"He's a friendly dog . . . except when he isn't."

We dog owners tend to view our pups in the best possible light, even if that requires downplaying certain bits of unpleasantness.

I was walking our chocolate lab Aquinnah in the neighborhood the other day when I spotted a well-dressed woman whom I did not know. She was walking a small, long-haired dog of indeterminate pedigree - probably a terrier mix.

The woman was almost a block away, but heading in my direction, so I took a detour into a parking lot. Aquinnah (aka Quinn) gets very excited whenever he meets other dogs. Quinn isn't remotely aggressive, but these encounters always involve a lot of exuberant jumping and lunging and pulling and barking on his part, so I usually try to avoid them.

To my surprise, the woman detoured into the same parking lot, so we were now walking parallel to one another. I stopped. She stopped. She waved. I waved back. She then began walking toward me, so it seemed clear she wanted the dogs to meet.

“Is your dog friendly?” she shouted, because we were still separated by a good 50 feet or more of pavement.

“Yes,” I replied. “He’s noisy, but he’s not aggressive.”

She continued to walk in my direction. So, out of courtesy, I turned, to meet her halfway.

Nodding to her pooch, who did not look at all pleased by this turn of events, the woman said: “He doesn’t get to meet many other dogs.”

By this point, we were only feet apart. Just as Quinn and the grumpy looking pup were about to touch noses, the woman smiled at her dog and tossed out an afterthought.

“He bites sometimes.”

As if on cue, Grumpy growled and bared his teeth. I yanked Quinn's leash, pulling him back, to make sure this didn't become one of those times. Then I looked at this seemingly sensible woman and asked myself a question that I was too polite to ask aloud: What were you thinking?