It’s really bad. It’s definitely affecting our lives. They’re relatively common round here, I’d say I see a few a week at least, and I rarely see a muzzled one although I do seem to see more on leads these days. But what use is a lead alone?
My older two are now easily old enough to go to the small park across the road on their own, but them getting old enough has coincided with the rise of these awful dogs and so I’m more worried than ever about them. I let my 12 nearly 13 year old go for a short time on his own to chuck his basketball around a few months ago and I followed him a short time later. I got there to find him trapped inside the caged games area with a bully charging aggressively around the outside of it trying to get in. The young female owner was hopeless. There was an elderly lady with a small dog who had gone in the cage to escape the bully.
We went to the same place fairly regularly in the hour or so before dark on some summer evenings. I noticed it had become a thing for owners of aggressive muscular dogs to take them in the playground (near the caged area we were in) at that quiet time and let them charge around. It seemed to be their way to defy the ban: quiet, going dark, and fenced off from other dogs, but fuck anyone else who wanted to go in the playground. I felt we had to stay until they had gone so as to try to avoid an encounter on the way home.
Time and again we change our behaviour because of these people.
I’ve been squeezed off pavements by these brutes coming towards me taking up all the space, and there isn’t always time to cross the road. Recently one came bowling towards me on a lead, I thought ‘at least there’s a lead’ as I skirted round into the road, only to suddenly see 2 more behind not on leads! The owner said the same moronic thing another one said to me recently, ‘you’re alright, you’re alright’. No, I’m really not.