Barking mad

Now I like to think I’m not a particularly aggressive person by nature, I rarely bark and have never been known to bite, well not hard enough to break the skin at any rate. My husband isn’t an aggressive person either (except when massacring our dinner), but yesterday we both found ourselves catapulted head first into a full throttle screaming match with a complete stranger, right in the middle of the park.

What brought out our ‘inner lout’ and fired up our dormant fighting spirit? That would be the canine companion of the said stranger, the canine with his jaws clamped firmly around the quaking bones of our poor Spoodle.

Now it’s not often that dogs gets attacked around here, but when it happens it brings out the same feelings and emotions that you would experience had it been your child on the receiving end. An overwhelming anger and a strong desire to flatten the culprit to the ground. Of course when the culprit has a tail, a sharp set of teeth and a killer instinct, it’s easier and generally more advisable to turn your attention to the person on the other end of the leash.

And here in lay the problem. The dog, lets call him ‘Jaws’, wasn’t even on the lead. He was ambling along the path at the edge of the park, a few metres away from where we stood in the playground. On seeing ‘Jaws’, our Spoodle (Charlie) did what all young and nosey dogs do given the same situation. He ran across to have a good sniff and say hello.

When Charlie was a couple of feet from ‘Jaws’ the owner suddenly started to panic and yelled out at me “Quick, get your dog away“.

Too late. The great hulking beast snarled, sprung forward and bit Charlie on the leg. There was a great deal of growling from ‘Jaws’ and some high pitched squealing from Charlie, before he limped back to us as fast as his other 3 paws could bring him.

Now had this woman apologised for the attack, we probably wouldn’t have thought much more about it. But there was no apology, far from it. Instead she blamed us, told us it was all our fault because we couldn’t control our dog and get him to return to us the second she yelled out. Bloody nerve of the woman.

I believe that it was at this point that we saw red and the public airwaves became filled with raised voices. We pointed out that if her dog was prone to attacking any dog that came near, and he obviously was as she knew to warn me, then ‘Jaws’ should be kept muzzled and firmly on his lead.

Of course she was having none of this and continued to claim that it was all down to Charlie, a dog so friendly he wouldn’t bite a flea if it landed on his nose and tugged on his eyebrows. While he is admittedly not the best trained dog in the park, he’s a Spoodle for heavens sake. A walking rug with a permanent wag and ‘Feed me now’ eyes.

Being the responsible dog owner that this woman so obviously was, once she had stood up and removed her head from her backside, she continued off down the path. 5 metres on and she once again proceeded to take the dog back off the lead she had finally put him on, so that he could once again roam free.

Now had it been a toddler at the playground who had gone up to say hello, what would have happened then? Would the dog’s owner have claimed it was the all the parent’s fault, for letting their badly trained child fall into the jaws of her uncontrolled animal?

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to own dogs and some dogs definitely need to take their owners off for some serious training.

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