Our Dog:
Lucy is a mixed breed dog. She came to us from a friend when she and her sister were found abandoned on the street at probably 8 weeks old. Our best guess is that she's about 5 months old. We've had her for 2 months. She’s probably got some black lab, smooth fox terrier and probably other things in her too. She’s smaller than a black lab. She seems like the size of a fox terrier. As far as personality… she’s very aware of her surroundings and likes to retrieve things. She’s more tuned in to the outside world than she is to us… so playing the goalie game has helped establish respect. She’s a runner! She seems to have boundless energy. She loves playing with other dogs and will lunge and jump at new dogs to start them playing with her. When we take her out to run we keep her on a long leash and she does well with that. We’re still teaching her to “come” when there are distractions around.

We’ve been using the Goalie game and the 30 minute “Settle” command to develop respect with good success. The Listerine trick is amazing!!! Thanks for that tip too.

Our concerns:

We live in Mexico. The street dog population here is huge. I am feeling stuck in my own home because of street dogs. Usually when I’m by myself they’ll leave me alone, but when I have my dog with me… that’s another story. Lucy’s not a huge dog, and at first she seemed invincible …but since she’s become friends with two larger neighbor’s dogs she seems to have developed proper deference for these two bigger dogs. I haven’t taken her out walking in a while because of two aggressive street dogs we encountered the first time I took her walking. They followed us while barking. I turned around and walked us home, but all the while, Lucy wanted to play with these dogs! Granted, this incident happened before she had become friends with the neighbor's dogs, so maybe it'd be different now. But I found it unsettling. Now,instead of taking her walking, I usually check if the field next to our house is free of stray dogs and I’ll take her out to run once a day for at least a half hour, sometimes more like an hour and a half. It's at these times that the neighbor dogs come and play with Lucy and that seems fine. But when we get back home she whines and looks out the windows whenever stray dogs come by imploring me to let her out to play with every dog that comes by. I don’t have a fenced yard. We rent our house, so there's no chance we can install a fence.

So, I’d like to resume taking her for walks, but I don’t know how to do that when I can’t be certain the stray dogs will behave right. Lucy’s mainly a house dog, but with her energy and desire to socialize, I don’t know that she’s happy with this arrangement. If I could teach her to come better, then maybe I’d let her play in the unfenced backyard with the neighbor’s dog… but the stray dogs often come into this yard too. Should I let her play with the stray dogs that come around? Is that a safe idea? Is it best to let them teach eachother how to behave and develope a pecking order among them? Or should I teach her to leave these dogs alone and ignore them? What's the best approach?
Please help.

Becky (Feeling fenced in by stray dogs.)