a woman riding her bike on the sidewalk by the park stopped behind me and the pointers and was looking here and there and i thought she was looking at birds and imagined i heard her making bird calls. comet pooped and we turned back and she blocked herself behind the bike for protection, and me and the dogs were thinking, what's with this chucklehead? and she says i'm very afraid of those dogs, i was attacked by a weimaraner. i didn't see any point in pointing out that these were pointers, but i did assert that they were no threat. and she says you never know, and i say yes, i absolutely do. then after i thought again how dogs react to fear. fear makes dogs afraid, or nervous, or at least concerned, and with mister fear just attracts him to try to put the fearful one at ease. i wanted to say to her her generalized and therefore misplaced fear confuses the dogs, and you probably made that weimaraner afraid of you, and the dog thought she was defending herself. i wish i could say how sorry i am for people that live in a bubble of fear they carry everywhere. i'm afraid they are attractors for trouble, and it's unnecessary. sure things happen, but a factor in random occurrences is the presence of fear. fear attracts, and irrational fear makes you a victim, even when nothing happens. she's like they should be on a leash, and i'm like you should be on the street, but i ride on sidewalks, and i totally understand the perfectly rational fear of cars.