No fence fighting but large dog, little dog situation. I was at my friends house a few years back. They had two JRs, cute as ever. One was very good, intelligent. The other was very intelligent with a little evil. If the 2nd started sh*t then the first would end up following. One day I was visiting and took Reiker with me. Reiker and the first one was playing and having a good time. The 2nd, (instigator) came over and wanted to bite, and bite and bite. Reiker was told to "relax" but the 2nd one turned it up a notch. Reiker was looking at me like "Master, do I HAVE to take this? I can MAKE them stop!" Well, all hell broke loose, (with the two JRs and they started getting really mean. I picked Reiker up to get him away from their biting (he still wouldn't do a thing) and when I picked him up he had two JRs attached to him! One had bitten and hung on to his ribs and the second had bitten and hung on to his tail. Four feet off the ground with two dogs attached to him.

He's long hair so no broken skin.

I think this post has hit a nerve with many larger breed dog owners. I'm very sympathetic to how upsetting it must be to have a dog that's been injured but I'm also completely weary of being attacked by small dogs when I walk my GSD. When I walk in my neighbourhood, I am only attacked by small dogs- never by the larger dogs (and I see many large dogs- GSDs, dobermans, English Mastiff, etc.). Why is this? Why do so few small dog owners not invest the time in obedience training their dogs? It's not like small dogs can't learn- the Chihuahua in our obedience class is probably at the top of the class. I'm also genuinely puzzled - when off-leash small dogs attack my leashed GSD as we walk by, why am I being screamed at when the owner can't recall his/her small dog? I'm really grateful that my GSD good naturedly endures the attacks.

 

You are lucky your GSD handles it.  I have had small dogs off leash in my neighbor all the time, the come in my yard, My old girl wouldn't have it, she would have killed them given a chance, I alsways supervised them in the yard and could never relax because people are idiots.  My old girl would leave it as long as I was there to tell her too.  If my dog can leran why can't theirs??
 
Lyn

I too had issues with smaller dogs (and one not so small) that liked to run the fence and bark incessantly at my dogs whenever we are out.  My dogs are trained to "leave it" which they do.  I don't let my dogs outside unsupervised and I don't allow them to bark incessently like many other dog owners seem to feel is acceptable.  Currently I am renting so I am having to deal with fence runners on either side of a chain link fence that seperates our yards and I am always out with my dogs.  My permanent home will have a tall privacy fence!!!

My mom has a similar problem only she has a small well trained Shih Tzu that she takes for walks every day.  She has had more instances of having to pick Odie up when other people walking much larger dogs let their dogs run up to Odie (he freaks out due to previous bad experience with big dogs that got ahold of him at the kennel he was staying at while my parents were on vacation, they chewed through the kennel wire to get to him).  My mom has even been jumped on by the bigger dogs who are trying to reach Odie and she is 79 years old!

It is a matter of obedience and owner responsibility. Many small dog owners think the size of their dogs negates the need for obedience or that talking to them like they are humans and can understand what the owner wants just because the owner explains to the dog what is expected in the current situation in as many sentences as possible (now Sweetums, please don't run at the nice lady because we don't run at people because it isn't nice because........blah blah blah).  My sister-in-law is one of those and it drives me nutts.  I have worked with her Yorkie (who is a really good dog) while she was out of town and I was watching him.  Milo was great at obedience and loved to go out to "work" (I trained him along with my GSDs, he was one of the "big dogs" while he stayed with me).  My sister-in-law had him a few weeks and he is now an obnoxious brat dog again!  She didn't see the need to "make him mind since he is sooooooo cute".  Obviously this thread hit a note or three with me hahahahaha