I just have to have a moan ....... I always take the responsibility of being a dog owner very seriously, keeping Rosie on the lead on the road, cleaning up after her, ensuring she doesn't get over friendly with people who clearly are nervous, etc. etc.  I was walking her through the village the other day and a dog came out of a path way, ran across the road, approaching her very aggressivlely and stood right over her in a hugely dominant way while Rosie sunk to the ground in frightened submission. The owner followed over and said "oh, it's because your dog's on the lead". No apology, no reprimand, seemingly no awareness that the dog could have been hit by a car, or even caused an accident.  It left me speechless. Perhaps in her eyes if I walked my dog along the road without a lead everything would be fine!!    Rant over..

Yeah ive never had that happen with my dog but when i was out walking my brothers dog because he was on holiday, in the park with bruce not on a lead because he is very well behaved and a big GSD came up to us growling and bruce being a pit bull stood his ground and barked trying to protect me. The owner comes rushing over saying that Bruce was being agressive and that bruce was being threatening to him (the owner).. bruce took no notice of the owner he was only protecting me froma bit German shereard

I had a similar incidence last night with an elderly couple here on holiday - their dog was on an extendable lead and whilst walking my dog minding our own business they allowed their dog to come directly towards my dog - they showed no intention of pulling the lead back and just let him keep coming tothe full extent of the lead - the way he 'sauntered' over directly in my dogs path was obviously threatening my dog and he started to back away.  Now I will not have anybodies dog do this, on or off lead, and cause my dog to have lead / fear aggression etc so after looking in total amazement at the dogs owners for not doing anything other than look at me and my dog I stamped my foot hard in the dogs path and shouted 'leave!'. Well the dog backed off enough for me and my dog to continue on our 'quiet' walk leaving the old couple grumbling behind me, obviously my fault - grrrr, it makes me sooo angry. :)

How stupid people can be. I admit to having mad dogs who sometimes rush over to say hello (not aggresively, just too friendly) in spite of several years of training, but I would never blame the owners or dogs for telling my idiots to go away and stop annoying them. I always go after them if they won't come back and put them on the lead and drag them away!