I go hiking everyday in this amazing expansive forest park bordering an urban area, it is really gorgeous. So this is like my gym and my church rolled into one. The problem is I have a totally rational phobia of large dogs I don't know running toward me and generally being out of control. I was mauled.

This park has a leash law primarily for environmental reasons but NO one pays attention to it. After a particularly crummy hour of dog dodging I finally got up the nerve to say (in a really nice way) "hey I'm not that comfortable with dogs sorry" as they are bounding at me fifty ft away from their owner who isn't paying attention.

Anyway no matter how nice I am some people have been put out by this. I don't even know why I'm apologizing to them really, they are the people letting their dogs pollute and erode the trails, and giving me panic attacks.