Another thing to remember is that your dog will be more aggressive and more likely to have an issue with another dog while at the end of a leash. It feels to the dog like they have no place to go. If you are ever in a situation that "seems" it is going badly (remember that dogs communicate with body language that you and I cannot see) I recommend that you remove the lease from the dog, only if you can without putting yourself in danger. If your dog is a Type A it will let the other dog know who is boss. If it is type B it will allow the other dog to do its thing. Either way it gets settled on there terms without the owners energy getting in the way. There are very obvious examples of when not to do this, but always remember that all dogs have the instinct to protect themselves, humans do not and it is much easier to break up a dog fight after the initial few seconds are over and one dog has taken control. You can get in a lot of trouble trying to prevent an fight from happening. Your emotion connect will infact make your dog more aggressive, so step back and collect yourself before rushing in. It will allow you to put your self in the best position to separate the two animals and keep them apart.
I know that we all want to protect our dogs from injury during a fight, but remember a fight over dominance is not going to result in serious injury (typically). Dogs that kill other dogs have screws loose whether it the owner or something that happened to the dog, but you are always better off removing the dog from the lease and collecting your dog after, than to try and prevent something from happening.
This experience comes from more than 9 years of helping a family member with sled dogs (20-45 at a time). I am not a dog trainer but have been given a lot of information about how to read dogs and when to get involved and when to step back and get an idea of what is happening first.
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