Soooo, those of you who read my last post "Sort of a Sad Rant", you know what my canine situation is where I live.
Those that didn't, basically, my dogs are nuts, and I'm the only person in my neighborhood that actually cares for their dogs.
Okay, now that we've had our refresher course...
Diesel is a 4 year old APBT X Border Collie who, for the first two years of his life, lived on the end of a 4 foot chain, with interaction ONLY from me and my friends. And, for the past two years, I've been struggling to socialize him. It's not going very well due to the lack of willing, eligible participants -.- ~ Aleu is 5, a Siberian Husky, and she's had boat loads of socialization, but unfortunately doesn't have very good doggy manners. Only Diesel can handle her. It's sort of like... she sends mixed signals. Dogs can't seem to figure out if she's friendly or a threat. Of course I can tell she's not a threat, I know her intentions are good, but she just... is rough and loud and excited.
But we manage.
Now here's the problem.
A new neighbor, who has been here for alllmmooosssttt a month, now randomly has two little, yappy, irritating, obviouslyneverhadanytrainingatallever dogs. One is a Shi'Tzu, the other is either a Shi'Tzu, or a Poodle. It was hard for me to tell between them shittingbricks and trying to distract my two. I heard them before I saw them. I didn't recognize their barks, and I can tell every dog down here apart by their bark. These two have had to have shown up this morning. So I know nothing about them.
But from what I have learned to read about dogs from just being around them, they are not joking around. They're growling and snapping and running from side to side and shoving their heads through the porch bars, standing rigid with their hackles raised, eyes fixed. I am DEFINITELY not comfortable walking past them, as they've been acting like this with not only dogs, but with people too. And cars. The only thing keeping them on their porch is a rickety baby gate that my brain keeps envisioning popping out with one swift press. .-.
My dogs HATE these things. Generally they try to ignore the other dogs but these two, they have just decided they want to eat them. Aleu is excited, she looks at them like they're cats. She gets that familiar look in her eye that says 'lunch >8D' and Diesel tightens his body and all but breaks his neck to get at them, his hackles raised and his own eyes fixed. That baby gate is the ONLY thing stopping a tragedy. For once, I'm frightened for someone else's dogs.
After walking/jogging for over an hour, playing with horses, and splashing in creeks and shoving their noses in godknowswhat's dens, they STILL remembered these dogs and stopped to look on the way back. Thankfully they weren't outside at the time.
And now the questions.
What can I do to at least get my dogs' attention off these things?
I'm honestly very afraid to pack any treats with me and use those to get their attention, because I feel like that would be us stopping, allowing the porchrats extra time to get excited and bark, and possibly knock that gate down and throw crap at the fan. And arranging my walking schedule around when the dogs are outside are inside won't really work as I have no way of knowing when they will or won't be outside, especially when I come back.
