Hello Meg..........this woman would not have the strength to get over the hill to you, she is not the sort Poor you if you had to suffer a similar confrontation. Not funny is it.

There is it is called "the society of I'm alright Jack"

Yes! And they rather depend on not EVERYONE being as thoughtless and selfish as they are don't they. Because if everyone was - they wouldn't like it any more than Bitkin and people like her do.

I can't imagine this woman would be too pleased to see another dog owner come round the corner with six or more huge scary looking dogs let off lead to come charging towards her and her dogs.

oooh I'd lurve it to be me, even though I've only got 4 of them and Mabs is Non combatative, the sight is enough to scare anyone. Sadly it would end up being me who was in the wrong if my girlies retaliated, I keep away from most people now because they can't control their dogs, mine aren't even allowed to look in the wrong direction I suspect.
She will know her 'rights' even though she has no idea of the responsibilities that go with those 'rights'

Report the incident to the Dog Warden, you picked your dog up to keep him safe but if that was a big dog or one that is dog aggressive he could kill several of her dogs. She needs to be told/forced to keep them under control. I am still suffering from the accident I had 3 months ago because of a loose dogs racing up to me, Bonnie and Tilly like that. I reported it to the Dog Warden and the dog hasn't been out loose since.

I had a daft incident happen yesterday, was on my way home with Lona and Mabs and all of a sudden there was this tiny chi racing up to me on the end of a very long extending lead, the woman hadn't even seen me. I quickly had to move into the centre of the road (luckily it was in a small village) and shout to her to shorten her lead, and I got a filthy look and a nasty remark. Lona won't normally bother and Mabs doesn't want to know, but that isn't always going to be the case when this little dog does things like that, and I am sick of having to protect my dogs from stupid people and their actions, and then get abuse from them.

Bitkin wrote ..... Thank you for agreeing about the picking up thing - some people have more guts than me I think when it comes to this sort of thing, but I just wasn't prepared to risk it.

I'm not someone who believes in picking up a small dog for no apparent reason but when a neighbour's dog tried to attack my tiny Chloe, picking her up was the only way to prevent her from being hurt. She was so traumatised by the incident that for weeks afterwards my normally intrepid little dog was terrified whenever she saw a large black dog, even in the distance and she'd literally beg to be picked up, which I did until she regained her confidence. I really think by doing so she recovered much faster than if I'd forced her to be "a big brave girl", and if a similar situation ever arose again I'd have no hesitation in doing the same thing.

I think something I said in another thread has been misinterpreted. I meant that if you feel you have to pick your small dog up because it may be under threat, DO NOT hold it aloft, tuck it under your arm, turn away and walk off.
If you stand there with your little dog held aloft then the big dog, which is already excited, will get even more excited, and start jumping up, because the dog will think you have a treat (ie your dog ) and you could even be knocked over.

When Joe started to have panic attacks after being attacked by 2 Weirmaraners I always picked him up, I took the view that if I got hurt I could get the owner ordered to keep the dogs under control, if Joe got hurt nobody wanted to know.

On the few occasions it was bella under threat I picked her up without even thinking about it. now if bella is not sure if she will lie down and wait if she is frightened she will run behind me. poking her little head out from between my feet!