I was walking my dog in a neighborhood near my home one evening last summer, when not one but two dogs belonging to a homeowner on the street charged us, barking fiercely. One dog had been in the front yard as we approached (on the opposite side of the street), and the second charged out the front door when someone entered. It was over in a minute or two: the woman of the house caught one dog by its collar, and someone visiting the house removed the second dog after he'd snarled at us for a minute or two.
My dog, smaller than either of his two attackers, was terrified (a rescue pooch, he has anxiety issues to begin with), and I was understandably concerned since I'd already been bitten by a loose dog a few weeks before.
For what it's worth, the city has a leash law, and a) I was on public property (a sidewalk) and b) I was in compliance with that leash law – my dog was controlled by a harness and a six-foot nylon lead (not a retractable). When I asked the owners, rather pointedly, if they were aware of the leash law, the man responded by asking, "Do you live here?"
WTF? That's a public street! I could have been walking my dog on the sidewalk of a public street in Chicago, LA, Boston, or Bugtussle, Oklahoma, and not needed to justify my presence to a resident.
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But now I know what was going on: he was employing what's known as the "Hey! Look over there!" defense, a form of the "distraction defense." He knew he was in the wrong, so he tried to convince me that I was "equally wrong" by raising a completely unrelated question that – at least in this case – was not even in the least wrongdoing. In other words, pretty much the same as saying "Nope, no Russian collusion here, but hey! Look over there! they bought some uranium a decade ago!" |
Yep, people like this guy voted for Donald Trump because he could be depended on to act just like they would...
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