How to stop a #dog from #urinating on #strangers

My policy: Deny, deny, deny.

While walking Gizmo along the bike path in the El Dorado development, Santa Fe, NM, we saw a young mother with her shy, cute, almost two year old boy.  The mother said that the boy would like to pet our dog and we said, “Of course, Gizmo is gentle and loves people.”

             The boy carefully and tentatively reached out to touch Gizmo.  The mother helped, guiding his hand to the top of Gizmo’s head for a small pat.

            Then, as we were talking about how good Gizmo was and how nice it was that we were asked about petting our dog (some people don’t do that), I looked down.  And saw Gizmo lifting his leg.  Gizmo was about to wet/mark/urinate on the little boy.

         At the same time, I yanked back on the leash and shouted, “NO.”   He did squirt, but all of it apparently wet the sidewalk, a tribute to my leash yank.

            The mother, looking a bit abashed, said that the dog had apparently missed wetting her son.  “No harm done.”

            Maybe not to her son, but we were concerned.  First, Gizmo wet two women in the dog park in California.  Then, after lulling us into believing that behavior had been eliminated from his repertoire (and that he had taken my advice about that was not the best way to meet women), Gizmo suddenly wanted to pee on a two year old. 

           The books we have by Cesar Milan, the dog whisperer, did not directly address the problem of peeing on strangers.  Cesar: did you omit or not solve this problem?

             Saying NO and leash yanking seemed to be the right approach, but I am baffled about how to totally eliminate this behavior from Gizmo’s repertoire.  Help me!!!

                   "You can say as much as you want, but the (dogs are) picking up what is... inside of you." Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.  (In view of my problem, this quote puzzles me: is Cesar saying that, inside of me, I wanted to urinate on a two-year-old human?  I hope not.)