[QUOTE=ClaireandDaisy;2160507]

Actually my dog fell into a pond once and the Thames once, he will now only go into water if his feet can touch the ground! No idea how he felt but it was hilarious... imagine going down the steps towards the Thames, the last one was covered with water, he was ok, then he took another step down and it was "mummy help"!!! Before anyone condemns me, yes I had him on lead and I pulled him out ok, but it was so funny!

Hmmmm.....right.....

Hahahahahaha... oh I can just imagine them telling me Fluffy feels emasculated by being called Fluffy and me chopping his balls off

Thanks for that people, good to get feedback, waiting for the trainer to get back to me to see her opinion.

[QUOTE=...in the words of Cartman....sounds like "a bunch of tree hugging hippy cr*p" [/QUOTE]

Sorry Moon's Mum that made me giggle, you'd never catch me tree hugging Have never heard of 'the trust technique' before, will have look at website but agree with finding out more before going ahead with anything.

i would say you are thinking about this the wrong way round, as their should be no onus put on the stranger whatsoever.
they would be the victim of what is, essentially, by law, a dangerous dog.
if this is a common occurance in your local park, you could expect a visit from the dog warden (if it had been a big dog you most probably would have been in the doo dah by now).
i could understand if the lady was approached by an aggressive dog, but the only thing the owner did was put some of the blame onto her for acting frightened, then, naturally, she would be abusive.

everytime your dog is allowed to repeat this behaviour he is rewarding himself and making the behaviour stronger and harder to break.
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sorry to be the party pooping messenger, but this is the legal and behaviour reality.

Thanks Krusewalker, but it's not his regular behaviour anymore. He used to be on a long line before, but as his behaviour has improved massively with training, he was off lead a lot and it was fine. So his strangers chasing is quite rare these days.
I was not blaming the woman, I asked her to ignore him, but instead she was leaning over to him trying to smack him which made the situation worse. If she was truly frightened I don't think she'd do that IMHO. Normally if he'd start barking at someone I call him away and he does come back straight away, but as she was reacting in a threatening way (in my dog's mind) he thought he was right to carry on barking at her. So I thought all my hard work with him is failing....
That only happened yesterday after a looong time of him being fine, so naturally I was upset and talked to my trainer.

fair enough.

but i would have to say of course she would bend over to try and whack him if she was frightened, that is the fight out of the fight, flight, or freeze options when frightened.

it doesnt really matter how your dog perceives the lady's actions, as legally, she was defending herself from an aggressive dog.

the ony really appropriate response would be to go over to her and get your dog and then apologise for your dog having a go at her.

its only a temporary setback, you could get the long line out and do some more of your training.

Thanks for that, that's exactly what I'm doing, trying to do more training and maybe get some alternative help.

Trust me, first thing I did was apologise and I asked her nicely to ignore him, but her response was rude and started with "he's only barking at me because I'm black" (that really annoyed me as it was totally untrue as black people are not exactly rare in my neighbourhood), then I called the dog over but at the same time she was trying to hit him and was being abusive... so that's how the thing escalated.
I know my dog made a mistake as he's fearful, he's not trying to bite anyone and he never has, but I also know that I should try and find a way to calm his excitement somehow, which is why I posted this question in the first place.