Dog park politics

Yesterday afternoon, Montana was involved in a minor incident with another dog at the dog park. Well, I say it was minor. The other owner might not agree. I still haven't figured out what to make of the whole thing.

First, as background, there are a few pertinent facts.

1. Over the nearly five months that Montana has been with us, she has gone from not knowing at all how to engage with other dogs to truly enjoying playtime at the dog park. Her favorite type of playing is chase, followed closely by doggy wrestling.
2. There are some dogs that she won't play with and some dogs that she always plays with. There are also a couple dogs that always want to play with her when she doesn't want to, and some dogs that she always wants to play with when they don't want to. This is the case for most dogs at the dog park.
3. For the most part, dogs seem pretty well able to regulate themselves at the dog park. Occasionally a skirmish or fight will break out, requiring owner involvement. But most of the time, if a dog wants to play and another dog doesn't want to, the other dog will make its feelings very clear by walking away or snarling at the other dog.
4. The other dog involved in the incident with Montana is a 10-month-old shepherd puppy that Montana absolutely loves, and who does not love Montana. Every time this dog comes to the dog park, Montana tries to play with him, and he never wants to. This does not deter her from trying.
5. Montana's way of playing involves running after a dog until she catches up with it, then gently pouncing or otherwise trying to engage in wrestling with the dog. She is also very verbal and barks loudly at dogs she wants to play with. She does not take shit from dogs she doesn't want to play with, and she also doesn't beat up on other dogs. If a dog she's playing with ends up on the ground, she will wait excitedly for it to get up. She has never once tried to go after a dog that was on the ground.
   
6. Many other dogs play the same way as Montana. They run after each other and when they catch each other, they wrestle. The way they normally catch each other is by cutting off the angle so that the dog they're chasing can't get by.
   
7. The dog in question is extremely submissive. He always crawls on his belly and rolls on his back when playing. He is also intimidated by Montana. I think her playful barking scares him. Whenever she tries to play with him, he ducks down low to the ground and slinks away.

So yesterday at the dog park, Montana caught sight of the other dog. Wanting to play with him, as always, she ran after him, full-speed. He ran away. She caught up with him, and most likely tried to cut him off, at which point they collided, hard. Montana was fine, but the other dog collapsed on the ground, yelping. This attracted the attention of all the other dogs at the dog park, who all ran over to see what was happening, which caused all their owners to run after them to pull them away.

The dog was fine, just shaken up. His owner pulled him up and he wasn't injured, limping, or anything else. Within three minutes, he was happily playing again like nothing had happened. Still, it was one of those incidents that was very noticeable. At first I didn't realize that Montana was the other dog in the collision. She had walked away like nothing had happened and was sniffing around maybe 100 feet away, totally unconcerned, which is always what happens when there's an incident at the dog park--she never gets involved.

Once I figured out that it was Montana who collided with the other dog, I went to the owner and apologized, and petted the dog and made sure he was OK, which he clearly was. And I thought that would be the end of it, except that the owner was clearly pissed about it. He didn't scream or pitch a fit or anything, but when I apologized, he said in an annoyed voice, "She always does that to him." When I asked what he meant, he said that Montana was always trying to dominate his dog, harassing him and trying to cut him off when he ran so she could knock him over.

I didn't quite know what to say. In that moment, I saw the way he must perceive us: Montana as the out-of-control, aggressive dog and me as the passive owner who thinks it's all in good fun when really it isn't at all. There are dogs like that at the dog park, and owners. But I have been thinking about this since it happened, and I absolutely do not think Montana qualifies. The dogs that I see as aggressive are the ones that bite, and snarl without provocation, and go after dogs that are already down, and instigate fights. The useless owners are the ones who don't watch their dogs at all and who ignore situations where their dog is clearly being aggressive toward another dog.

And that's not Montana, and it's not me. She is never aggressive toward other dogs, ever. She never tries to dominate. And this wasn't an act of aggression--it was an accidental collision.

Still, I could see how the owner perceived it, and I could sort of see where he was coming from. Montana does always try to play with his dog, and his dog never engages back. Now that a collision has occurred, the owner looks back at those other times with more annoyance and frustration than he did before.

The thing is, his dog never regulated the situation. Yes, he's submissive, but Montana never attacked him, never tried to hurt him, never really even bothered him. All she ever did was run after him and try to play with him, and dogs do that with other dogs all the time. And most of the time, if a dog doesn't want to play with another dog, and the other dog is being persistent about it, the first dog will set limits by snarling or something. This dog never did that.

And the owner never talked to me, never said, hey, I know your dog is just playing but could you call her off? So I had no idea that he thought this behavior was a problem, and in fact I don't think he did think it was a problem until this collision happened, and then he looked back at it and decided that it had been a problem.

Anyway, he was angry about it, and since I could sort of understand it, even though I felt like he was overreacting, I didn't want to stand there making a bunch of justifications about it. I did say that I really thought she was just trying to play and was definitely not trying to dominate his dog. He did concede on that point, but he said it didn't matter because the point is, my dog harasses his dog and that's what led to this whole thing.

So, I told him that in the future, when my dog tries to play with his, I'll call her off. And he said OK, but he was clearly still pissed about it.

And actually, I'm a little bit pissed about it too. I thought about it long and hard, after going to the gym to clear my head, and if the situation were reversed, there's no way I would have reacted like that. In fact, Montana was once trampled by a pair of labs chasing after a tennis ball, and when the owner apologized, I said, quite honestly, that it wasn't a big deal and that you have to expect that these sorts of things will happen at the dog park. And I still believe that.

If you can't deal with the occasional accidental collision between your dog and another one, when all the other one wants to do is play, you probably shouldn't be bringing your dog to the dog park. It's one thing if a dog displays aggression, but that's not what this was, not at all. Montana is always under control at the dog park, she plays very well with pretty much every other dog there, and she is a big favorite of most of the other owners.

To me, it seems like an unfortunate incident where luckily, nobody was hurt, the dogs have most likely already forgotten about it, and it generally wasn't a big deal. Now that it's happened, I'll pay more attention to Montana's interactions with this dog, but I still don't think that she has ever really crossed a line with him. But I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, am I seeing this all wrong? Was this guy justified in being so pissed off?