On our walk this morning I decided to take Briar out to Stewarts point. There was a bit of a jam there; a photographer with his tripod, a woman and her dog, a couple cars, and this eccentric (or maybe egocentric) man with his dog.
This man approaches the point and his dog starts yanking on his leash, barking agressively, and tries to lunge at Briar. Keep in mind, Briar sits there calmly with a little bit of back poof, staring the dog in the eye. The man gets risen up as it takes a bit of adrenaline and strength to contain his 80+ lb dog. The other people around smile and are entertained by the novel idea that this little kitty goes on walks. I smile too.
He catches my eye in the midst of the chaos, and he says to me, "You think it's funny that my dog can kill your cat?". I say to him, "Oh he's ok, if he's threatened, he'll run away". He continues to try to pull his dog around the point as his dog is persistently worked up over Briar. The man is getting really irritated. I kind of smirk and do a small nose laugh as he says to me, "You think it's funny? All my dog has to do is take a bite out of your cat, and he's dead. My dog has killed a cat before". I bit my lip as I didn't want to upset my lovely walk and decided not to say anything. The man continued on as he was using his all his momentum to pull the dog away.
OK, so I am a little confused here. Everyone here at the point, including Briar, is mellow, well behaved, enjoying the beautiful scenery on this lovely morning. This man with the dog seemed to be the only one having trouble. He was having trouble controlling HIS dog... maybe he was angry because he has trouble controlling his life. MAYBE it's because he blames everything on everyone else, including Briar who's happily chillin' at the point. MAYBE it's because whoever owned the cat his dog killed sued him and he's still paying for damages... who knows?!?
To all of this, my initial response was to get smart with him and say... "Maybe you should train your dog not to kill cats." or "Maybe if you were a happier person, your dog wouldn't have the desire to kill things". But either way, I was happy, because I got to write something on Briar's blog about it. HAHA.