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I'm not going to fully defend the owner, because dog behaviour starts at home, but chances are this dog has grown up in that park, with people at the puppy stage re-enforcing that a little jump up to say hello was fine. Because who says no to a puppy? Certainly I found this with Calvin, and was repeatedly frustrated when people praised him for doing it when he was 4 months/5 months. I know I'm not saying anything new- labs are energetic, big, people focused dogs- who thrive off attention. The conditioning has happened for this dog, and for Calvin and I it has been a constant challenge to re-condition him to not do this.
It meant back to the lead, and following the distraction at meeting steps, and training at home with the same rules. (treat to the floor, toy thrown opposite direction, etc(cf McCann Dogs).IMO the issue is the misconstrued fantasy of a Lab as the 'perfect' dog. They need a job and strict rules, and people don't do the former and are unwilling to enforce the latter, and as a result I suspect are some of the worst offenders for 'bad' dogs
In terms of helping the owner- if the dog comes to you- be ready, be low down and praise it when its "four on the floor".
The owner needs to start training it at home, because this behaviour is already heavily conditioned, and gives the poor dog the excitement that it is probably lacking elsewhere.
(to my part above, some idiot recently interrupted an impulse control training session of ours, and got Calvin all excited and jumping up at them. Then turned to me and said "must happen all the time". It doesn't and I was both angry with them, and embarrassed. I told them precisely what I thought.)
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velosaurus
there's a woman that frequents our local park with a full grown lab that has a habit of launching itself at randos at a full gallop. it did it to me a week or so ago and flattened me the fuck out. i had stern words with the owner. apparently this is far from the first time this has happened and this morning, it cannonballed into a woman who suffered some pretty nasty bruising and a hopefully not too serious knee injury as a result. the owner's response was a sheepish "sorry about that" before eventually getting her dog on a leash and hot footing it out of the park.
Poor dog clearly hasn't been trained properly and is clearly too big (it's gotta be at least 40kgs) for the owner who i suspect finds it easier to let him off the leash rather than do the opposite.
something needs to be done but no one wants any harm to come to the dog.
how tho?