This afternoon I was walking my mom's dogs because she is sick and I need exercise.

We have a golden retriever who we got when one day he just appeared in our yard. We called the shelter and did everything legal to find the owner. When we did she gave him to me.

We don't know his history. The person who gave him to me said he'd been with a few families, always on a chain. We suspect he once had a family with kids and training as he vaguely seems to remember some training.

So I'm walking along and a car came so I took him to the side of the road. The car came up a hill, saw us and accelerated but as the young man driving went past he yelled at me "you something that dog!". No time to react. I kept going but decided I didn't want another encounter and so we went back early.

All that's fine. Creepy but fine. I think he might have said I stole that dog and that's not true. But with the dog's history I can see where one might think that; for all I know he was stolen at some point but not by us. I don't know his history before last October but I do know that we got him legally b/c the shelter was involved. It could have been anything. "clean up after" that dog? (We always do). "control that dog" (makes no sense but we do have 2 dogs that bark although this guy is not a neighbor so shouldn't complain).

But now I'm paranoid about walking the dogs again. He can yell from his moving car all he wants (and next time I'll be ready to get his license plate; today I was too shocked) but if he decides to get more aggressive it could be scary. And of course my brain has gone there and now something I truly enjoy is scary.

Like I'm not paranoid enough without people helping...