It began as a simple mid-morning walk - one mom, two teenage nieces, two youngsters, and a baby.
The teens, Ashlyn and April kept the whole procession vivid with their incessant ramblings while the rest of us listened and I pushed Angelo in his stroller.
We decided to take a route that we'd not taken before.
It was a quiet residential area that looped down and around.
As we started back up to the main road there was a row of houses on one side and a forested incline with distant speckled glimpses of Elger Bay, a marshy wetland, on the other.
Suddenly, I noticed a small pack of dogs of assorted sizes in the distance first walking and then, within a moment, running toward us.
Ashlyn and April's continuous stream of conversation was interrupted by my sharp gasp as the pack, apparently having sized us up, decided to bark then growl menacingly.
  Now, these dogs were most likely family pets that had gotten loose from their backyards and, while having just come off the enormous victory of escape, were feeling their proverbial oats.
Nonetheless, after the initial flush of fear, my natural "mother bear" instincts kicked in with full force.
Remembering what my dear friend and doggy aficionado, Mike Macy, had taught me, I began to bark.
Yes...
you heard me correctly.
This was no wimpy bark, mind you.
I puffed out my chest, leaned forward, waved my arms (with menacing bear claw fingers) in the air, neck thrust forward and head held high, I growled and barked, mustering up every last sinew of theatrical prowess in my frantic attempt to be the most convincing alpha male dog on the block.
  With my vocalizations, so deep that they seemed to come straight up from my toes, the spit-filled language went something like this: "Grrrrrrrrr! Bark! Bark! Go home! Bark! Bark! Grrrrrrrr!" I kid you not.
To add to the shear comedy of the moment, and as if I was being lifted by the force of my voice itself, I moved back and forth on the balls of my feet reminiscent of a  thug heatedly exchanging words and gestures on some L.
A.
street after a minor fender-bender.
Anyone viewing me from the seemingly deserted neighborhood might well have thought that I was possessed.
I kept this monologue up until the dogs were about sixty feet from us.
This was, apparently, where they were close enough to see my angry eyes and threatening set of incisors, for they came to a screeching halt.
All of their convincing growls and bearing of teeth stopped, too.
They stammered on their feet a bit, back stepped, looked at each other, then, looked back at me, turned, and ran back home with their tails literally between their legs.
    Cocky with my sharp victory over the local gang, I continued in the same fashion but with even more vigor-spit flying and sweat pouring down my forehead until I could see them no longer.
Quiet now, an enormous sense of pride welled up in my exhausted throat until I became keenly aware that my two nieces, who were dumbfounded through this entire incident, were now thoroughly and completely laughing their heads off at me...
And, when I say "laughing" I mean "tears in eyes, unable to speak or breathe laughing".
The heavy convulsions of panty wetting, side-splitting cackling went on far longer than the incident itself and I realized a  vital truth that day:  There is really nothing in the world quite so cutting as two sharp-witted teenage girls to make any adult feel completely stupid..
..
Still, I was glad that I did what I felt I had to do and that it had been so effective (at least with the doggy crowd) that I actually ended up using the "top dog" technique on at least three other separate occasions (yes, sadly, I've been aggressively pursued by dogs a number of times).