and are away from other you dont want any dog big or small coming over to you. I know ppl who are out with their dogs and if i want to socialise myself or my dog with them i go over to them and they do the same.

I do feel that the thread is very much for let your dog off and let the socialise but I view myself ads responsible and dont want my dog or anybody elses dog go bounding about meeting and greeting until i know they are not aggresive and they know that about my dog. If a dog is on a lead they could be nervous or aggresi ve towards dogs and if a dog were to go over to that dog then it will be aggressive and then thats just s disaster area waiting to happen.

If you want to let your dog off thats fine but make sure the recall if 100% first and if you can't be sure then don't let them off!!

Being a total dog lover i as well as my dogs love to meet & greet other dogs on our walks.

I agree Henry,

The problem I have is Takara herself has been very nervous around other dogs so I don't like to call her away if she's choosing to say hi.
If we see an offlead dog I don't call her away unless asked to.
If we see an onlead dog, I tell her 'busy dog' (she used to know not to approach onlead dogs but became scared of them so we worked on socialising on the lead and now she approaches them) and she leaves them alone until I can speak to the other owner to find out if they mind their dog socialising with mine.

Takara's very good at reading body language and knows a dog is aggressive well before she approaches them and well before I can see it so she will not go upto a dog that's aggressive.

She's not quite so good at knowing they're nervous and I have had to call her away before when she was trying to encourage a nervous dog to play...

I also know that Takara doesn't retaliate, if a dog has a go she does a runner unless she's on her lead and that's when she snaps because she can't run away.

Eddy's a totally different story and because I've had aggression issues with him before, he's called to me each time we see another dog and rewarded for calm behaviour.