To Spray or Not to Spray

I’ve ranted before about encounters with loose dogs (some friendly, some not) that Lilly and I have on our walks in our rural neighborhood. When we talked about these events during our behavior consult, the recommendation for carrying a spray with stopping power came up. Earlier this year, I bought the citronella kind to carry. But, I’ve yet to use it. Maybe I’m just being too nice.

Yesterday, we had another encounter with that loose Newphie who glommed onto us in early May. Since Lilly is NOT supposed to have contact with strange dogs, I did my best to avoid him and/or distract him, including hollering at him and dropping fistfuls of food on the ground, in hopes of him stopping to eat while we made our get-away and came home.

(A huge shoutout to his utterly irresponsible family for ruining our morning walk.)

But, he’s either completely NOT food motivated or just desperate for attention because nothing worked. Lilly full-on snapped and snarled at him, but he didn’t care, he still followed us home. Thankfully, as I’ve mentioned before, he cannot keep pace with us, so he ended up about 10 feet behind us as we hurried home.

And, I did my best to keep feeding Lilly. This dog honestly means no harm, and it’s clearly not his fault that he’s loose.

Still … It made me mondo crabby. With the heat, high gas prices, and Lilly’s new no-contact plan, I already feel pretty trapped at home. So, our morning walks are pretty important to our mental and physical health.

I guess my question is this:

If you had a dog like Lilly, where would you draw the spray-him line?