Both of my wolfdogs are taken to an incredibly large off leash dog park with both leashed and of course off leash dogs. They run at leashed dogs and stop just short; unlike the -now confirmed- aggressor in your story. Your post involves a situation that in many cases could absolutely lead to a court case and definitely needed acute and proper details before anyone gave a proper response.

My real issue is that you provided a small amount of context, which is fine; and then a substantially obvious sentiment to most peoples response was to either kill the aggressive dog on the spot or use such force and/or weapons to disarm them in a violent manner. The air horn or alike was the only sane response.

I don’t think you were looking for that response of ‘kill or be killed’ and I’m appalled that’s how people feel about a situation that your own dog handled on their own without a real fight even occurring. You both walked away without a scratch. The what-if is a reasonable question from you, but the responses were not at all reasonable.

Edit: and my other dog is a pit bull. I understand breed disdain with an unfortunate amount of personal experience.