I've pretty much stopped worrying about what other people think and do, so long as they are far enough away that they are unlikey to try anything with one of mine.
Today, I had Odie at the vet and they were taking blood. She couldn't get enough out of her left rear leg. So she switched to the right. And she is poking and poking. And poking the dog to get the blood. She said a few times, I am not worried about her.
So I said, well she is fully attack trained. At this point she was trying to get blood out of her neck, and poking away with her face right in Odie's teeth. She looked at me. I told her, well I didn't, actually I'm not sure how to get her to bite -- well, I think I know. She said, let's not practice now. LOL!
At one point, I told her you don't have to worry about the dog, you need to worry about the owner!
But she was just having trouble getting the blood to come out. And Odie wasn't complaining.
I guess the way I look at it, if someone wants to put some distance between themselves and my dog. All the better. They are nervous, and it is probably better for them to stay away. I've only had one person yell across a parking lot, telling me to keep the dog away. That was 7 years ago, and this site was not all that sympathetic toward my feelings of incredulity. The dog was 4 months old, a puppy, mostly black, but his ears were up. The guy was huge.
My feeling was that people need to get over their fears and not expect the world to cater to them. But the general feeling of the site was that some people have phobias, and I guess they are to be pitied and not expected to get over a possible episode that they have had in the past.
Personally, I think it takes a lot of guts to tell someone to not walk somewhere or not bring the dog in a certain direction, or that they should not have that kind of dog or the like. I think a phobic person should go ahead and cross the street or go the other way. That's fine. But when they get loud-mouthed about it, then I think it isn't such an evil thing for us to think they need to get over themselves.
Ah well, I think it is probably a good time to get my moon chart out and see if it has anything to do with how fractious I've been feeling lately.
ETA: Darn! Can't blame the moon either.