Uncle, Grandmother in Custody After Toddler's Dog Attack Death

[magical thyme]

4. as usual, the article doesn't bother to describe the dogs beyond the inflammatory

I wonder how many were intact males?

I never realized how many idiots there are out there with dogs until a couple weeks ago when I broke up a budding dog fight between 2 intact male dogs -- a registered lab held by a long rope and an intact terrier off leash -- during my dinner break at work.

I was walking the boardwalk on the harbor, watching the boats and greeting various doggies as they passed. As usual, a woman was sitting on the embankment with her young intact yellow lab, who is in field trials training. He was on a long rope, but pretty well controlled by voice.

I stopped to chat with her then continued along the boardwalk. On my way back I passed a man with a medium sized terrier mix. Intact. Off leash in a public area. The dog was lagging 20-30 feet behind the man. Various other people were walking their tiny dogs. In one case a tiny poodle mix was being held by a toddler, but fortunately I passed them long after the incident or this could have been a worse story.

The man walked past the intact yellow lab, with his intact terrier lagging about 30 feet behind. As the intact terrier reached the intact yellow lab, they started growling and heading for each other.

The intact yellow lab ignored his owner's voice command, and continued to approach the loose intact terrier.

The intact yellow lab's owner immediately pulled the rope up short and dragged the yellow lab back to her side.

The loose, intact terrier's owner was blissfully ignorant of the fact that his dog was about to get into a fight. And the loose, intact terrier proceeder to head off the boardwalk and go after the intact yellow lab.

That's when I stepped in, as I had caught up to and was just behind the terrier. I yelled NO! and grabbed for his collar. My voice and hand startled him just enough to distract him from the lab. I was not able to get hold of him, but at the point his owner woke up and started calling for him.

Luckily for everybody involved, he was more afraid of me than interested in the dog fight, and ran to his owner.

I was effing pissed. were those people thinking?