I'm not a dog person, so I may be venturing into uncharted territory here. I tend to put dogs into catagories:

BMU dogs are big mean ugly dogs, which I avoid.
BFS dogs are big friendly slobbering dogs, which I tend to keep at a distance.
HWP dogs are hard working police dogs, and I always hope the human on the other end of the leash is in control.
LBY dogs are little bitty yapping dogs, and they are not my favorite either.

Strange as it seems, I sometime get to know a dog and almost like them, but it is only that one dog. Now take Cosmo, for example. He is BFS dog, a lab they tell me, and he belongs to my grand children. He thinks I am his best friend, but of course *everybody* is his best friend. I wish he wouldn't slobber.

There is a LBY dog up the street who might be a police dog considering the amount of time he spends on stakeout. He is slightly bigger than a mosquito and just about as lovable. His owners tend to stake him out in good weather. His chain gives him a radius of about 20 feet, and his perimeter is only about ten feet from the road. When I go by walking, biking or scootering, he gets rather frantic. He almost turns himself wrong side out when he hits the end of the chain. I wonder what he is trying to tell me.

I even got friendly with a rotwieler. I know that isn't spelled right. (The only breed that has a spellable name is a Jack Russell, and I'm not sure I've ever seen one of those.) But back to the big rot (BMU) whose name was Maxey. Maximum dog, I guess. She weighed over 100 pounds and was absolutely scary to look at. But she was a mild mannered dog about 99% of the time. I worried about the other 1%. Unfortunately, Maxey wandered off into the woods one day and never came back.

Sometimes dog owners worry me more than their dogs. They say, "Aw, he won't bite." That reminds, me of the parents who say, "My child won't lie to me." If people love their dogs so much, why don't they keep them in the back yard and away from traffic? Why should the poor dog feel threatened by passerbys?
Howard