Across the street was our elderly neighbor walking his sweet little dog, Mocha. Cloud isn't sure he likes Mocha very much, but he'll warm up to her. She yaps excitedly but she's a sweet little dog.
Also across the street was an athletic young woman with a massive boxer. The woman obviously knew how to control her dog, but the dog was large and muscular... and he had his eye on Mocha. This was, as my husband might say, a dog who eats small dogs. And his owner was struggling to keep him under control.
So here we have little Mocha.....
...up against this:
The woman got the boxer to sit down, mainly by kneeling on his hindquarters, and then shouted to my neighbor, "You go ahead! I'll stay right here!"
My neighbor and his dog looked at this big barking monstrosity and frowned. They froze. They hesitated. They shuffled their feet.
So I called out across the street, "Hey [neighbor]! Come over to this side of the street! Come in my yard!"
(I don't have sidewalk on my side, so dog walkers don't generally come to my side.)
"What?!" he shouted back, over the roar of traffic and the additional roar of dog-eating dog.
I gestured widely. "Come on over!"
He leapt to life and darted across the street with his little dog close at his feet. I forgot to glance at the woman and her boxer again to see how she reacted to this sudden third-person solution, because Mocha was happy to see us, and Awesomecloud was cautiously interested in her, and my neighbor and I were already catching up with the mundanities of neighborly small talk.
The boxer's owner may have been relieved that she didn't have to do more to control her dog. She's going to have to do more in the future, though. She may have meant well, but sometimes aggressive problems require aggressive solutions.
I should have mentioned to my neighbor that he can cross into my yard anytime.
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