We were just exiting the ravine yesterday afternoon, quite early, when we came across him. Usually we see him later in the day. He and his wife have two rescue dogs, one a terrier mix the other a Lab mix. Both of the dogs have their issues, from their days living elsewhere, before they were surrendered to a dog-rescue organization.

They'd never posed a problem to our Button and Riley in the past, and nor do they now, to Jack and Jill. The female terrier becomes extraordinarily excited in the summer months when she's permitted to wade in the creek, by her owners. We don't let ours do anything like that, although most people do with their dogs. We once had the misfortune to find that Button had cut the area around her dewclaw badly, thanks to a beer bottle that some nit had tossed into the creek. The creek, in fact, becomes a depository for all manner of detritus, junk that people carelessly throw into it.

The larger of those two dogs has a tendency to shy away from people and from other dogs, barking furiously. When the two dogs are in their own backyard they're adamant about not permitting anyone but their owners to draw near. But they are loved by their owners, and why not? It was previous owners who had marked them for life by imposing a trauma of brutality on them.

The young man, Sri Lankan by birth, but Canadian by good fortune -- ours and his -- told us about an incident that had occurred in the ravine last week. There's a woman who often walks two middling-sized terriers. She never leaves them off leash, and often stands aside, holding them back when others approach on the trails. She's friendly enough, and has explained to us that one of her dogs is fiercely cranky. Both, in fact, bark furiously at people passing by, or perhaps it's their dogs they bark at.

The cranky dog has a nasty reputation among Bilberry Creek ravine dog walkers. It has often attacked other dogs, despite the care its owner takes to separate it from such opportunities. There are some dogs, much larger than the terrier, fearful of being anywhere in the vicinity of this dog. Our friend explained he had been walking with his two, and suddenly around the corner, the two dogs appeared -- on leash of course -- and his Lab mix reacted by pouncing on the belligerent dog. He separated them immediately, but, he said, the woman went out of her mind with rage.

She plastered the air with vicious language, and although he said he did his best to calm her down, nothing would assuage her anger, she just kept on screaming fairly horrible things at him. This went on interminably, he said; he should simply have left, but he kept trying to instill some calm into the hysterical woman. Finally, he said, he became so angry himself if she'd been a man he would have hit her.

It's  unfortunate, but these things do happen.We've experienced our own unfortunate encounters on occasion in the ravine, with dogs whose socialization left much to be desired, and whose owners' attitudes sometimes weren't much better than their dogs'. But you turn the chapter, unless something really dreadful occurs, and move on. We did our best to assure our friend he was not at fault, given the circumstances. And we'll continue to give those two middling terriers wide berth.