.

Perhaps neither side was fabricating. The perspectives just different. Whenever you have a situation like this, people, (including myself), tend to jump to one side or the other...one extreme or the other.

In actuality, Bear Bears guardian should have had better control, the officer probably overreacted. The dogs were just being dogs and dog parks are a bad idea. Although I initially was angry with the officer, (and still think it should have been handled differently), I hate to see him labeled in any way. Poor judement? Sure. It would be interesting to know what happened from a witnesses perspective, but there weren't any.

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I have a brother in law enforcement and I know that he would not enter a public park with his gun, especially not if he had his wife and dog (also a GSD) with him. "Too many things to go wrong," he would say.

He draws a very clear distinction between the guys who leave the violence at work vs. those who don't. This officer seems to belong in the latter camp, which unfortunately gives LEOs a bad rap as trigger-happy, just itching to be put in a situation where they need to use lethal force.

He should have at least fired a shot in the air to scare the dog, but that doesn't look like it was part of his plan.

EDIT - I took my late GSD to a few dog parks and I never had a bad experience. In fact the pets and owners were all quite well-behaved and I never saw any violence of any kind. Maybe it's just my area (although Ft. Belvoir isn't far from me), but my experiences have not mirrored the horror stories on this site and I was very lucky in that regard. I'm going to be much more careful when my Mal arrives.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"