Re: RANT: Highpoint dog owners

#622264

littlebrowndog
Participant

It has been a few months ago and it was at Alki, not Highpoint, but we did have an encounter with the owner of an off-leash dog that required calling the police. We were walking along with our 2 dogs (service dogs) and a man came walking towards us. His dog was off leash and a fair distance behind him. We didn’t say anything to him but just moved as far away as we could. He turned around and called his dog and instead of the dog coming to him he came charging at our dogs. My husband yelled out at him to control his dog and get his dog on a leash. The guy became very belligerent and threatened my husband that he would “kick his a**” as he was leaving. We called 9-1-1. The guy saw my husband do that and decided he would wait around for the police to arrive (he apparently thought he was being wronged!). The police did come, and they chastised the guy but that was it. They said they could not write him a ticket as they had not seen the dog off leash. They actually advised us not to confront people with off leash dogs as what happened was exactly the sort of conflict that could arise and it could even escalate to a fight or worse. There’s a $1000 penalty for injuring or killing a service dog, but a lot of consolation that would have been if his dog had actually attacked ours.