Let's talk about what happened yesterday when was out walking with my dog. This is going to be a story about a dog (), but mostly about how people forcing "help" onto strangers can cause a ton of harm.

Meet Hugo. He's a cutie pie.

I adopted Hugo a little under a year ago from my local rescue. He was a 5 year old of pretty mysterious background (they'd rescued him from the pound, no idea what happened before then). As with many rescues, he had a lot to learn and was scared of a lot of things.

In the last year he's learned a TON! He knows about having a human of his own (and he's adopted a few more). He's learned that sitting on the sofa is the BEST. He went from being terrified of cars to bounding into the passenger seat, tail wagging happily.

Just in the last couple of weeks, he finally learned about Making Fetch Happen and, let me tell you, every day we've had a DELIGHTED dog bounding from one end of the garden to the other, filled with ZOOMS and CATCHING and HAPPINESS.

...a couple months ago he also learned that yes, it IS possible to gobble food off the kitchen counters while the hoomins aren't looking and, well, that led a a trip to the vet and the humans being kept on our toes to keep the counters clean...

There's one fear that Hugo has, though, that is taking a long, long time to work through:

He's terrified of other dogs.

He has two dog friends who he's been introduced to slowly and carefully. Every other dog, though? Terrifies him.

Here's what happens when Hugo sees another dog. At a distance, he instantly gets alert. Eyes widen, ears up, breathing quickens. If they get close he'll start to whine. Whining turns into crying, breathing gets even faster, he'll run back and forth on his lead to try to get away.

It's a level of distress and panic that's really hard to see.

If the other dog gets even closer, he'll melt-down completely. By now he'd be barking at the top of his voice, eyes wide, crying in between barks.

And if they get right up to him, he's going to attack them.

This attacking isn't made of aggression. It's pure, undiluted terror.

But here's the thing: me and him have been working on this for months, and we are making very slow, very gentle progress.

The methods I've been using for this are basic in principle, and tough in practice. It's all classical counter-conditioning.

The idea is that you find out where his threshold is- at what level alertness becomes panic, basically. You slowly, gently introduce him to the presence of his fear outside that threshold, and you pair every instance of the fear with a really loved reward.

You try to never allow a situation to happen where what he's scared of- in this case, strange dogs- gets inside the threshold and triggers panic. You just slowly and gently get him comfortable with them outside his threshold, and be guided by how that becomes closer.

You can also help to bolster that threshold by removing/avoiding other stressors, so the dog is starting form a relatively happy place. Hugo doesn't like loud noises- traffic or high winds are tricky for him.

All simple in theory, and hard in practice.

We go for our walks at quiet times, along quiet streets. I keep an eagle eye out for other dogs in the distance- it's a race between my height and his amazing collie-mix eyes.

I turn us down different roads, or carefully time our walking past parked cars so close-by dogs don't end up in Hugo's field of vision. And every walk we're on, I pick two or three times when we see far-away dogs to work on positive reinforcement.

it's WORKING. Very slowly, but it really is.

Until yesterday, when one man's insistence on meddling set us back weeks, if not more.

Let's start with my mistake- I made a big one.

I forgot that it was Sunday afternoon, and that that meant that a LOT of people would be out walking their dogs. Normally I'd remember that, but, well, with the lockdown one day kind of blends into another.

I was also feeling confident- like I said, we're making loads of progress! For the last few walks, Hugo had managed to see dogs walking on the other side of the road with barely more than a few whines before moving on.

I shouldn't have been blasé. That was my mistake.

I realised my mistake very quickly. Within a few hundred yards of my front door, Hugo had already seen a half-dozen other dogs. There were dogs walking on every street, so there wasn't a way to maintain distance. He had gone from alertness to anxiety and was verging on panic.

I decided to turn us around immediately, and take the quickest route back to the house- which was just a couple hundred yards away. I turned to cross the road and saw a man with a large dog- a gorgeous german shepherd- at the other side of the road.

They were coming towards us, so I moved me and Hugo a bit down the road and crossed. They were crossing in the opposite direction.

This was too much for Hugo- despite us being at a distance, this was one dog too many for him- and he started to panic.

Hugo was barking, whining, crying, hyperventilating, running uncontrollably back and forth, his eyes so wide the whites were totally visible- he was in clear and intense distress.

He's also a big dog, and he was scaring an old woman walking down the road.

I got us to the other side of the road, brought us to the side of the path next to the wall, and *stopped* us.

This is not something I generally do- mainly because I work to prevent this from happening.

Right now, though I needed to keep us still, keep H physically safe, and assess the situation. I couldn't keep us walking towards home- there was another dog a ways away in that direction.

I also knew that once the first dog left, Hugo would probably calm just a little.

Once Hugo had calmed, just a little, I could work to bring his attention back to me (he needs to be calm enough to accept treats to do this), then distract him with activities (sit, jump, down, shake-hands) and we could start to walk home.

But while he was panicking I needed to keep everyone physically safe. So I got him to Sit (and oh, I'm SO PROUD of him for Sitting for me while he was literally having a panic attack), I stayed very very calm and kept myself in between him and everything except the wall.

Not ideal, but you gotta put on the lifejacket before repairing the boat, right?

But Hugo didn't calm down. He kept panicking, getting more and more distressed.

After a time- probably a few seconds, it felt longer- I turned my head around.

The man, with his dog, had not moved.

They were both standing directly across the road from us. It was windy (another thing making things harder for Hugo) but I could see he was saying something to me.

I looked at him to try and listen.

He was telling me- shouting across the road at me- that I was doing everything wrong and I needed to... something.

I couldn't hear what he said.

I think it was to ignore Hugo (which is a good plan, tbh, normally- you don't want to reinforce "bad" behaviour).

So I shouted "I know exactly what I'm doing, I need you to leave." I'm working very hard to project my voice without stress, anger or fear coming across- harder than you'd think, given the situation and also the noise of the wind. But it's essential.

I don't want under any circumstances to give Hugo the impression that I am anything but calm in this situation. If he picks up on perceiving me to also be scared, it would fuel his panic even more.

The man doesn't leave. He stays where he's standing. He yells something else at me- again, telling me that I'm wrong and I need to.. something.

His dog is still there. Hugo is utterly, blindingly terrified.

This time I'm done.

I shout across "My dog is not going to stop panicking until you and your dog leave. I need you to leave, now. PLEASE."

By this time Hugo is in utter meltdown- a situation which, as I've said, hasn't happened in quite a while.

I've been walking him in quiet spaces and times, ensured there's a very small chance of other stressors like loud noises, worked hard to spot other dogs before he does, given positive reinforcement, and reinforced redirecting his attention to me when he sees other dogs.

After that one incident, he was anxious and panicked for the rest of the day. I got us home and we drove the couple of blocks to his favourite (very quiet) park. In the park he was anxious, distracted, running from one end of the leash to the other back and forth.

He was unable to calm himself enough to pay any attention to me, unable to be calm enough even to take his favourite treats from me.

We had a very short walk in the park and I brought him home after just a few minutes.

This man's actions may have undone weeks, possibly months of patience and work.

It's not just that he presumed that I didn't know what I was doing. Nor that he thought that yelling at someone across a road was useful.

Nor that he got pissed at me when I told him to leave.

(Did I mention that? It was very clear that he got actively offended and insulted when I told him he needed to leave and that he was making things worse.)

(I do, by the way, not believe that a man would treat another man- someone he respects as an equal- that way.)

What was REALLY damaging was the fact that this man, who claimed to know my dog better than me, was oblivious to how his actions were CLEARLY escalating the situation.

He was so convinced of his authority that he was unable to see the active harm he was causing.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm bringing gender into this- this is one guy, one situation, right?

It is. And I want to be clear that the VAST majority of men who I've encountered walking Hugo have been perfectly lovely.

The vast majority of people- any gender!- with dogs understand instantly what's going on. I'll tell them (across the road!) that he's a rescue and scared and we're Working On It, and they'll normally just say something encouraging and we move on.

In the last year, only about a dozen or so people have offered unwanted, unsolicited Advice to me, without my seeking out any communication with them at all, while I'm out with Hugo.

And while most men are lovely: EVERYONE who has done this to me has been the same demographic.

Specifically, EVERY person who has acted arrogantly, ignorantly, and made the situation significantly worse through their presumption of my own ignorance and incompetence has been in that demographic.

(And again, the vast majority of people do NOT do this)

I am certain that if I were a six-foot tall man in his late 30s who was acting like he knew what he was doing to de-escalate a situation like this, I wouldn't have to also deal with other men's arrogance, imposition, and deeply offended feelings when told to stop it.

And that doesn't just annoy the crap out of me (although it does).

It also harms my dog.

I'm about to take Hugo out for a walk. I'm apprehensive about how it will be, and whether he'll be the happy, relatively calm dog of two days ago, or the terrified one of yesterday.

And I want to say this: The vast majority of men don't do this shit.

But I'll bet that man from yesterday has NO IDEA that he's after messing things up. I bet he's rolling his eyes at that hysterical bitch he was just trying to help.

Which leads me to:

If this thread has you feeling defensive, I want you to look at where that's coming from.

I'll bet you don't WANT to be That Guy. But That Guy probably doesn't think he's That Guy.

So take a look, and if you're defensive, ask yourself why. And keep asking.