It was a shock to hear and left a bad taste in my mouth. Yesterday during our ravine walk we had come across a couple whom we'd never seen before, in the company of their five-month-old standard poodle, a beautiful animal whose exuberance, given its age, was little surprise. This was not an aggressive dog, but a mild-mannered, and joyful personality demonstrating no difficulty whatever getting along well with other dogs that happened to come along while we were in deep conversation with other people as they arrived at the spot where we had stopped to talk for a considerable length of time.

One of our long-time acquaintances with a beautifully mannered dog of his own had come across us, stopped briefly and then carried on, and we were still in conversation when he returned, surprisingly after a relatively brief hiatus, having obviously not gone far from where he had seen us. Again he stopped to speak with the group that we represented, in a fairly jocular manner. What I hadn't seen, consumed with talk alongside two other women, was what my husband relayed to me, that our friend had bent down as the young poodle made to leap up at him and violently fisted it, knocking the puppy into a tumble. The puppy's owner, a man proud and affectionate of his charge, saw what  had happened, but obviously felt constrained to say anything in protest, and our friend made his farewells and continued on.

This wasn't the first time we had seen him behaving in this manner; previously it had been our two little dogs whom he had swatted away from him, not as violently, but disturbingly, nonetheless; no one else we know has ever reacted in this manner and for quite a period of time we distanced ourselves from this man, though lately, our relations had become warmer. Now I'm left with a nasty taste in my mouth over him. It's not as though the dog might have bowled him over since this man stands a full foot taller than anyone else who ventures into the ravine.

And then, to kind of taint further the experience of yesterday's otherwise-pleasant and invigorating trek in the woods, as we were a short way from exiting the ravine we came across a woman we see on occasion, who related to us another disturbing tale of violence, this one revolving around a year-old husky usually walked by a very personable woman who keeps the dog in control with a device that gives it a brief electric shock when it wanders too far from her presence and she can no longer see it. She walks the dog on weekdays and leaves it to her husband to do so on weekends, and we had noted a half-hour earlier the sight of the dog quite a distance from the man walking it, he paying no attention whatever where it was, giving it completely free reign.

Evidently, later, the man had entirely lost track of the dog. In that interval the woman described what she had seen, a drama unfolding before her eyes, her own dog sitting serenely by her side, a large, hairy breed like a Newfoundland mix that never ventures too far from her. The husky had chased down a red fox that had ventured out of its den, and incredibly, had caught the fox and it was in the husky's jaws. She shouted at the dog, and it ignored her, as she began running through the understory over snow and ice. She approached the two, the fox struggling to be free, the husky holding on, and ignoring her appeals while she was pulling on its back. Until it finally released the fox which streaked away, the husky following it, until the fox managed to slip back into its den, its face peering out at the husky, which finally left it, as the woman berated it loudly.

No idea what condition the fox was left in; whether injured or simply traumatized.

Soon the dog's owner appeared and the woman informed him what had happened. He as good as shrugged offhandedly; it wasn't, he explained, his intention to restrain the dog, he preferred to let it wander where it would, unlike his wife, who maintained tight control of it.

This will not qualify as one of the better days we've ever experienced in our woodland trails.