What are you doing to that dog?

Eliot the German Shepherd has a problem. He firmly believes that sighting another canine - or anything vaguely ressembling another canine - requires excessive tugging on his leash and unrestrained barking. He tugs toward and barks at strollers, wagons, dogs big and small and, most recently, a poor, innocent white and brown plastic horse on wheels left abandonned at a local park.

Simone has a different problem. After a fairly severe car collision a couple of years ago, she suffers from neck pain and headaches. Jerking movements, such as those engendered by a dog pulling madly on his leash, aggravate the pain.

On occasion, Simone has resorted to wrestling the dog into submission when a dog approaches. While this reduces the barking because Eliot cannot see the approaching beast, it increases the scratches on Simone's arms the moment Eliot realizes that this isn't just a play match and there's an actual four legged dog in the neighbourhood. So Simone found a new position that evens the playing field between Eliot and herself. The problem is that this new position makes it look as though the dog is in a sleeper hold.

"What are you doing to that dog?" one man challenged Simone angrily yesterday.

"I'm trying to..." Simone started to say but Eliot, having spied the woman and her dog approaching a close-by garbage pail to drop in a bag of doo-doo, barked up a storm. Simone turned herself and the dog around.

"You're choking that dog!" the man drew closer, his face twisted in anger.

Eliot barked at the man who took a step back.

"Control your dog," admonished the man, easing his way back without taking his eyes off the dog.

Oh, for crying out loud...