I do not hate dogs. I love dogs. I love animals.

Actually, I grew up with a dog—Chipper, a spaniel mix that loved to wrestle and hated to be bathed—as well as two cats. (Just for the record, I don’t hate cats, either. And I don’t understand this “I’m a dog person” versus “I’m a cat person” business. But that’s a subject for another column.) So don’t send me hate e-mail after you read this: dogs wreak havoc on the sidewalks that are the tracks of my daily commute.

And when I say dogs, I mean dog owners.

I left my apartment the other morning—only to run into a woman encouraging her two white poodles to pee on my stoop. Normally I wouldn’t care; this is New York, right? But the leashes blocked my way like police tape, and I had to hopscotch through them to pass. Limbo-ing under them wasn’t an option, though I did consider it. At least the walker flashed an apologetic smile. 

I got no such nicety from a second woman walking her peppy dachshund along Broadway near Houston. The mutt was harnessed to one of those tape measure-ish stretch leashes. As the dachshund darted across my path, the leash caught my shins like tripwire. I pivoted back, then abruptly right, and nearly lunged headlong into a bank of alternative newspaper boxes. Good thing they’re plastic now, not the metal of old.

Two blocks later came the final insult. I had to play chicken with a beaming dog walker and her dirty half-dozen: collie, black lab, Pekinese, two pugs and one very kickable Chihuahua. Somehow, instead of nipping at each other, they pulled a Maxwell Smart on me: the pack and I both shuffled way to the same side, then hurriedly way to the other. Impasse.

Sighing, I hugged a patch of brick near Aroma café and let them by. Annoyed, I walked the rest of the way with my head low.

I thought of the terrified mother who one morning in front of Whole Foods allowed her daughter to pet an owners’ two dogs, then yanked the “leash” of her girl’s little arm when one of the canines simply opened its mouth to pant. I have no such fear. I even get a kick out of the way that people and their pooches often look alike—from my slender, Icelandic coworker Lee and her stringy, Italian greyhound to the stocky guy with a crew cut and muscle shirt at the Tompkins Square dog run and his sluggish bulldog.   Of course, I despise those owners who fail to scoop the poop. And seriously, why have the ugly brown smears left behind always, always been stepped in? Well, that’s one thing, but not to be able to pass?

Bite me, says this new father. I own a stroller now. And not some tiny thing with toy wheels. It’s one of those tall boys that are as rugged as they are overpriced. “This thing’s like a Transformuh!” cried the woman at Babies R Us who sold it to me.  

She’s right. Don’t make me use it. Because if I do, your dogs are going down.

And remember—when I say dogs, I mean dog owners. 

—Tim Coleman