We took the dogs to the park today and had the weirdest encounter with a guy there. We had just gotten out of the car and were leashing up the girls, when these two guys were walking towards with their dogs to their cars that were parked in front of ours. These guys were both probably in their late 50s, early 60s. One guy had a Rotteweiler on a leash, and the other one had a Boxer that was leashed, but the guy had dropped the leash and was letting the dog walk about 15 feet in front of him. The Boxer was coming towards us with his head down and ears back and wasn't looking at all friendly (I learned a lot about dog body language in Sophie's class last month, ya know, and this was not friendly dog language). Greg had both the girls on leash by now and they were barking and pulling while he was trying to back away from this dog. I walked ahead and tried to distract the dog, but had no luck. I was just about to say something when Greg said "Hey! Can you get your dog?" This old guy went ballistic on him. He got right up in Greg's face and said "What's your f-ing problem?" Greg said "Your dog is coming at my dogs." And this guy just flipped. "My dog won't hurt your dogs, he's not doing anything!" He yelled.
Greg was just gaping at this guy who had gone from stress level 1 to 10 in an instant and said "Well, they don't know that! They are on a leash and he isn't." And they guy said something else nasty. Greg said, "Don't start something you aren't going to finish." This guy, who wasn't much taller than me goes right up to Greg and says something like "I'm going to finish anything I start!" Greg took a step towards him, and the guy picked up his dog's leash and loaded it in the car.
We just gaped at him. It was so weird. What a stupid thing to freak out about. Usually we try to keep the girls away from other dogs when they are on leash and the other dogs aren't. Dogs just react differently when meeting another dog on a leash than when they are off, and a dog on leash with a dog off leash showing signs of being unfriendly is never a good combination. Besides, Sophie can be quite snotty to dogs when she's on leash, especially when she is resource guarding her car. The weirdo guy didn't even think that MY dogs might have been the problem, not his.
Anyway, it was just weird. You can't even go to the dog park without meeting weirdos anymore. I don't know what the guys problem was, but I think he needs to cut back on the coffee.
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