When the person being charged at — someone who, by the way, has PTSD from prior dog trauma and is caring for a person with a dog saliva allergy — asks the owner to leash her animal, the response is essentially: I can do whatever I want and nobody cares.

Signs posted throughout the park say otherwise. Dogs must be leashed. It's not ambiguous. It's not a suggestion. But rules only work when someone enforces them, and in San Francisco, enforcement of low-level quality-of-life rules has become something of a punchline.

This isn't an anti-dog take. Dogs are great. Responsible dog ownership is great. What's not great is the growing culture of entitlement in our public spaces — people who treat shared parks, courts, and sidewalks like their personal property and dare you to say something about it. When confronted, this particular owner reportedly told the victim to leave the park, as if she held the deed.

As one local put it perfectly: "I love intense but niche drama that has nothing to do with me." Fair enough — until it does have something to do with you. Until it's your kid, your elderly parent, or you standing there while an unleashed animal charges.

The deeper issue is one we keep coming back to at The Dissent: the selective enforcement problem. San Francisco has plenty of rules on the books. Leash laws, open container laws, permit requirements, you name it. But when the city signals — through chronic non-enforcement — that rules are optional, people start acting like it. And the people who suffer aren't the rule-breakers. They're everyone else.

George Sterling Park belongs to all of us. Your dog's freedom to roam doesn't trump someone else's right to enjoy a public space without being physically accosted by an animal. Leash your dog. Read the signs. And if you really believe you "can do whatever you want," maybe reflect on why you think public rules apply to everyone but you.