Today while at the dog park with my two Staffordshire bull terriers, I was confronted with a very annoying and actually insulting situation.

There was an older lady there with her three dogs.

 One was recovering from a recent vicious dog attack so it was rather nervy.

Of course, when you get a group of dogs around each other they become boisterous and fight, wrestle, sniff around each other and basically check their competition out.

Let’s face it, they are dogs and they have natural instincts and when around other dogs those instincts appear. 

Thank goodness they don’t become as vicious as they would in the wild, but yes they can become quite boisterous and some a little bit fiery so that’s when we as owners step in and pull the dogs back so they get a reminder of their boundaries and who is the boss. So I was at the park, with my two dogs and her three, and another one, and they were all displaying their typical dog behaviour.

But when my two or the other one would get too close or sniff her recovering dog, it would snap and snarl back and so my two did the same.

But my youngest one started to become a bit more escalated and the old lady started panicking and screaming while bending down to pick her dog up. 

She then demanded I put mine back on their lead. So reluctantly I did so, even though they are allowed to run around in there free from their leads.

But she then continued on and on about how they are too much and shouldn’t be there and was going on about the code of conduct, and even told me to leave.

I become a bit annoyed and started to argue her points and I even mentioned that she was being like she was because my dogs were Staffies so she was assuming they were vicious, but she wouldn’t admit that was her reason. I am so over these breeds being deemed as vicious because of all the attacks we see on the news.

As I said to this lady, my dogs have never been vicious to the point they would attack aggressively, but she didn’t want to hear it.

It’s people like her that make the rest of society look down on people like myself and these type of breeds.

Maybe she needs to take a look at her own actions. Who would take a dog that’s recovering from another dog attack to a public dog park to begin with, and then pick it up in an hysterical way as that’s only going to get the dogs even more worked up?

Next time, think before you act and remember it’s a public place so there are going to be all types of dogs and people there. 

Stacey McCurdy,

North Bendigo