It's Not Like I'm Letting My Seven Year Old Smoke Cigarettes

Last week, while I was biking with my dog, a woman in jogging attire, with a poorly behaved poodle, yelled to me, "You know, that's the worst thing you can do for your dog!" and so I circled my bike several times and politely listened to her explanation--she said she had a veterinarian friend who claims running along with a bike is bad for a dog's hips and that dogs need to stop frequently when they run and then she finished her lecture by challenging me to "look it up!" and I assured her that I would . . . though I know my dog and he loves biking with me and never has any trouble keeping up, but I humored her and "looked it up!" and there is nothing on the internet about how biking with a dog is bad for your dog (there are considerations, of course . . . your dog should be medium sized, you should avoid pavement when you can, and you should make sure your dog enjoys biking and can keep up . . . which my dog does easily because he can run . . . he begs me to take him out every morning) but this is all besides the point, the real issue here is why some people believe they can just yell out their opinions to a passerby . . .  I know how I should have reacted to this woman-- whose poodle was going bananas, yanking her around and rearing up, while my dog obediently followed my tightly circling bike as I listened to her lambaste me . . . after she said, "That's the worst thing that you can do for your dog," then I should have said to her,"The worst thing? If you think that's the worst thing you can do to a dog, then I have two words for you . . ." and then I should have said, "Michael Vick" or "bear-baiting" or "Vietnamese restaurant" but, of course, this "jerk store" theorizing is what the French call "the wit of the staircase," of which I have plenty, but in real time, I am a witless coward.