#and would signal that her ears were uncomfy (because she was getting another ear infection) by not eating until I checked her ears

[bobblestheninja]

There are some reasons you wouldn't want to muzzle a reactive dog though.

My Molly had a rough life before we got her, and was fear-aggressive with other dogs. We put in a ton of training with her, but even then the leashed/unleashed power dynamic was not one she did well with (luckily in our area not a lot of people let their dogs off leash)

However, we didn't use the muzzle as a preventative measure during walks, that's because we very quickly realized that it had a psychological effect on her (because of having to use it for the vets when she was having her joints checked for her arthritis, that she started having issues with pretty young.)

That's because the second the muzzle went on (so long as one of her people were nearby, or one of the vets/techs she knew, or one of her people physically handed the leash to the other person) she relaxed.

She was a Rhodisian Ridgeback/Lab mix, and wanted to keep her people safe. So the muzzle signaled to her that it was okay, we were doing the protecting for now. It was a signal that worked super well, especially once she developed diabetes and had to get insulin twice a day/get her sugars tested. Muzzle on, Molly relaxed, there was no issue with doing whatever medical thing that needed to be done. Muzzle meant humans were in control of her safety and wouldn't let anything bad happen to her.

However, using the muzzle for situations where we didn't know it was 100% safe for her and that we didn't have control over? That wasn't something we would do, because we didn't want some other person's dog attacking her when she was vulnerable and ruining her signal to relax and allow her ears to be medicated or to calm down so she can be poked. So no muzzle for walks, just the harness and strong leash so that she could be taken away from the situation, and carefully planning our trips. The harness allowed us to control her, especially when she got older, because even though she was a good 80 lbs she had hip dysplasia, and her hind legs were relatively weak. So even if she wouldn't sit (if a dog came by on leash we would go far to the side of the path, basically into the bush, and she would have to sit with no slack in the leash) then I could basically use the harness to lift her front end a little off the ground so she couldn't get the leverage to do anything even if she wanted to.

Now she wasn't going to bite people or anything, she was very calm with people, but we did know that it was a possibility if an unleashed dog came up to her. But because we could make sure she couldn't lunge, and our area didn't have off-leash dogs that often, we could keep the muzzle for unfun vet visits and keep it from being associated with being powerless and vulnerable, and keep it being more associated with being safe in an uncomfortable situation.

Everyone else talked about outdoor cats, it's time for me to talk about offleash dogs