It was kind of ironic when talking to some of the people that would came up. We would explain the reason she is wearing a muzzle and then the person would say "Oh. My dog does that". BUT, of course there dog would not be muzzled.
There were many difficult dogs there, and owners who I wasn't sure understood that there dogs were a problem. It's interesting after having worked with Pepper so much we are better able to watch dogs and their handlers with a critical eye.
- That dog is out in front dragging around it's handler, it looks pretty dominant.
- That dog keeps charging other dogs when they walk by.
- That dog's chest is out and tail is up, it's very dominant.
- That dog is shaking, it's obviously afraid.
- That dog's tail is curled up under it's body, it's afraid.
Of course Pepper took the opportunity to make liers of us by meeting many dogs without incident. Many of which were head on meetings. We had 2 incidents, neither of which escalated because Pepper was limited by the muzzle and we were watchful.
The first incident was caused by a woman walking a German Shepard. While she was walking by us the German Shepard decided to switch sides and took his handler out by tangling her legs with his leash. She fell hard and hurt her knee. I'm not sure why but this caused Pepper to growl at the German. An obvious warning, and possibly caused by the handlers fall.
The second incident was in a hangar where they PAWS had organized the various vendors that were there for the event. She had her muzzle on and a treat fell from a counter in front her. She immediately put her head down to get it, but was unable to because of the muzzle. Another dog by her also put his head down a manage to get the treat out from under her head. This caused her to snarl and charge the dog. I was her handler and I grabbed her back legs and pulled her back (I try never to pull with the pinch collar). I then popped her pinch collar (correction) and put her in a sit.
I'd like to thanks the lady at the Animal Hospital booth. She like Pepper so much she grabbed to fistfuls of treats and put it in our bags for her. We said hello to some old friends from when we used to take Pepper to dog parks. They were manning the COLA booth. Another great organization that people should donate money to. We waved to one of Pepper's past trainer, she was busy given Canine Good Citizen tests.
The walk itself was a bit longer than we anticipated. It is a 5K walk, but we thought it was going to be shorter. As a result we had Pepper wearing her backpack with 20lbs. of weight. It worked fine initially. The backpack gave her more focus on walking, and less focus on other dogs. However we went over lots of loose gravel, and rough trails. I ended up carrying the backpack for the later part of the walk. I'm glad I took her backup from her because I found out the sharp rocks and her weights made her right front paw sore. We took her home, did very short walks later on. The next day her paw was fine.
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