Leash that Dog, Jack-off!

Last night while returning from a wine social as some protestant church a couple of blocks from our house(More on this some other time), My girlfriend Clare and I walked down the alley that leads to the back of our Condo. At the other end of the alley, some guy was walking his dog - Not in the alley but crossing in on the street. His dog spotted us from a block away and started running toward us. We both froze. Clare and I are not dog people number one. Secondly, this is Chicago. There are people here that train dogs to fight. And by "train" I mean purposefully mistreat in order to make the dog extra mean.

Anyway, I had my bike with me, so I grabbed my water bottle in case I had to spray the dog in the face. When it finally got to us, it just barked. Extremely annoying, but at least we got the impression that it wasn't dangerous. We kept walking toward our house at the end of the alley with this dog yapping at us the whole way.

The owner finally strolled up to us and was apologetic. Then he gives us this lame excuse, "He's a herder, he doesn't like people in the alley." What the hell that meant I have no idea.

Then Clare said, "A leash might help that."

To which the guy turned back around and said, "Hey, don't tell me how to run my dog."

Again, what the hell does, "run my dog" mean. If "run" is a synonym for "control", then he wasn't doing much to "run" his dog.


I'm not sure what words were exchanged next, but Clare said something to the effect that dogs should be kept on leashes. He was walking away at that point and yelled, "Fuck you, you've said that twice already." How it went from "sorry about my dog" to dropping the F bomb, I'm not sure.

The woman who he was with muttered a weak apology and kept walking. The dog followed her but the dude stayed in the alley arguing with us.

We held our ground and noted that the law agrees with us. Apparently, Joe No-Leash didn't appreciate our civics lesson and just kept swearing at us.

He eventually stormed off in cloud of expletives. We just shouted "leash" at him as he ran away with his figurative tail between his legs.

Let me say at this point that I'm not against dogs or even dog owners. I know plenty of people who actually have taken the time to train their dogs. The parents of my friend Chris have a couple of incredibly well behave Irish Setters.

The problem is, that most people don't realize you need to take the time to actually train the dog to behave. It's not just going to behave on it's own. Then if you call people on it, like this prick in my alley, they get all defensive. Sorry, but I don't want your strange dog running up to me to "play." Keep your dog leashed or move out of the city.

And if you don't clean your dog's crap off my lawn, I going to break into your house and crap on your carpet.