Asshole Dog Owners

written: April 18th

Today’s photo:



It’s a baby Witch’s Burr (aka Sweetgum Pod). Ain’t it adorable?!?! I had never thought of how the sweetgum pods grew…kind of like how pine cones grow as well. But since moving into the house and walking Josey, I have gotten to see such cool things like this.

So I figured out first hand today that my booming, snarly “Teacher Voice” (akin to the “Mom Voice”) has the same stopping powers on dogs as it does children. There’s this gorgeous house on one of the cul-de-sacs and there was a beautiful male German Shepherd in the yard. Asshole knows how to OPEN HIS FUCKING GATE! Luckily, he did this after we had walked past his house, but once we looped back around we (meaning Me and Josey) came face to face with him. I saw him coming and my adrenaline was PUMPING. I shot off a very quick prayer to Sekhmet and then narrowed my eyes and snapped “NO” at him. That brought up him up short. Josey and I started backing away from him and he starting coming towards us again. I snarled a “NO” at him and stomped my foot and he looked so scared. ::laughs:: And what do you know? He can open his fucking gate up and let himself in his yard! Josey was so well behaved for the rest of our walk. ::laughs:: That was an unforeseen major benefit from that encounter. I think she was scared of me for a while. ::chuckles::

But seriously? What is with the shitty ass dog owners in this little neighborhood? I’ve come across more loose dogs here than I did the entire 10 years I lived at RBC Apartments – and I’m counting the encounters I had with the coyotes as well, and STILL, I had less dog encounters than I have had in the year (well, a year officially here, tomorrow) we’ve been here. Luckily, only one of those dog encounters here was with an aggressive dog – smaller than Josey, and it just wanted us off its yard, so once we were out of its territory, it was happy to leave us know. This German Shepherd wasn’t aggressive behaving, but I can’t take a chance. All I have on me is a knife with would require me to get in close to use, and I’m not keen on doing that with an aggressive dog. Guess I need to look into that stun cane Jimmy suggested a while back – think Taser disguised as a cane. That’s what a stun cane is. Or maybe bear mace? I dunno. The mace could blow back on us and that would not be enjoyable. With the stun cane, there would be less margin for unintended harm and would keep the other dogs at a decent distance. I wouldn’t have to get too close to use it. Just sucks that I have to prepare like this just to walk my fucking dog around the neighborhood. Other than the random loose dogs, it’s a very quiet, very nice neighborhood.