> Never try to grab the collar - it puts your hand/arm by their face. Instead, the prevailing advice is to grab both back legs and wheelbarrow the dog so that the back legs are both off the ground. It forces them to stop jumping, keeps you away from their head, and makes it so they can’t turn and start on you. Also, it’s a move that can be done on most dog sizes regardless of strength of the person. I’ve done this three times with success in high stress situations like you’ve described (and I’m a fairly small woman).

Wow, I am not sure that I would have thought of this. I have several neighbors with aggressive dogs, one of which has gotten off leash multiple times. I also ran into someone a few weeks ago with a pair of off leash Newfoundlands. One of them left the bank of Rock Creek, climbed up a small hill, and tried to attack one of my dogs. All the while, the real dodo brain of an owner was yelling “he’s friendly! can you catch him for me!” We were yelling and retreating and it still never registered that their bear of a dog was coming to attack and had back up on the way. Only at the last second did the owner appear to take the situation seriously. Very, very fortunately we managed to pull our dogs back and basically run backward while they barely caught their Newfoundlands. I had many crazy thoughts while wondering “am I gonna have to fight off two newfoundlands while my partner runs our dogs away?”