Woman, 82, told child to stop teasing a park goose, was shoved to ground by father.

[KurtNYC]

186. I am always sort of stunned when these things happen

I takes me a second to start to respond because some of it is just bizarre. I had a woman in the space of 3 seconds say "your dogs look thirsty" and simultaneously she stoops and sprays them in the face with one of those water bottles off of a bike (!) A stream of water in their faces like they are those clown heads at the fair that you spray the target and balloon blows up.

One of the more extreme ones was a guy, got down on his knees and barked at one of my dogs from about 12 inches away while telling his own dog "you don't need to be scared of this mean dog..." 3 people at a cafe table watched it happen and I just let him do it and held my dog tight. He got up and walked away with his dog. Something like that is just so weird and unexpected that by the time I have any appropriate response it's over.

Part of my adaptation is that I used to walk 2 big scary looking dogs in Manhattan and no one would approach them. Now I am in a small town with 2 very friendly looking lab/golden mixes and it's very different, lots more attention for the dogs. No fear or boundaries. People want to feed them and kiss them and whatever. Most people mean well so I try not to over react although when something develops that really threatens the dogs health or safety I just go into auto-pilot and hyper speed.