Keep dogs on on leash while on the trail, always. When you meet someone, give them a wide berth, to let them pass.
Nobody wants to travel to a distant wilderness and find dog poop all over the trail - so clean up after your dog, buried, a few inches under the soil, or if that is not possible, covered with grass or dirt. (I keep a plastic trowel in the pack of one my dogs, to have it handy).
A backpacker who insists on having their dog off leash, no matter if the pup is harassing wildlife or other hikers, risks losing the right to bring a dog along, for them and everyone else. More and more land management agencies want to follow the example of the National Park Service and ban dogs from all backcountry trails.
That would be a shame for me, because I enjoy having my border collies with me in the mountains so darn much. These smart dogs seem to have an ancient instinct in them, or a wild nature, or a sense of adventure, or whatever you want to call it, but it enables them to love these backpacking journeys with the same passion I do.
I am certain that like me, they somehow consider the time in between backpack trips as ok, but the real living comes when we are up on the mountain.
I mean you should see them pay attention when I start gathering my pack and gear and food. Then when the time comes that I load them in the back of my truck, into their dog carriers, there is an intensity in their nature which seems to say "Yesss, we are going, all is right in the universe, we are going to the mountains, Yesssss."
I have been taking the two dogs I have now backpacking since they were less than a year old - Both had their noses in fresh grizzly tracks at that age, and understood that dark objects near the trail are something to pay attention to, until it is certain they are stationary stumps, and not toothy bears waiting to ambush us.
In the past decade I took three other border collies with me - Bud, Cody, and Boogie, seen in the pictures below.
All three were good dogs - Bud and Boogie were mountain dogs like my new borders - fearless, confident, full of wild instinct, lovers of the mountains. The white border collie Cody's only bad habit was that he is terrified of lightning, and would not be calm until I set up my tent for him to retreat into during a bad storm.
