Going to the dogs

Oh, how the time flies. I see it's been over a week since I was chatting you up about my cowl. I found myself back in eastern Washington state for work last week, and was immersed in productivity (I even worked the weekend--I know!) Less on the knitting productivity front. Let's get the boring, uninspired stuff out of the way first.

Yay! Replacement sock! Moving on.

I occasionally check out my Blogger stats.  It's something that one could get obsessed over--but considering I have, like, 5 readers (including my mother-hi Mom!) I don't worry about it too much.  The most read posts tend to be from Knit and Crochet Blog Week (duh) but surprisingly this post is consistently always in the top 5.  Written almost a year ago (also while I was in eastern WA), this was an experimental knit I was doing--making a wine tote.  Internets traffic indicates that there's a demand for something like this; apparently, you knitters are total lushes.  No surprises there.

The first prototype was a bit heavy in intarsia for such a texturally complicated piece.  It was the wrong size for a wine bottle, and it was obnoxious having a million (approximately) little balls of yarn hanging from the back.  I stuffed it in the bottom of a bag.  Since I was headed back to WA, and since warm weather was on its way that I'd re-attempt this non-winter related item--scaled-down in size and difficulty.

A little bit of progress:

Prototype No. 2

I thought I took your advice on how to mix the colors for the grapes, but frankly this version doesn't look like either of the versions I was attempting a year ago.  More investigation necessary.  Speaking of investigation:

I'm investigating some yarn in my mouth.

Which brings me to another topic I wanted to talk to you guys about.  I was taking the Sam-ster for a long lunchtime walk today, when a guy came jogging up behind us with his dog.  Nothing out of the ordinary there, we pass by at least a few dogs on every walk.  We stepped to the side so they could pass, and I distracted Sammy by having him do a couple of tricks for me to earn some treats.  The other dog was pulling to come greet Sammy and getting pulled off of his hind legs--at first I thought that it was just because he was pulling at the leash, but then I realized his owner was actively pulling him back.  Harder and harder, really jerking him until he was basically choking him.  He kept jerking at him, even though the dog didn't seem to be doing anything wrong--he wasn't being aggressive at all, he just wanted to greet another dog.

Then instead of going past, he walks to the curb and forces his dog onto it's side.  At this point, I'm staring at him with my mouth open and probably have an expression on my face like he's just popped a turd into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed right in front of me.  He looks at me and says, "We have to do this pretty much every day."  A million thoughts are running through my head.   "Why don't you have him in a harness if he's so hard to control?" "You know all of that dominance stuff is total bullshit, right?" "If you have to do it every day, maybe it's not working," "Would you do that to a kid?""You're going to get your ass bitten doing that," and really, the bottom line, "You're abusing your dog."  I started to ask for his name, like you do when someone gives you shitty customer service, but stopped short.  What was I going to do with it?  The fearless side of me said that I needed to say something, the conservative side said that he could kick my ass and wouldn't have listened to a word I said.  I ended up stalking off with a scoff, having Sammy heel and giving him a treat to, I dunno, try and demonstrate good dog handling. 

I feel bad.  The walk ended up being a bummer, and I wish I had done things differently.  What would you have done?  What should I do next time?