‘D

ON’T worry, he won’t bite — he just wants to say hello.” So said clueless muppet #1 as her large black Lab circled behind me, growling menacingly with ears laid flat, before — yup — biting me.

“He’s not aggressive, he’s just curious.” So said clueless muppet #2, as her belligerent Jack Russell latched onto my Collie-cross’s bottom jaw, then hung on grimly, resisting all efforts to remove it.

“They just want to play!” So shouted clueless muppet #3, as her two dogs of indeterminate but large breed, neither on a lead, streaked across the park towards my (leashed) dog, murder in their eyes, as a prelude to an epic dogfight.

That special little South African word, “just”, which usually means “merely” or “simply”, takes on a whole new meaning — a meaning both weaselly and almost always untruthful — when used by certain dog owners to explain away something nasty being done by their dog to you or your dog.

What is it with these people? And I blame the people, not the dogs, because it’s hardly the dogs’ fault that their owners are nitwits.

I love dogs but I have a healthy fear of them. Dogs can, you know, kill you — and your dogs. And if they don’t leave you and/or your dog dead and bleeding in the street, they can certainly do horrific damage. Yet some owners seem curiously blind to this.