I’ve attempted a diagram as it’s hard to explain. At the beach yesterday after school. Ds1 was quite upset about some school stuff so I was sat at the top of the beach chatting to him. Ds2 went to practice skimming stones. It was pretty high tide so he wasn’t far away, probably about 20m.
It’s a really long beach but for some reason a woman started throwing a stick for her dog along the shoreline and directly in front of where ds2 was skimming stones. The first time she very nearly hit ds2 with the stick so I called him and told him to move further down the beach out of the way which he did. Woman then decided to move further down the beach too, threw the stick again directly in front of ds2 who was at that moment skimming a stone which hit her dog.
Dog yelps and runs back to owner and owner starts marching over to ds2 to tell him off. I get there first, ask if dog is ok (he seems to be) and ask her why she followed Ds along the beach when he was clearly trying to get out of her way. She claims she was walking along the beach in the direction ds2 moved so it made sense that she carried on that way. I say ‘well no harm done, thankfully the beaches are still quite quiet at the moment so plenty of room to skim stones, throw sticks etc as long as you’re aware of others’. So telling ds2 to be aware of others but not telling him off as I didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.
Woman then launches into a rant about how dogs are only allowed on the beaches for a few more weeks which is disgraceful when I let my child attack innocent animals, it’s no wonder society is the way it is when parents are too frightened to tell their kids off when they’re in the wrong etc. etc. I just said again “well, no harm done. We’d best get going” and left her to it as she’d cornered another dog walker to complain to about my feral child.
Should I have told him off? I’m perfectly happy for him to skim stones on a quiet beach with no swimmers or others around him. My mum said I should have at least apologised to the woman for upsetting her but in my opinion she upset herself. There was no need at all to throw a stick directly in front of ds2, there was a whole free beach.