I don't disagree with you

Apparently Lucky didn't actually go up to them, he just wandered over to the part of the park where they were.

But Lucky's recall is terrible and my brother's GF never keeps him on a long line

All of that being said, from what my brother says, Lucky wasn't that close to the dog before it literally hurtled over to him and sank its teeth into his neck...

But I agree with you, if Lucky had come back when my brother recalled him, this might have been avoided.


Also I think that - rightly or wrongly - in parks there are always going to be dogs that do wander over to greet other dogs. If someone does know that their dog will respond violently to another dog's approach, then really the aggressive/defensive dog ought to be leashed or muzzled OR a warning shouted out to the owner of the approaching dog.

I agree that in an ideal world, we would all have dogs who either had perfect recall OR who were kept on long lines - I keep my own dog on a long line precisely out of fear of an incident such as Lucky has now experienced.

But it's not an ideal world and I think these men KNEW their dog was aggressive.

In the case of my dog... definitely the other guy's fault - mine was recalled and on the lead as we were getting close to the gate where the road is.

I used to have a dog that was unsociable with other dogs, not a problem as he was always under control. However, just as in driving, did not matter how good an owner I was, I had to keep an eye open for other plebs.

I used to have him in a half nelson to prevent him biting dogs that came up to him (as their owners were nowhere to be seen). So, if my dog had bitten their dogs, it would have been THEIR failure to control their own animals; I always say, imagine I was a car, if your dog ran in front of me and I killed it, whose fault would it be?