Personal Pet Peeve

One of my simple pleasures in life is running with the dogs.  I love my furry running partners as they make the miles pass so much faster.  Today, my mom and I loaded up the truck with her bike, Tessa and Reba and we all went off to the local provincial park.  Tessa ran off leash with mom, while Reba remained on the cord and ran with me.

As we were nearing the end of our run we literally ran into one of my biggest personal pet peeves.  We met a lady who had two dogs - both off leash.  This is not my pet peeve.  Tessa often runs off leash.  My pet peeve is when the owner of said off leash dogs DO NOT HAVE ABSOLUTE CONTROL over said dogs.  I will admit this makes me feel rather cantankerous.  

As Reba screeched to a stop and began to growl, I demanded she stop and attend to me.  This should have been the end of the situation, except the two dogs continued running towards us.  The lady meanwhile is making no moves to apply control over her dogs, instead tells me it's okay, that her dogs are used to running in the dog park.   Um, that's nice, recall your bloody dogs because mine clearly is NOT interested in being friends with them.  *argh*  When my dirty look in her direction and my strident demands that Reba "Leave it!" clued her in she began yelling at her dogs.  Who summarily ignored her.  They continued to run at us, even once we had passed the owner, continued to follow as Reba and moved down the trail.  This is my personal pet peeve.  If you can't control your dog 100% of the time your dog should be on a leash.  Period.  It literally took me turning around, snapping my fingers at the bigger dog and telling it to get back before it returned to it's owner who by this point is at least 50 meters down the trail.  (And no, we were not in an off leash park.)

As Reba and I finished our run I discovered another pet peeve.  This lady's dog had left a deposit in the middle of the trail and she didn't move or dispose of it.  It's owners like this that give dog owners a bad reputation - and that makes me feel testy.

There you have it - my rant of the day!