‘Do you want me to put my dog on the lead?’ shouted the woman on her phone, as she came towards me on the woodland path, her huge hound bounding ahead. It was not a polite question. It should have had ‘or what?’ on the end of it.

People not calling their dogs in and making them behave is normal. To be aggressively asked to state my dog etiquette preferences as an unruly, slobbering beast gains ground on me was a new one. I wanted to shout: ‘No! It’s fine! I like being eaten alive by dogs!’

I had my two spaniels on the lead because we have a new addition. Poppy was so bereft after Cydney died that we decided to tap the builder boyfriend’s mother up. She always has a foundling or two. She said she had a young chocolate spaniel.

We went to see her and found Dave the dog billeted in the stable yard with two Alsatians. He bounded out to play with Poppy, and we took him home that day.

Quite quickly, we realised he had been learning techniques from his former flatmates. He was not at all vicious – being a typical soppy spaniel – but he made comic attempts to pretend to be vicious.

Having observed the German Shepherds doing their thing in the stable yard, he tried to replicate it every time someone came to our door. It took a while to convince him that guarding was not needed, or not to the degree that it was needed in a stable yard in the middle of nowhere. Even if it was, he was not the ideal candidate. A cute chocolate spaniel must know his limits.

After a few weeks he got the idea and became what the builder boyfriend calls a beddy pooch.

He learned to curl up with Poppy at night on our king-sized bed and, during the day, lie like a cat along the windowsill of the front living room window overlooking the village green, from which position he was able to study the passing populace, intently.

Every now and then he would deploy his old skills, such as when the lodger came in late one night in the dark, backwards though the door, crouched, and pulling a heavy sports bag.

Dave leapt into action and grabbed the lodger’s trouser leg. But the trouser pulling soon gave way to licking and welcoming once he got the idea that our house was full of different people coming and going as paying guests.

While out walking, however, I had no idea if he would socialise with other dogs and decided to err on the side of caution. So I had him on the lead when the big dog bounded towards us in the woods.

And all the while the dog bounded towards us, the owner was wasting time by attempting a discussion about my dog- restraint preferences.

I suppose a half-hearted offer to put a dog on its lead, potentially, was better than the standard proposition: ‘It’s all right! He just wants to play!’, which is the way these idiot dog owners usually prepare you for a darn good savaging.

I recently watched a woman seated on a park bench on the green enjoying some fish and chips when a black Labrador threw himself on top of her and started eating her dinner. The owner stood right behind him shouting – not at the dog, but at the victim: ‘No, no! You must sit still! Hold your food out of the way!’

‘Please get your dog off me!’ came the muffled cries of the woman beneath the Labrador. ‘Stop shouting! You’re startling him!’ bellowed the dog harridan. ‘He just wants to play!’

So I expect no sense from the dog owners round here.

The big dog bounded up and I dragged Dave and Poppy along, looking backwards, as it tailed us boisterously until the woman had to give up on her strategy of not ending her Zoom call in order to engage with her dog.

Harrumphing extensively, she made a huge fuss of schlepping over, call on hold: ‘Sorry guys, give me two secs…’

‘I said, do you want me to put him on the lead?’ she said. And I said: ‘I don’t mind. It’s up to you. You could leave him off the lead if you want him to follow me. Or you could put him on the lead if you want to take him home. It very much depends on your long-term plans for the dog.’ She was fuming.

I don’t think there will be many obnoxious team leader Zoom-call walkers in the remote corner of West Cork where we have just put down the booking deposit on a Georgian pile. I could be wrong. But it’s definitely worth a go.