Introducing my dog to friends' dogs
Background/context: My dog, Gus, is a wonderful dog. He LOVES the humans and doggies at doggy-daycare but is definitely leash-reactive and very protective. We have never had a dog over or introduced him to a friend's dog yet. We have also never been to a dog park because he has terrible recall (working on it 😂). I have been training him on all of our walks- rewarding good behavior with clicker and a treat. He now can ignore dogs barking behind fences (if he can't see them), but when we see other dogs on walks, it's game over... I can't keep a loose leash and he won't pay attention to me, but as soon as the dog is out of sight, he is back to normal. When we are still at a distance, I will give him treats when he sees a dog, but he already starts getting tense as soon as he notices one hundreds of feet away. We also live in a neighborhood where people let their dogs roam off-leash (even though we have the leash law here), and we have been approached about a dozen times by both aggressive (chasing and barking at us) and friendly guys that just want to say hello (but it goes poorly because Gus freaks out, of course 😞). He has only barked and tried to make space/getaway when approached by dogs- no biting, snapping, snarling. Thankfully, we've had neighbors intervene in these instances or the dog was easily scared away by me or my husband- to the point it's never progressed more than a lot of barking and getting twisted up in his leash.
We are moving to a new state, new house. We have friends there that have dogs, our house has a big fenced in yard (chain link), and there is at least one neighbor dog that he will inevitably see frequently.
Questions: We know he loves to play with dogs at daycare, so I'd love to hear any advice on how to introduce him to the neighbor's and our friends' dogs (how to ask the owners, how to go about the meeting in general). Given his leash issues, is it best to not involve leashes at all? Should we do professional training before introducing him to other dogs? Would it be safe to introduce him to dogs in our own *new* backyard, since he will not consider it "his territory?" Honestly any and all advice is welcome. Thank you!!
