In my SoCal neighborhood, there is a mandatory leash law. Nevertheless, people here often walk their dogs without a leash, and out of their control. They become indignant and rude if you politely remind them there is a leash law, even if their dog has just lunged for your thigh.

For some reason, my wife is an absolute magnet for aggressive dogs. (Same with mosquitos. There are only two mosquitos in SoCal. One is biting her now, and the other is on its way to bite her.)

My wife is an artist, and looks for interesting junk all the time. She's particularly fond of old broomsticks and mop handles, and often retrieves them from trash bins on the curb. One of the items she retrieved is an aluminum mop handle which on one end has the rusty, jagged, sharp and broken-off remains of what used to hold the mop fixture. She has painted some nice flowers on the shaft, little bunnies, some peace symbols, an American flag, and stuck a Mickey Mouse figure on the top. All a very nice SoCal flavor, and people often remark about her cute walking stick. They rarely notice the rusty sharp jagged end, but she finds it very comforting when greeting the neighbors' little pets now on her walks.

This is comforting to me, also. I still have teeth marks on my arm from a bite by a neighbor lady's large brittany spaniel more than 35 years ago. She was walking the dog down the street, and he was cheerily carrying a stick in his mouth like he wanted to play fetch. We stopped to have a friendly word with this lady, and without warning the dog dropped the stick, and lunged toward my face. I threw up my left arm, and he bit through my shirt into my left bicep. For his trouble, he spent several days penned up so the county health department could see if he had rabies. During this time, he was presumably well fed and watered. I spent most of the next week in pain, but my wife also made sure I was well-fed and watered.