personal safety on walks

[ReecesPieces]

Regular who has name changed for this. I'm looking for ideas on how to keep safe on dog walks, never worried about it before but recent events have had me googling personal alarms.
I live in Colchester, close to where a young woman was murdered last week, the second knife murder in 3 months. It was a well used path, mid morning and I'm amazed there was no one else around at the time. Trying not to obsess about it but I'm wondering if a personal alarm would have helped. Not sure it would, unless you spend all your time on high alert with finger ready to press the button. The noise is supposed to disorientate the attacker and give you time to escape, but wouldn't the noise disorientate me as well?

Those of you with alarms, have you ever had the need to use it?

I was wondering about this too recently - I go on walks that are often very isolated though. I'm assuming the dog would do something if anyone did decide to attack me . . .

I've got 2 fairly big dogs but don't think I could rely on them to protect me. If it was a frenzied knife murderer I imagine dogs would probably get v agitated and bark furiously but not do anything helpful.

Well, I can only tell you what I do as unfortunately I have been followed in recent months by the same man, who I reported to the police.

Do not follow the same route at the same time every day
Always take your phone
My friend carries a stick which she can hit people with
Let someone know where you will be walking and when you get home
Always have a plan b, so a place where you can get to

You shouldn't have to change your behaviour but unfortunately I felt I had little choice

How frightening Owllady. Has he stopped following you now?

Done, but I do think some sex 'offences' need to not be classed as offences. There is a HUGE difference between an actual rape or sexual assault and a 15 year old having a consensual sexual relationship with her 17 year old boyfriend and it should be treated as so.

ahh wrong thread!! What I meant to write was I doubt anyone would get near me with my pack of collies and springers. They're all working dogs and not particularly into people.

It's not supposed to be good to train pet dogs to attack on command, pity, I think one of my dogs would be good at this. He's a Belgian Shepherd, not a people dog at all. When I first got him he showed a lot of guarding behaviour, suspicious of people on walks, barking and trying to stop them going near me. We did lots of training and now he completely ignores everyone and focuses on his ball.

I tend to stick to very local busy walks morning and evening and dh tends to do the late one. The long one during the day I tend to decide on the day where we'll go so it's pretty random and the time differs depending on what I've got on. It's about as much as I can do I think because Eric doesn't look like a deterrent

Very scary. I do carry hairspray in my winter jacket pocket. I try not to go anywhere too remote. I also don't chat on the phone - try to be aware of my surroundings. Maybe an alarm round your neck on a cord?

I hope so reeces I have seen him outside my son's school though too, just hanging around. I thought I was being paranoid but everyone else thought it odd. I don't like changing my own behaviour but I just did what I felt comfortable with

Definitely swap up walks and times
I have a smart water (I think it's called) thing that sprays them with a vile smell, marks with smart water and deafens people