It may not be about your dog. I avoid sniffs with one of my dogs because he's so high anxiety. He goes crazy with other dogs barking, growling, you name it. He's never bit anyone but it's just easier to avoid the whole encounter.

I would always ask. You can just say “hey would it be okay if I let my dog say hi?”

Some dogs have baggage or bad behaviors, or maybe it’s also the owner who has some anxiety or social reason for it.

Not all dogs are well socialized. My mom's dog would snap when she got stressed.

No one can tell from walking past how well trained and behaved your dog is or how up to date on its shots it is. It only takes one bad incident to realize there's a lot of terrible dog owners out there and protecting your dog's means not letting them say hi to every single dog they see outside.

Not making any accusations but it's not always about the dogs. Sometimes the owner sketches me out.

Small dogs are too unpredictable and escalate without warning.

My dog would do serious damage if he felt the need to defend us.

My cute, sweet to me little dog is a murder machine in the streets

My personal experience is that small dogs tend to be absolute monsters far more often than big dogs. That's not because they're less trainable but more just because they're small enough that many bad behaviors are ignorable so bad owners don't bother to correct them. A lot of the people I know who have small dogs couldn't train a dog to save their life so they got a dog small enough that they could just call the bad behaviors cute rather than actually doing something about them. If a big dog gets agressive towards every other dog they meet, you kind of have to fix that issue very quickly or completely stop taking them on walks in public. But with small dogs, a lot of people seem perfectly content to let them be agressive towards every other dog they meet and rely on the physically larger dogs being well trained enough to not retaliate.

Of course none of that is to say that you're one of those bad owners. It doesn't sound like you are anyways. But it's for those reasons that I would be perfectly content letting my dog socialize with a larger dog someone was walking but I would sooner cross the street than walk past a smaller dog with them.

My little guy is an idiot. For example he'll try to sniff the other dog's butt no problems, but other doggo sniff his butt? He doesn't like that.

My dog is very friendly, too friendly. I let him say hi to other dogs and people until I realised he was pulling to get to every interaction possible. Since I started avoiding interactions while walking he is much better and I enjoy our walks a lot more. He socialises a lot, just not when we are walkingnon a leash.

Sorry for being anti-social.

Leash aggression is super common. Also every person in the world is a fucking idiot until proven otherwise.

Other dogs often find my dog scary or intimidating just because of his size. He is a large sighthound so it is understandable. They are tall and slender with long body parts that don't move like other dogs. I don't think he'd hurt anyone on purpose but he can get tired of yapping and when he responds it will look very scary for both the other dog and their owner.

So I keep him close to me when we meet other dogs unless it is somebody we know or the owner asks to introduce them... Aaand they seem like a sensible owner that knows their dog well enough and listens when I explain my dogs dos and donts.

Otherwise it is not worth it for me to worry about the situation nor to be proxy socializing with somebody that I don't want to be around.

Also worth remembering is that all dogs are individuals, and so are their owners. There is no obligation for neither dog or owner to be social with anyone if they dont want to for whatever reason that is nobody else's business.

Too many variables, and the social interaction can't be predicted.

No one needs an injured dog and a lawsuit. So if I don't know for sure they're cool, I will protect my dog from yours.

Small dogs snap at my dog. Owners don't control their pets. I honestly don't want my dog around other small dogs I don't know, because small dogs are aggressive often.

Thank you all for your kind responses, it truly means a lot! I think if I was still on FB or Reddit and posed this question, I’d get raked across the coals. lol