Slightly annoyed and venting - my park pass expired this week, so no more runs up on the mt or from Mitchell canyon until I get a new one. One thing I love about the mountain, there are no dogs allowed, not even on leash. So, you just go, run, and if you hear something big, you know it's not a dog. Regional parks, where I am now running, you can have dogs, and dogs off leash if they are under your control. Now, I can get onto Diablo by accessing it through a regional park, and that is how I have been doing it this week...but it means running through dog-ville.
So this morning (by the way, we are under a heat advisory, temps reaching and maybe passing 100 today and tomorrow, so if you take your dogs out, bring them water. Please.) I'm running and here come 2 big happy friendly, thirsty boxers. No owner in site, and therefore he can't possibly have control of his dogs, which are way, way off leash. So I stop because they are all over me, jumping up, wiggly, happy dogs. Except for that my water bottle leaks, and was dripping, and one of them spotted this and was thirsty and bit my finger. I felt it and knew it was fine...probably going to leave a mark, but fine. Here's the annoying part...the owner finally shows up and is livid at his dogs. Yelling and lunging at them trying to grab collars...annoyed with me because his dogs like me and wont leave with him. I had to turn and run with the dude to get his dogs to go with him.
Poor dogs. I like me better than their owner, too. We would have had a fun morning. I would have given them water and not yelled at them for being dogs. If you can't control your dogs, keep them on leash. Don't allow them off leash in an area with coyotes, cows, deer, bobcats, happy runners, and other things to chase, and then yell at them for doing it. And, please bring water with you.
Looking forward to that park pass. I really don't like running with people who have no business being out there, or with their dogs.
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Ps. I have a dog. I love dogs. I love the mountain. I love runners. I don't like running into cranky people on my morning runs. I don't like getting bit because you didn't bring your dog water, and you don't have your dog on a leash and/or under your control. I fully expect to get bit by spiders, bugs, cows, rabid coyotes and other mt-ish things while running out in nature. I do not expect to get bit by a dog. And, no, I did not tell the dude his dog bit me. He seemed to have enough anger issues w/o me tossing that info at him.
Happy Friday.
Things like this really bug me, and I always hope that this was the dog owners first day trying something new with his dogs and he just learned something new the hard way. But I fear that's not the case, the owner has gone through this many times before, and is sure the dogs are fine without water or out on their own. Some day one of his dogs is going to do something really bad (hard to imagine it being worse than biting you) and he's going to say "I don't know where that came from. They are always such good dogs." (And I would bet money he bags up their poop and leaves the bag alongside the trail.) People like him give all dog owners a bad black eye, and he is likely completely clueless about it.
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