By Denise Flaim

Maybe you read the story last week about the Dix Hills man who nearly had his ear severed after three rottweilers charged his leashed pitt bull mix, Emry, and he got in the middle to save her.

Maybe you wondered: If that was my dog, what could I have done?

In that particular case, probably not much. (Though, happily, Emry survived.) Then again, most dog fights don’t involve quartets. Interviews with local dog trainers yielded lots of tips about nipping a dog fight in the bud - though sometimes the advice conflicted. So make like a Sizzler customer and take what calls to you from the following buffet.

What everyone agreed on is that grabbing a dog’s collar - or getting anywhere near his mouth - is the worst mistake you can make.

“Unfortunately, what happens is people start to freak out, and their first instinct is to get in there and break the dogs up,” says law-enforcement officer James Greco of Long Island K-9 Service in Manorville, who trains narcotics and bomb-detection dogs. “But once the dogs are in that frenzy, the only thing that’s going to happen is that you’re going to get bit - pretty badly.”

Sometimes, a “wheelbarrow” approach can work: Someone grabs and lifts the rear legs of each of the dogs, and then pulls the canine combatants apart. “A lot of times they will separate, because they are only standing on their front legs and are not that stable,” Greco says.

Denise Herman of Empire of the Dog in Brooklyn advocates what she calls “the drag and the drop.”

“You can try grabbing them by their tails and swinging them out, using centrifugal force. Then, once they are separated, you grab their collars,” she says, adding that encircling your arms under the dog’s hips, right in front of his rear legs, also gives you leverage. “It works for your run-of-the-mill dog scuffle.”

But not for serious entanglements among big, powerful dogs that are already “locked” on to each other, warns Jeff Kolbjornsen of Elite Animal Trainers of America in Islip Terrace. He worries that pulling such dogs apart might cause even greater injury to the dogs.

Instead, his preferred method is cutting off the air supply by lifting each dog by its choke chain and suspending them in the air until they gasp and release. This method only works, he notes, if each dog is wearing a properly fitted chain choke. Buckle collar? You’re out of luck.

Some dogs are so focused that hitting them with big, blunt objects - or spraying them with an irritant, such as pepper spray - only increases their aggression. “I remember going to a dog show at Nassau Coliseum 20 years ago, and some bullmastiff grabbed a golden retriever and wouldn’t let go,” Kolbjornsen remembers. “People were hitting him with chairs - nothing.”

Rick Pisani of Rick’s Canine Workshop in Brentwood remembers that incident well because it was his golden retriever.

“A friend of mine had a cup of hot coffee, and when she threw it at the dog that’s what got him to release,” Pisani remembers. (Trainer to the end, he took his shaken golden retriever into the ring after the incident, lest the experience ruin him for dog shows for life. Getting back in the saddle - not to mention copious amounts of liver treats - did the trick.)

Pisano says that incident illustrates the importance of being creative and using whatever you can find to startle the fighting dogs.

“If you’re walking and something happens, maybe you can find some metal garbage cans and bang the tops together to make a loud noise to make them look up,” he suggests.

Averting a fight is the neatest trick of all. Both Pisani and Herman are fans of Direct Stop, a citronella spray that can be aimed at the dogs’ faces and is sold in a canister that can be clipped to your belt.

Awareness of your environment is key. Avoid streets where you know irresponsible owners let their dogs wander. Herman, who owns a Chihuahua, is always on alert “for places where I can toss my little dog” - like on top of a car - when an unleashed dog approaches. “Picking up a small dog almost always is more inclined to make something bad happen,” she warns.

Indeed, in the end, the best advice for dealing with dog fights seems the most counterintuitive: stay out of the fray, and drop your dog’s leash so he can defend himself if escape is impossible.

“There is no one way that is going to work every time,” Pisano concludes. “Basically, take whatever is available to get them to come apart.” And, failing that, “sometimes you have to almost let it be” - as much as our hearts and our bodies would say otherwise.