Would you label this "person aggression"?

[DeeMcB]

There is a young man (early 20's) that takes his dog to the same dog park as us. Every time we see him there, he talks about how he had GSD's growing up and that he was looking for one when he came across the dog he has now (sweet little pit girl). Our dogs play together well so we tend to gravitate toward each other at the park. That is to say, Ezra (my 8mo) "knows" this guy only because he's seen him at the park.

So the dogs are wrestling, running, having a great time when the young man starts to call Ezra. Ezra glances over at him but continues with his games. The next time Ez zooms by, the young man grabs him by his collar and says, "Come here". Ezra immediately turns and snaps at the guy. I said, "Wow, I wouldn't do that again if I were you" and he said, "I only wanted to pet him. I didn't know he was people aggressive".

My vote? They guy acted inappropriately. If he'd told me he wanted to pet Ezra, I might have called him over and had him sit for a pet. Grabbing a dog that doesn't know you by the collar when they're in the middle of playing was just plain dumb on his part and I did not correct Ezra for it.

What do you think?

[LaRen616]

If some stranger grabbed my GSD by the collar in a rough way mine would have probably snapped at him too. Not only because he is a stranger and he did it rough but because it probably would have surprised him.

[Emoore]

I wouldn't call it aggression. More self-defense.

[Jax08]

I would not consider that people aggressive. I would consider that an idiot person. He grabbed a dog that doesn't really know him while the dog was in drive. He had no business grabbing your dog at all.

[xenos56]

Not people aggressive, it was just a reaction to suddenly being grabbed. Really.. who does that? How did this guy not see how inappropriate this was?

[Konotashi]

If I grabbed a strange dog mid-play at the dog park by the collar, I'd expect that.... But I have enough common sense not to do that.

[hunterisgreat]

If a stranger grabbed either one of my dogs while they were high drive I'm not sure if there would be a bite or not. I wouldn't call that people aggressive though if they did

[Konotashi]

I think I'd be pretty upset with someone grabbing my dog by his collar, especially if he was playing. Then turning around calling him aggressive because of his stupidity. They'd get a hunk of my mind.

[hunterisgreat]

Well. My female is really really mouthy so there would be a bite for sure, but not sure about a defensive one

[selzer]

I don't know what one of mine would do in such a situation. The more stories like this I hear about people and dog parks, the more I prefer to pass on the whole thing. It is not even so much the other dogs that are unpredictable, but the people.

If your dog would have bitten that guy, and the guy would have had to get his hand stitched up, how many of us would believe that our dog would come away smelling like a rose.

I mean, we cannot put our dogs in boxes to protect them from idiots, but still...