Basset puppy, curious but apprehensive. Italian Greyhound tolerating the interaction but not thrilled.
Heading directly towards us, I step off of the path and oncoming oblivious person. Yep, she steps off as well and continues our way. Moving further away and trying my best to make it perfectly clear that we are not interested in an interaction with my body language; my hard work goes unnoticed. Of course it does, I'm use to this response. So many humans are clearly inept at reading body language.
The woman and her very large husky type dog sporting a prong collar attached to an extension leash are not someone we want to talk to. In fact there are very few "strange" dogs we like to meet these days. When Elsa was young we searched for friendly dogs. But even then I had to do some major investigative reading before I allowed an interaction. Just one bad interaction can set things in motion; like when Elsa was attacked by the bulldog. She is now very wary of strange dogs as am I. People just don't understand dogs in general, let alone their own.
"Oh yes, he's friendly," famous last words right? I don't care what anyone tells me, I have to read myself. Even then dogs have many different levels of friendly and as they get older it changes. Many adult dogs do not want to deal with puppies or young rambunctious dogs. Very few dogs want to just play with anyone, no questions asked.
But we push don't we? Pushing can backfire. It can lead to stress and all sorts of new fallout behaviors. We need to know our dogs and respect them for who they are. Elsa LOVES her friends, I mean she goes ga ga over them. She can make new friends but the introduction can take time because of her past experience of being attacked. Plus it must be a very friendly, wiggly and inviting type. Best if it is a male, males seem to get away with murder by Elsa.
Do we want to hug and play with every person we pass while out in our day to day? Hardly. Every dog is different, like us. Respect one another and your dog, we all have our limits.