Golden Retriever Charges at Three Dobermans on Walk in Wild Video: 'Crazy'

A dog owner has shared dramatic footage of the moment three of her Dobermans were confronted by an off-the-leash golden retriever.

Leslie Stark told Newsweek she posted a clip of the confrontation to her dog's TikTok account, thedobieteam, "to educate people on responsible dog ownership."

Stark is a certified dog trainer who uses a science-led approach that focuses on "the well-being of the dog and helping people understand their dogs and the reason behind the 'bad behavior' that they currently experience."

Originally from Peru, Stark is the proud owner of five Dobermans—Boss, Kyra, Gaia, Zeus and Arya—and regularly posts about their adventures together on social media under the moniker of the Dobie Team.

"I've always been around strong breed dogs since I was a kid," she said. "My first Dobie came home when I was 4, and we previously owned rottweilers and German shepherds."

Stark's line of work means she's no stranger to disobedient dogs. However, one video recently posted to the Dobie Team TikTok account has been causing a stir on social media. The clip shows Stark and three of her Dobermans being accosted by a golden retriever, who charges at them during a walk in a residential area.

"I was walking in my neighborhood with three of my five dogs when I suddenly spotted an off-leash golden retriever, kind of 60 meters away from me," Stark said. "He was sniffing on the grass, and that's when I thought, OK, think fast. If he sees us, he'll either come to greet, come fight or perhaps he'll just ignore us."

While she was thinking this, Stark noticed the golden retriever had "turned his head up" and was looking directly at them. She immediately spotted the telltale signs that the dog was "alert and defensive": an "inflated chest, hairs up, tail rigid and up, closed mouth and ears pricked forward." So she immediately took her phone out to record what happened next.

"I wanted to be able to have proof of what had really happened in case it ended in a bad fight," she explained.

In the video, the golden retriever can be seen charging in, barking as it confronted the three dogs Stark was with: Zeus, Gaia and Arya. The golden retriever is shown circling the Dobermans, barking and bearing its teeth. It then appears to make several attempts at biting or nipping at the other dogs in a tense encounter that threatened to boil over into something uglier.

All of Stark's Dobermans escaped the incident unscathed, with the golden retriever rounded up soon afterward. The footage sparked much comment on TikTok, where the video has been watched over 33 million times.

The incident wasn't a surprise to some. "My golden is the same...crazy," one viewer wrote. Another said: "My sister's husky when he was small got attacked twice by two diff golden retrievers."

Though Stark acknowledges that the golden retriever approached them in a "nonfriendly, more aggressive manner," she's not keen on attributing a "general characteristic" to any particular breed, as "each dog is unique."

"What I can comment on is that, surprisingly, there are many cases of unbalanced goldens that are not friendly at all and that cause similar scenes as the one we saw on the video," she said.

"I highly believe that this is due to the fact that since goldens are considered a friendly breed, they tend to end up in households with poor dog knowledge or in households of people that don't invest any time in the proper raising and training of the dog," she said.

According to data compiled as part of the American Kennel Club's Current Trends in Pet Spending Report for 2021-2022, just 8 percent of dog owners took their dogs to obedience training over the 12-month period surveyed.

That figure is part of a wider trend in which many dog owners are failing to properly train their pets. That's why Stark sought to share the footage.

"We shouldn't blame a specific breed but rather address the fact of taking proper care of our own dogs," she said.

It's about "letting everyone know that your dog is your responsibility and that absolutely every dog from every breed or mix needs education and training," she added.

As a Doberman owner, she also wanted to use the video to highlight what she calls "breed discrimination."

"We all know that if it was one Dobie trying to attack three goldens, all the news channels would be titled Aggressive Doberman Pounces at Innocent Friendly Goldens," she said. "The media is always trying to hit on aggressive breeds. It just drives me crazy, and it's absolutely incorrect."

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