[Lilah Charm]

I know I have read others stories but we have not had such a scare as we had today....

We took a trip to the nearby lake we like to go to in the gorge, fun for the kids To play in, grass, shade, trees and of course dog friendly. We chose a secluded corner for our family to settle in and overall we had a very nice day. However, midway through our trip we were about an inch away from it going all bad.

Lilah and I were walking (on a leash of course) on the main path through the park to grab a few things out of the car, it was a very crowded but we were in a wide open space and had already stopped to talk to a nice older lady who wanted to say hi to lilah. A little further along a young blonde woman was standing with a beautiful pure white husky/wolf looking dog who appeared to be safely on a leash and sitting nicely, she smiled, I smiled and then her dog lunged at mine totally unexpectedly and she lost her grip on the leash. I know the right response is to have an umbrella or even a stick but I had my shorts and tank top bare arms and my little girl on a leash so my automatic response was to haul her up- I know she looked like a dangling squirrel and all in one moment she was as high as she could be and he was leaping and snapping and I swallowed her into my arms and in my rowdy 'raised by my father-mother of five children-load hundreds of pounds of feed and hay for a living and know how to wrestle a ram' voice I hollered/growled some sort of very loud noise and he sat right down. Thank god. By this (short, very short) time the owner had made it to her dog (six feet away?) and was apologizing profusely, she was very shaken up and explaining that he normally does so well with little dogs and was visibly about to cry. We continued on to our car and got our things but on our way back we went the long way around over the lumpy hill and avoided walking anywhere near their group- what a terrifying experience.