Special Needs Pets

Okay, so I was sitting in the middle of the park the other day reading a book. Suddenly I hear this great, repetitive shrieking sound. At first I thought it was a person. But when I start looking around, I realized that the ear-piercing sound is coming from a group of animals doing god-knows-what. Like I said, god knows what they're doing, but it caught and kept my eye for some reason. After about fifteen seconds of watching the four dogs wrestle around, I begin to get a little uncomfortable. The dogs aren't play-fighting, they are actually fighting. All of a sudden the smallest dog is latched onto the under-side of a larger dog, and the larger dog is pawing violently at the smaller dog. The other two dogs are back with their owners. Once the larger dog gets the little one off of its belly, s/he pounces on it, gripping the back of its neck with a force that a rhinocerous couldn't reckon with, it seems. Pretty soon, my attention diverts to the bellowing male owner of the large dog, and the screaming female owner of the smaller dog (the corresponding master-pet relationships were discovered later). The male owner of the large dog attacks his own now-viscious pet. He starts punching the dog in the face and pounding on the top of its head trying to get him/her to let go of the death-grip in which the small dog is caught. Finally, as the male owner holds his dog, the female owner yanks her dog away from the seething mouth. It was too far for me to see any gore, but I'm guessing that both dogs, especially the little one, was injured. The female owner started yelling at the male owner with incredible vulgarities, and the male owner explained that it wasn't his dog and he didn't know that it could get so violent. Finally, they exchange phone numbers and more curses/excuses and separate their temporarily insane animals and selves. I assumed they were off to their respective veterinarians (hopefully different offices).

After I left the park totally disturbed at the eloquent display of the brutality of the animal kingdom, had a few thoughts about the fact that people are part of that kingdom as well, I got curious about why it looked like the owners were planning on communicating at some time. Were they exchanging insurance information like people do in fender-benders, legal information (see you in court, jerk), or what? I'm a bit curious about that one.