Gimme and the Bad Man

We've found a place near home where we can go for some of our short off-lead walks.  Its a trail that I used to use years ago, but has since been improved.  Where we park is in the middle, so up and back to both ends is a 90 minute walk. 

Because its improved, and it connects with an old improved bike trail that runs through the city, there are a LOT of cyclists using it now.  Consequently we get a bunch of recall practice with every walk.  Gimme needs to be near me whenever there are cyclists going by so they aren't faced with trying to dodge a dog that may move unpredictably.  Dodging dogs leads to biking accidents. 

Fortunately the one thing I've done very well with Gimme is to establish a killer recall.  On each walk I get many compliments on her recall, and her beauty, of course.  Interestingly, I've called her so many times, that she is just starting to see the bikers and then turn toward me and see if I call her.  I expect she will start coming in on her own, which would be great.

Because the weather is warming up, I've started walking her in the morning so I can take her home before I go to work - just too warm to have her stay in the car.  As a result, I'm starting to see more homeless people in the area, as they come out of their camping areas in the woods nearby.  Mostly they've been fine, but recently we ran into a man that was behaving very weird.  Gimme was walking ahead of me and still thirty feet away from him when he started behaving threateningly toward her - which of course made certain that she was fixated on him.  Since he was being so spooky, that basically pushed her over threshold and she couldn't even hear me calling her.  Meanwhile he's yelling at me that he's going to kill her and beat me up if I didn't get her away from him (she was 15ft from him, but barking).  She was so worried, there was no way even when I was right next to her that she was going to turn her back on him to come to me...   She was unwilling to turn her back on him until he was about forty feet away.

Gimme didn't act inappropriately - he started menacing her before she even started to pay any attention to him, but an even better response would have been to come to me automatically.  I like her friendliness, but when someone acts odd, she should return to me.  So that's something we'll be working on. 

The guy was obviously whacked.  And while there are a fair number of people using that path - I see about ten during my one hour walk... I could be in a lot of trouble before someone wandered along to come to my aid.  In all my years of being out and about alone, I've never run into someone that spooked me - until now. So went to Cabela's and bought a pepper spray device that will clip on my pants.  

I recommend that anyone who is out and about walking alone carry some "personal protection."  There are several different ones - many small enough to conveniently carry and reasonably priced.  Clearly I've been ignoring that kind of advice for many years -- you can one-up me by heeding that advice.