Ah yes ...we have a wide river bank opposite our house and it's used by fair weather dog walkers especially in the Summer - one person parks her car at one end of the path and lets her six 'Yorkshire Terrorists' jump out to tear along barking wildly at everything and everyone - I do try and avoid her '- but two days ago she met me and my young Groenendael Hawk-she screamed at me to put my dog on a lead despite the fact that we were knee deep in her yapping pack, and when eventually she caught up with them she told me that large dogs should never be let off lead and that I should avoid places where other dog walkers are (presumably because mine are big, black hairy and wolf like !! ) -Hawk meanwhile was trying to avoid the onslaught and hiding behind my legs - presumably the fact that they are small and 'cute' means that they are entitled to behave like out of control loonies around other dogs - and never need to be taught good 'dog manners' -of course there may well come a day when a not so tolerant larger dog will correct them in no uncertain terms !!

And when that day comes the poor dog will probably lose its life and the owner prosecuted for having a dog 'dangerously out of control'
Meanwhile the woman will continue to let her dogs do what they will, and probably dine out on her experience with a vicious dog that attacked her poor little ones

There are lots of those here as well. I find it very annoying and sad as well. One time a neighbors highly aggressive Chihuahua charged out of his yard and attacked my Brownie on his back foot, drawing blood. Brownie fought back viciously as it was painful, breaking the little dogs leg. At the local park a woman actually asked me if her dogs (female and male Yorkie) could "sniff" Brownie and when I said sure, the Yorkie male immediately tried to attack Brownie on his nose. I snatched him back before he could get bitten and she apologized claiming her dog has "never done that before". At dog parks this is also an issue. People bring their aggressive little dogs and let them off leash thinking that because they're tiny, its okay for them to be aggressive. They fail to realize that when bitten hard enough for it to hurt, lots of big dogs will fight back as if it were a wolf attacking them. Then when one is mauled by a larger dog that was only defending himself, it makes us large dog owners look like morons. This is the reason I avoid dog parks nowadays.

I've never been comfortable letting our chis off-leash around other dogs , for both sides of the coin - big dogs with useless owners , and the fact that one of mine's first reaction is to be rude . He's the kind of punkass that just might get his nose bitten off if I let him run up to other dogs. I have tried to socialize him but we didn't have him in his formative year , and we accept that he will never be like his brother, who we did socialize when he was young.
He calms down (I'm repeating myself, aren't I ?) ... he doesn't seem to get , or care, that he's snack-sized to some dogs .

The one that's nice in public is great until his brother gets excited, then I have to make them both sit and stay, or lie down (or just pick them up and move on) .
The nicer one had potential for being a real little monster , but we got him down the good fork in that road when he was a pup and he's an absolute charmer with people.

Anyway , when we lived in the city I only let them loose in small-dog dog -park areas , simply because I didn't want to take any chances with big dogs. We moved to a more rural area three years ago, and they get walks down by the Rio Grande all the time. Then some arseclowns moved in down the road ; they let their untrained pitbulls out sometimes ...I put 300 yards of fence up this spring to keep them out . They already got a chihuahua that lived next door to them .... don't get me started on useless owners .

Ok... I had sworn off discussion boards earlier this summer ... I know I'd have a good time here but I have to move on .

Boww wow wow , yippie aye tie oh , y'all

Dar (the beastmaster )

i have genuinely never met a JRT that wasn't a nasty nippy dog, and people ask me why i dislike them so much!

I know a girl who bought a 'pomchi' or Pomeranian x chihuahua for normal people and she didn't want to start training it to early because he was too cute... as you do!

I think people assume that nice little cute dogs, and labs are all born half trained/are naturally lovely dogs without any guidance. grumble

We don't all let our little dogs run riot you know

But it's tempting, because they're soooo cute

Think another thing with small dogs is once they've been squashed flat/ Pulverised enough times by unruly large ones, they're less likely to want to "Say Hello".

Exactly. Owners of large dogs don't seem to get this.

I wouldn't want to "say hello" to something 10x bigger than me that could potentially leap on me and hurt me.

There's a very overweight golden retriver over my local park who like to roll over on small dogs, the owner just laughs thinks its funny but its not on the small dog its doing it too.