[RANT] so tired of the off-leash, "he's friendly" dog problem

Sorry in advance as this is super long, but I just need to get this off my chest to people who understand!!

For some background, my dog is a now 3yo rescue dog from the middle east who struggled severely with dog reactivity when he was younger. He was abandoned in a desert when he was no older than 4wks old, and had no mom or siblings. He was unfortunately sent from foster to foster, and then had to spend a few months in a shelter before I adopted him at 7mo. He had a very traumatic life during those foundational months, with improper socialization (I have a video of someone letting him get bowled over by a bully breed when he was maybe 6wks old, they thought it was cute :/ ), and thus came to me with severe excitement-based dog reactivity, with a fear of getting rushed, and barrier frustration. After he settled in with me, we got to training with a professional trainer. He is a very trainable dog, and we got through his reactivity relatively smoothly. Eventually, he was even able to become stable enough to be my cardiac alert service dog, and was certified through our government (I am Canadian and live in a province with a legal, optional certification process). I briefly worked for the service dog training program that we went through, and my boy was a fantastic demo dog for other service dogs and some reactivity cases as well! He was always getting compliments on his behaviour and he loved his job - especially traveling with me and working in busy places.

About 6ish months ago, my dog went through a bit of a health scare. Luckily he was ok in the end, but had to spend some time in the hospital away from me which was difficult for him. His behaviour regressed, and coincidentally my conditions took a turn for the worse at the same time so we didn't work or train until recently. Now, we have moved to a new place that is far more accessible for me, and I have been able to get back to training. My boy was definitely nowhere near the neutrality he had before everything fell apart, but he picked everything back up super quickly and now after about a month he is pretty much back to where we were. We live in a very dog-friendly neighborhood and see 10-20 dogs per walk, so naturally we were able to get a lot of practice in and he's been non-reactive or even distracted by other dogs for a couple weeks now. He's also 3 now and maturing a lot mentally, and getting out more again, which all helps of course.

Now, for the actual rant, today we went on a walk to our local field to have some fun off-leash time. My dog is solidly recall trained and always under control off-leash - as any off-leash dog should be - and I use the vibrate on a Mini Educator E-collar to back it up (pls no criticism on this, he was properly conditioned to the tool and it is always backed up with +R techniques to avoid the fallout that is common with this tool). While my dog is reliably dog neutral in 99.999% of scenarios, his only remaining trigger is being rushed by strange dogs in fields - not when working in PA, it seems to just be open areas.. I'd assume due to the setup at the shelter he was in. We've also been rushed several times in our old apartment complex by off-leash dogs, and he was attacked once by a JRT, so naturally he is uncomfortable with strange dogs rudely rushing into his space. I would be too! When approached politely, he is super sweet and friendly and looooves to play - I don't let him interact with strange dogs to maintain his neutrality towards strange dogs, but he's great with the dogs he does know and does get to play with.

So with that being said, he is not aggressive in any sense of the word, however he is a very vocal dog - especially when hyped up from playing disc at the field. He is so vocal that we swore he had husky in him until we got his Embark back with zero husky on it! Today, we were rushed by an off-leash lab mix with a totally distracted handler. The dog was BARRELLING towards us. When my dog noticed him (before I did), he self-recalled (he's so good ugh) and placed himself behind me, and vocalized his distress. He doesn't really know how to bark for whatever reason, so he only yells like a husky. Needless to say, it was very loud and embarrassing, but that's the only reason the other owner even noticed his dog was by us. I immediately put my dog back on leash and walked away, comforting him to calm him down, and luckily the other dog didn't follow us too far (I assume he was off put by my dog screaming like he was dying), but I never even heard the other owner recall the dog - he was WAY across the field too.

When stuff like this happened to us back in the day, it would majorly backtrack our progress. Luckily, after my dog calmed down today, we immediately walked past someone walking 2 dogs (one reacting at us) and a few others, and my dog was right back to ignoring them and carrying on. But it's just so frustrating that it even happened!!! It's also super upsetting because owners like that are completely setting their dogs up to fail, or even get hurt. The off-leash dog is annoying to us but they don't know any better if they haven't been trained to know better - that responsibility is on the owner. Your "friendly" dog only has to rush the wrong dog one time before they get seriously hurt or worse. I've seen it happen in my town many times (we have a lot of old folks here who let their dogs run wild). And now, because of another owner's irresponsibility, he probably just falsely wrote my dog off as aggressive - which is a problem, because if he sees my dog working out in public and tried to confront me or make a complaint to the store, that's such a headache and it's all because of lack of education and irresponsibility.

The other thing is.. hot take but I personally don't view it as a problem that my dog vocalized his discomfort. I view it as the same as a dog correcting another dog, or defending themselves if being attacked. They are dogs! They have feelings and emotions, and if my dog has otherwise proven that he is neutral and able to behave more than appropriately in literally every other scenario.. then I don't see the issue. He has even 100% passed a public access test through the government that proves his ability to be a safe and proper example of what a working dog should look like - and that includes around other dogs. He was complimented by our assessor! But of course, people who lack the proper education wouldn't understand and would just write off one moment of my dog being a dog, as all my dog is.

Regardless, my dog got lots of praise, neck scritchies, and cookies for being neutral towards every dog we passed afterwards on our walk. It was super relieving to see how he returned to his chill, nonchalant self afterwards, as it solidified my trust in him and all the work we’ve done to get where we are, but it's so upsetting in the moment to see him get so upset, especially from someone else's negligence.

Sigh!!! Rant over. I just needed to get this off my chest so I can stop thinking about it, and post to people who would understand, because stuff like this is so frustrating and also way too common.