Dog walks, until I’m on them, are not my favourite part of the day. Especially in winter when you look outside and see frosty grass and grey skies. But even so, Hublot’s excitement when he knows he has a walk coming. We often see other dogs and Hublot will happily exhaust himself (which doesn’t take long these days!) chasing them around. People with little dogs are understandably a little wary sometimes, but who wouldn’t be. When you are used to a terrier, a German Shepherd is quite a different beast!

But recently we came across somebody with a very unusual response. We had followed a lady, within about 20 meters, for about half a mile getting to our regular field.  She had a rottweiler who was off lead and was happily tootling along. When we got to the field, we let Hublot off his lead and he ambled over to the other dog to have a sniff. As far as I’m concerned, the social aspect is very important for dogs. But, not in this case apparently. Although both dogs were about 15 meters away from the lady, she suddenly exploded into distress. Her dog was quickly recalled and put on the lead.

Hublot followed to complete his sniff and was greeted by an array of flapping arms, shouts of “get this dog away.” She then proceeded to fire a range of obscenities at me for  not keeping my dog on the lead. All seems very unnecessary and sort of defeats the point of a dog walk at all. And are you in a position to complain when your dog is also off lead? Maybe just having a bad day, needs a nice walk with her dog to calm her down!