[GalasaKoll]

Today we were walking Socrates on a main road in a busy area. We take him there for walks sometimes because it is a super dog friendly area and Socrates loves meeting all of the people, so it's a nice change of pace for a walk. Also, because there are usually a good amount of dogs around, people always keep their dogs on leash to be polite, unlike many other areas around here (people in my town think since they've lived here a long time they own the whole place and can do whatever they want). We were coming down the road and I saw a chihuahua with a woman on a flexi lead. I got socrates on the other side of me and stepped off the sidewalk because clearly the woman didn't realize that those leashes have a button on them to control how much slack the dog gets. She ended up turning down a side street before we passed her and I heard her dog go CRAZY barking. I had seen a woman with a GSD turn down that same road a couple of seconds earlier, so I assumed the chihuahua was barking at the GSD. I stopped, because I didn't want to pass the street in the heat of the action and 1) have Socrates react or 2) have the woman try to turn away and walk right up to us as we passed. So I figured I would just keep Socrates under control while I waited for a good time to pass. I had him sit and within a second I hear "OH NO!" and see the chihuahua bolting for us growling. I have no clue how this dog ended up off leash, but the woman was holding the leash and the dog still had his harness on, so for some reason she unclipped him. The chihuahua leapt onto Socrates and I held his head away from him with the leash so he couldn't grab the little shit and scooped the dog up and tossed him with the other hand. Socrates was VERY good. I threw the little thing at the owner (woops) and just told Socrates "LETS GO" and he just followed us right out of there. I didn't even look back, I have no idea what happened with the dog, but hopefully that dumbass rethinks letting her obviously unfriendly dog off leash in a crowded public area. Every day I am even more amazed by people's stupidity. Now that's just one more place to cross off my list of safe places to walk to dog.