What started off as a lovely sunny afternoon in the park with the kids ended up with me mopping up a bloody leg after some shitty little dog took a piece out of it. I'm not a dog lover at the best of times and have always had issues with owners of unruly mutts at our local park but today has taken the (dog) biscuit!!! I was playing catch with my DS and the ball went over to a grassy patch where a couple of fat salad-dodgers(sorry, but I'm raging) were troughing a bucket of KFC. I went over to retrieve the ball and this little yappy Scottie dog sprung out of nowhere and bit my calf! Rolled up my jeans to find a bleeding wound and stormed over to the owners who reeled out the usual "That's the first time he's ever done that, he's usually so well-behaved"... Demanded that they put their horrible little hound on a lead pronto (which they did - so good of them) and warned them that it would be in their best interest to do that from hereon in since it could be a child next time. Also took the bloke's telephone number although it's probably a false one. Whilst I wasn't exactly savaged (although it bloody hurts!) there have been enough sickening stories in the press about dangerous dogs and children for me to be absolutely appalled by some dog owners' disregarding and frankly disgusting behaviour, and this is just a case in point. I don't have a problem with dogs being exercised in large open spaces (preferably Siberia or the Gobi Desert) but I DO have a problem with dogs being left to run amok in public parks where children play.
Just a thought...now that we've got a ban on smoking in public places, why not a ban of marauding dogs in public places? The anti-smoking lobby have (quite rightly) drawn attention to the dangers of public smoking to non-smokers; isn't it about time we draw attention to the dangers of dogs without leads to those of us who don't want to share our public places with vicious animals?