what to do when encountered by an aggressive unleashed dog?

[SnowyShiloh]

What the heck are the dog owners in this town thinking? Had a very minor but rather odd experience with another dog today. I was just walking home the way I always walk, which is on a nice big sidewalk that runs along the back yards of a lot of houses. One of the houses has a tall chain link fence with a gate that leads onto the sidewalk. As I approached that particular yard, I immediately noticed that the gate was hanging wide open and that since this morning the owners have shoveled out a walkway in the snow to the gate from their back porch. That's well and fine of course, except apparently after digging the walkway (and opening the gate!), they let their huge dog into the backyard and went inside. The huge dog that naturally started barking and approaching as soon as it saw me. I've walked this same way for 4 years now and haven't seen this dog in about 2 years, he's very barky and I was actually wondering they other day if they still had him since I hadn't seen him in so long. Why on Earth would the one day they choose to let him in the backyard also be the one day that they choose to leave their gate open? Thankfully Mr. Doggie stayed in his yard and didn't come out the gate (though I remember him coming out a couple of times to bark at me a couple years back), but seriously.

As for the original dog this thread was about, I'm pretty sure someone adopted him He's no longer on Petfinder, but he WAS featured on the shelter's web site as pet of the week a couple weeks back! Hopefully someone saw him and decided to give him a great home! I took a screenshot of him when he was pet of the week, they had a cute little bandana on him and a nice bio.

 

[LakeCondo]

I'm glad to hear both situations turned out ok. I'm hoping that the gate issue won't happen again. They sound like responsible people with one lapse, unlike your neighbors.

But your mentioning snow shoveling took me aback. The warm weather recently, with many new record highs set, & by 4`-5`, not just 1`-2`, means that the plants are about a month ahead of what used to be normal before climate change.

 

[SnowyShiloh]

LakeCondo, today was a pretty warm day (relatively speaking) and snow and ice are starting to melt a bit but we still have a long ways to go!

Hopefully the gate will remain closed. I'm half tempted to close it myself but that's just asking for trouble, especially if the dog is out. Wonder where he's been all this time? And I wonder why they decided to shovel a path through the snow, they haven't been going out the gate at all this winter (no foot prints in the snow) and it will be melted within 2 weeks. Their street (as in the street the front door opens onto) runs parallel to the street/sidewalk the gate opens on to so you aren't really saving time by going out the back. Now this is just me being nosy rather than a concern