Bay Area Bird Blog

Yesterday, my wife and I were awakened early in the morning by the sound of a dog chasing a panicked deer through our backyard.  My wife went out back to try to control the dog; I went out front to try to find whoever was walking their dog and let it run loose.  Sure enough, up the street was some guy with his (unleashed) dog, standing and talking with another dog owner.  I said “do you have a border collie?” and he said “yeah.”  I told him his dog was chasing deer in our yard; he said “oh, is that where she got to?  OK,” and made no move to come get his dog!  I insisted that he come down right away and get his dog; he said “oh, OK” and came down.  But rather than show any interest in controlling his dog, he started trying to chit-chat: “Oh, that’s a nice gate, did you make that?,” and “Oh, you have a creek in your back yard, that’s really nice”, and so on.  I said “listen, I have no interest in making nice, I want you to get your dog out of my yard right now.”   He still didn’t care, nor did he apologize…unless you count “I can see you’re upset” as an apology.  The guy’s whole attitude was that it’s no big deal if his dog is running around in our backyard and our neighbors’ backyards, and that he was just humoring us by removing his dog…which he eventually did.  But I guarantee he didn’t learn any lessons or resolve to change his behavior in the slightest; in his world, it’s fine if his dog roams other people’s yards.  I try to remind myself of the many good, responsible dog owners I know, but encounters like this make it hard not to hate the whole group of people.  The sense of entitlement of some of these people is just incredible. (See the discussion of a previous post on this blog for more).