Some dog owners need obedience classes

Sabine Jones bares her teeth at impolite nitwits who can’t or won’t control their dogs

"Don't worry, he won't bite - he just wants to say hello." So said clueless muppet #1 as her large black Lab circled behind me, growling menacingly with ears laid flat, before - yup - biting me.

"He's not aggressive, he's just curious." So said clueless muppet #2, as her belligerent Jack Russell latched onto my Collie-cross's bottom jaw, then hung on grimly, resisting all efforts to remove it.

"They just want to play!" So shouted clueless muppet #3, as her two dogs of indeterminate but large breed, neither on a lead, streaked across the park towards my (leashed) dog, murder in their eyes, as a prelude to an epic dog-fight.

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That special little South African word, "just", which usually means "merely" or "simply", takes on a whole new meaning - a meaning both weaselly and almost always untruthful - when used by certain dog owners to explain away something nasty being done by their dog to you or your dog.

What is it with these people? And I blame the people, not the dogs, because it's hardly the dogs' fault that their owners are nitwits.

I love dogs but I have a healthy fear of them. Dogs can, you know, kill you - and your dogs. And if they don't leave you and/or your dog dead and bleeding in the street, they can certainly do horrific damage. Yet some owners seem curiously blind to this.

I know personally of two separate incidents where dogs committed atrocities - in one case, the dog actually tore off someone's ear; in the other, the dog escaped its owners' property and killed another dog on a leash being walked past on the pavement - and yet remained cosseted members of those families. I'm sorry, but if a "child" of mine tore off someone's ear, I'd be tempted to have him put down. For me, the decision to euthanize a dangerous dog is a no-brainer. And I'm a dog-lover.

"Get your effing dog back inside and close your effing gate!" That was me, screaming at clueless muppet #4, who stood around holding grocery bags and whittering uselessly while her terrier shot past the muppet's car and out the open gate, and went straight for my dog's jugular. Her explanation? "I was just unpacking the car ..."

But perhaps my favourite was the reaction of clueless muppet #5, who clocked me walking home from the shops, past her house, pushing a pram with a small child in it, with a backpack full of groceries, and my dog on a leash. She actually locked eyes with me, so there's no doubt that she saw me; and her twin rottweilers, which had already spotted my dog, were growling and slavering at her feet. Then, astonishingly and without any apparent reason, she simply opened the gate.

It would have been comical had it not been so bowel-looseningly terrifying: the rottweilers clearly could not believe their luck, and hesitated for a fraction of a second, glancing at each other, before launching themselves at my dog. As my dog's howls of fear and pain rent the air, and I tried to wrestle the pram containing the completely hysterical child out of the way of the fracas, I screamed at the muppet, "Get your dogs under control!"

Her (shouted) response? "Oh, just calm down."

I can only hope there's a special circle of hell reserved for these people, where they're forever set upon by the dogs of other nitwits, and have to listen to "just" excuses for eternity.