Ready For A Long Weekend

Did our normal Friday dog walk with Jean this morning. We had a “run-in” with a woman while out on the walk because of Jean’s dogs.

She was walking a cute little Australian Shepherd puppy. Jean’s dogs love to meet and greet new dogs, but they have a very bad habit of getting too excited and they start barking like crazy. When one of her dogs starts barking, the other 2 chime in. When they do this, Hiker always quietly stays back because she’s not “outgoing”. They scared Hiker to death the first time she met them. Also Jean forgets sometimes to ask first if it’s OK for her dogs to meet another dog before she starts approaching the other person with the dog. It is very important to do that because you never know if the other dog gets along with strange dogs, but Jean seems to think that all dogs should meet. So she starts letting her barking dogs go up to this woman and she got within about 5 feet of the dog when the woman yells at Jean “Are you crazy?” Jean replied “My dogs just want to meet your dog.” The woman yelled “NO! I don’t want those vicious dogs anywhere near this dog.” Well Jean’s dogs are noisy and obnoxious, but they are NOT vicious. And I’m sure that others see them as a pack which can be very scary for some people and other dogs. They have never bitten anyone or any other dog. I tried to calm the woman down by explaining to her that the dogs were just excited but that they were not vicious, but she just kept yelling at us and telling us she has been a dog trainer for 20 years and that she knows that dogs who bark like that are always vicious and that Jean should not take her dogs out in public. She just kept yelling, so I just walked away from her.

I do think that Jean should not expect everyone to just let her dogs go up to others without asking first. When I’m walking Hiker by myself, I usually won’t let her approach other dogs unless the other person asks me first if their dog can say hi to Hiker because I know that even though Hiker is the quiet one, she’s the one that would come more biting another person or another dog. So just because dogs bark like crazy doesn’t always mean they are vicious. You have to look out for the quiet ones too.

I remember passing that same woman on the path before when I was alone with Hiker and he little dog stated coming toward Hiker. I asked her if Hiker could meet her dog because her dog acted like it wanted to say hi but she very rudely said “NO!” So I said OK and we moved on. Guess she doesn’t know that her nasty attitude will rub off on her dog.

But as I said, Jean needs to stop thinking that her dogs need to meet every dog in the world

Was very overcast again this morning from a thick marine layer, so it was nice a cool while out on our walk.

Decided to have a lazy day today since Keith is coming for the long holiday weekend and he and I will no doubt be out running around everywhere. Also hoping to get in some walks and maybe a hike with him.

Weather was so nice today. I never even had to turn on my fans. Just had the doors open.