Snappy dogs

[Bean]

Today we were walking in Dawlish (we’re on a short break) with out darling Tilly, who loves to say hello nicely to all dogs, when the spaniel she was saying hello to suddenly snapped at her face!!! Thankfully Tilly jumped back pretty quickly. We noticed she was shaking her head afterwards and had some blood just under her nose!! What is worse she was giving ALL dogs a wide berth on the way back to the car! We found this VERY sad as she is such a sociable dog. I truly hope this experience has not made her afraid.
When we returned to base she ate her dinner fine and she played with her toys as usual so hopefully she’ll forget about it. Not sure why I didn’t see a warning sign from the spaniel. We were very shook up, poor Tilly.

[zeta1454]

Sorry to hear about Tilly’s bad experience. As you say, hopefully it will not have a serious impact on her if she is a sociable dog. Strangely our schnauzers tend to be very wary of spaniels generally although I think this is more down to the fact that many spaniel breeds seem to be quite hyper as they are energetic dogs.

One of our first miniature schnauzers had a bad experience with a greyhound biting her and drawing blood but she did recover fine from this and it did not affect her behaviour around other dogs afterwards.

Hope you are feeling OK too. It is a shock when something like that happens. Take care and maybe (if this was an on-lead meeting) be extra vigilant about Tilly greeting other dogs and keep on-lead contact to a few seconds only.

[Bean]

Thank you for the advice, much appreciated. Tilly has been her usual self so we’re very relieved. Steve and I are very cautious now which is a shame, but I felt tearful and shaky afterwards for a few hours and don’t want another episode like that! She had a wonderful time with her cousins (1retriever and 2 Tibetan spaniels) at my brother’s in Launston (before we went to my sister’s in Dawlish).