A dog defending itself is not aggressive. She WILL defend herself. She did before she was attacked and she still will. However, she is not DOG AGGRESSIVE. If someone attacked me, I'd defend myself too, but that doesn't make ME an aggressive person.

This guy is not talking about defending oneself. This guy is talking about an attack making a dog "dog aggressive" which to me means that this dog will attempt to attack other dogs.

You say "Whenever I'm out on walks, I and others ask "is your dog good with other dogs" and we let them meet if everyone is. I've never had a problem with it."...that is all fine and good in that situation...what if you don't get the chance to ask, an off leash dog is charging toward your dog with aggression. What then?...give me an answer instead of just a negative on everything I say.

Now I understand you a little more. Sometimes I have really read some of your posts to understand them better. Now I understand you better. You would run away from an aggressive dog...hahahaha...and he will run the other way, right?

I don't understand your point here. If a dog was charging at my dog with an aggressive stance, I'd whip out my walking stick or my thing of Direct Stop to stop it. But I don't quite understand your point...

The whole video is about NOT MEETING OTHER DOGS. Not allowing them to meet other dogs.

So what happens if you never allow your puppy to meet other dogs except a couple you know? What happens if your puppy is severely under socialized and that aggressive dog approaches and attacks. What then? THEN you will have a puppy who develops issues.

If the puppy is well socialized and attacked, then you have a chance of salvaging things and the dog's not becoming DA.

This is a picture of someone that ran away from an aggressive dog.

So what is your point? This is what I'm gathering from your posts here:

1. Don't let your puppy meet any dogs you don't personally know forward and backward.

2. Don't go out anywhere because your dog could meet an aggressive dog who is off leash.

Please do share any other points you might have.

I think the guy is saying meeting dogs YOU don't know.
It is best in my opinion to only allow a young pup meet dogs that you know are not aggressive.

So socialise your pup with dogs that may be strange to your pup but not to you.

But how many dogs do you know? In my neighborhood I only really know 3 or 4. When I first moved here I knew none. I had ONE dog I could have socialized mine with: my parent's dog. And she's skittish around other dogs. So if you've just gotten a puppy and you know maybe like one or two people with friendly dogs, well, that doesn't work too well IMO. Puppies need to meet dogs of all sizes and ages and play styles. They need to meet a LOT of dogs, not just a couple.

On the flip side, I met MANY dogs I had never met before and have never had a problem with a dog someone told me was dog friendly. And not everyone has. A few people have said "Would love to meet but my dog has issues with other dogs."

I just don't think that ONLY meeting the handful of dogs one might know is properly socializing a puppy.

Perfect! and that's just what I did initially, then I moved on to letting her find out for herself, BUT, always made sure I called over to the owner of the dog first whether it was ok for it to meet my puppy, but as things moved on from that, we then got dogs charging up to us without any owners to ask! That's when the attacks started happening, I've done the running away (uphill!) with both dogs from an aggressive gsd who was annoyed that he couldn't actually rip her to shreds coz of his darn muzzle (she'd just been speyed so had stitches in), so he laid down in front of us frantically trying to remove it off his nose, that's when I legged it!

I've also done the "block" managed to get my leg bitten by doing that, not quite as bad as in the picture, but bad enough!

Things then escalated and I witnessed my first ever real dog fight (one of which was mine), and now my dog has really wised up, she won't put up with any aggression, she answers with her teeth and as my hubby says "who can blame her really?"

Oh how I wish I'd kept away from busy "park" type environments just to socialise my darn puppy, because now for the past six months I've HAD to go to this type of place just to rectify things and try and sort it all out since the real fight I witnessed. What if I ask myself

completely agree with Crysania. You cannot wrap your dogs up in cotton wool and meeting less socialble or grumpy dogs, when puppy is a little older and has already met lots of very well mannered dogs, can actually be beneficial, i.e your dog can learn to read the signs of a not so friendly dog, practise calming signals and even learn to "bounce back" when something bad does happen. im not saying that we should encourage meetings with DA dogs, BUT a lot of dogs wont tolerate being bounced on so a puppy who has only met a select few dogs, may not understand WHY he cant bounce on the new dog and get himself into even MORE trouble!
Dogs need to understand body language, good and bad, keeping them away from negative experiences is only going to make them very NON "street-wise"!

IF an off-lead dog approaches my lot i will guage the dogs body language and look at the reactions of my guys as to whether or not i should let them play or move on. If i feel the dog is DA, and this has happened before i do body block, put my dogs behind me and do my damndest to move the dog along. You cant protect your dogs from every situation, unfortunate as it is, but by decreasing their socialisation circle you are doing more harm than good IMO

Hope that all made sense lol