My dog Rico was the sweetest, craziest dog, but he was very leash reactive. The first time I ever felt comfortable enough to take him out to a crowded street, he was actually really good, but I only felt comfortable enough to do this because he was muzzled. Now, this allowed me to advance his training of course and to gain more and more trust in him. The biggest change for our training was using an E-Collar and then adding the muzzle, because I wasn’t as worried for the biting as I was for the screaming. Once we got the screaming under control we could focus on everyone being safe, hence the muzzle.
The first big outing with other dogs we had was on a leash, to an art walk around a neighborhood in Austin, the second big outing we had with A LOT of other dogs was to an off leash hike with about 8 other dogs running around each other.
A lot of people tend to think that muzzles are only for aggressive dogs when in reality it’s not the case. They are there for safety, it can be that the dog might bite for sure, but it can also mean that you are conditioning your dog to wearing the muzzle just in case he ever needs it because he got hurt or because he needs to use it at the vet and you don’t want the muzzle to mean “it’s time to go to that horrible place that you hate” or what about those dogs that eat absolutely everything they find on the floor. Muzzles are used for a variety of reasons, so don’t fall in the taboo of changing to the other side walk because you see a dog with a muzzle, but don’t tempt the destiny and pet a dog with a muzzle.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to muzzles is just throwing one on your dog without any previous exposure to one. Some dogs might be fine, but the majority are not. It’s better to get them acquainted to in various steps. Let them see it and sniff it, put some peanut butter in it without even putting the muzzle on just so they get a feeling that it’s nothing bad. Then start feeding them treats and allowing them to put their snout in by themselves, once you’ve worked on this for maybe 3 or 4 short sessions of about 3 minutes, start strapping the muzzle. An extra thing that you can do is allowing your dog to eat a meal with the muzzle, but also try not to forget to make your dog walk around it for a bit, one thing is them feeling comfortable with the muzzle while resting another thing is feeling comfortable with it while walking.
Might not be the shortest process, but it’s 100% worth it.