Hi & Welcome,
The best advice for this situation is to keep your dog on a lead until you have worked through and can prevent him from doing this behaviour.
The reason for this is because as you say, people are quick to judge when dogs growl, bark and bite in many cases this is because they dont understand why they’re doing it and it frightens them. You know that your dog is not aggressive but what if he did the goalpost thing near a young child and the parents / carers were frightened / felt threatened by it – no-one wants you to be in that position with your dog as you obviously love him very much 🙂
I’m afraid theres no such breed as irish staff, usually it is a name used to refer to dogs who are not considered to be Staffies which most probably have pitbull as part of their breed. If you are in the UK I would advise you to seek some professional advice on this from a breed specialist or someone who is well versed in discriminating pitbull types from legal breeds / crosses (remember – your dog doesnt have to actually BE a pitbull or cross – just seem/look like one).
Lastly, I would advise getting a behaviourist to help you with “the tree / goalpost” thing, I really benefitted from this with my own dogs loads. Its not just what they do with the dog, a good one will teach you to teach your own dog and you’ll always have those skills if you have any more dogs 😀 😀
Claire.
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