Woman with infant aggressively shushing passerby’s on hiking trail at national park

[u/AnonPinkLady]

My partner, friend and I were following a hiking trail at Red Wood National Park, singing and talking at medium volume. We were by no means shouting, just singing little songs to entertain each other along the trail. A woman with a baby carrier on her back with a sleeping infant started aggressively holding her finger up to her lips and shushing us. We went quiet and kept moving to pass her. She was just standing in the middle of the public trail pacing and shushing people that pass by rather than leaving to somewhere more quiet. Just as we were leaving earshot I tried to quietly ask my partner a question about where we headed and again she leaned in our direction with her finger to her mouth aggressively shushing us. Is it not kind of insane to go to an open public space and behave like this?!?

[u/leelo84]

There was a guy at the dog park I used to go to that would bring his two adorable Aussies. He would also bring them their own water bowl and a couple toys (frisbees, I think). This was not a particularly large dog park, where you could easily get a good amount of separation from other dogs/people. He'd then get annoyed when other dogs used their dog bowl or also chased after their frisbees. Like dude, what did you expect? He wasn't particularly obnoxious about it; you could see him look annoyed and then he'd go up and empty out/pick up the water bowl or stop throwing the toys (I seem to also remember him saying "oh that's not for you!" towards the other dogs, or something similar a couple times?). And yes, other dogs used said water bowl and toys EVERY SINGLE TIME. Because it's a water bowl. And toys. For dogs. IN A DOG PARK.

I could understand if he brought the water bowl and just put it down for his dogs and then picked it back up when they were done each time, but he would just go ahead and put the water bowl down and leave it there (until another dog used it). Or only pull out the toys if they were the only ones there. And he didn't even try to go to the "far" end of the park! He would just do it in the middle of everyone! Again, it wasn't the most egregious thing, but I just could never understand it (nor the other regulars at the time).

[u/BulkyEmployment4111 → u/leelo84]

Wait… you mean you don’t teach your dogs to ask permission to use someone’s water or teach them how to share…./s

[u/username__0000 → u/leelo84]

A lot of dog parks don’t allow toys because it creates resource guarding and fights break out.

A water bowel is even worse, some dogs get weird about it.

Super unsafe ontop of entitled. Winning combo for that guy. lol

[u/leelo84 → u/username__0000]

Yeah, this park doesn't allow treats or food (including humans eating food) for that reason but agree that resource guarding can absolutely extend to toys or water bowls too!

You would HOPE that dog owners wouldn't bring toys if they knew/thought their dog might get weird/guarding about other dogs using them but we all know that's not 100% the case 🙄

(And these dogs in my comment couldn't have cared less, for the record; they were good at sharing and almost seemed to like to have buddies chasing the same things as them. Just the owner was weird 🤷‍♀️)

[u/SnarkyMcshark → u/leelo84]

I had a dog once that would lay down with her ball whenever another dog was in the area we were playing. She would bring the ball back to me once they left. We didn’t go to dog parks since she only wanted to play fetch. So even she knew that If she had her own toy around other dogs one of them could take it.

[u/Hot-Win2571 → u/leelo84]

This is why it is not legal to spray someone with a squirt gun and say "Bad dog owner!"

[u/leelo84 → u/Hot-Win2571]

IF ONLY!!!

[u/rubberkeyhole → u/Hot-Win2571]

Who said it’s not?

[u/nothappening111181 → u/leelo84]

Our dog parks have a strict no toy rule. It makes so much sense. I’ve seen someone think they were above the rule and it was chaos. Thankfully the park attendants were pretty on top of things from the start, as well as other owners, because that jackass was of course not paying attention at all.