self defense situation while walking dogs- advice please

Hi all,

I was going to post this in the Santa Cruz subreddit because this situation occurred there, but it is probably more appropriate here. I am a fit 52 year old male and I was walking my two large dogs (Dobermans) down towards Seabright beach. I was at the intersection of Seabright and East cliff (just past Days Market). I was headed toward the beach and I stopped at the light to wait for the crosswalk. I noticed a guy on a mtn. bike on the other side of intersection also waiting for the same crosswalk. He was just standing over his bike and he didn't have a helmet on. I knew that when the walk signal turned green that I would have to pick a side to walk past the guy. I had an iced coffee drink in my left hand and both dogs on leash in my right hand, so I proceed to walk to the right of him when the time came. As he approached me there was a split second when we picked our paths. Then, he got closer and said "get your F**D Up dogs out of my way". I had a hat and sunglasses on, so as I stared at him as he passed to my left, he couldn't tell that I was giving him a glaring look. I didn't say anything, as I didn't want to provoke a troll, but he then said "what, you want to test me?". I just kept walking and he proceeded on the other way without incident.

However, the whole thing got me thinking about what could have happened. I was in a tough spot. If he had done anything, it would have been hard for me to defend myself in that moment, given that I had the dogs in hand in the middle of a busy intersection. My dogs were well behaved and didn't lunge at the guy or bark or anything. If they guy had tried something I would not have wanted the dogs to be involved nor would I be able to just let go of them. I have a fair amount of self-defense training and am an intermediate bjj practitioner, but this guy looked like a mean tweaker and I don't know what he would have done or would be capable of. My question is, what would you do in this type of situation if the guy was more aggressive? Should I be carrying peppers spray? Something else?

thanks in advance for your advice.

Submitted January 09, 2025 at 04:59PM by Dizzy-Mixture422 https://ift.tt/K1BLRTk