Through a set of strange events I won’t go into because it gets me angry at how others treat animals, I ended up adopting one quite awhile ago (I have a soft heart, thank you my understanding wife). As you say, that dog was the greatest.
Since I’d never owned a big-ish dog before, I was shocked at how it frightened everyone. There has never been a sweeter, more intelligent dog in our household but most people would cower in fear (especially for some reason hispanic women and black men).
This dog would never leave the yard, even the few ocassions it got loose…would never go past the property line uninvited. Ever.
The best I could do was to divide people into three categories:
(1) Those who were not afraid at all.
(2) Those who I could introduce the dog to, explain the dog’s background and demeanor, and win them over.
(3) Those who were going to be afraid no matter what.
I had great success moving people from (3) to (2), but there were still a few holdouts.
I would introduce the dog to people, explain the dogs history and how I knew it since puppyhood, and demonstrated how obedient the dog was. Plus, I never ever left the property without the dog on a leash.
When neighbor’s dogs would bum-rush mine, (come into my yard and tell my dog they were alpha of the neighborhood), mine would just sit there and look at me – not even a hint of agression. That made neighbors more comfortable. And whenever I saw neighbors who were uncomfortable seeing the dog outside, I would put the dog in the house. I did anything I could to let people know we were very passive.
Slowly people started to use the dog as the neighborhood “protector”, a visual deterrent to strangers in the neighborhood. Not often, but sometimes. Sorry there is no real gold nugget of wisdom in there, just a common sense approach.
