Yesterday, I riding to work on the MUP when I come across a guy "walking" his dog. He was walking away from me on the right side of the trail and his dog was on the other side, in the grass, smelling a phone pole or something. Guy was carrying his retractable leash, but it was not attached to the dog. The dog sees me and comes back onto the path so that when I was even with the dog, he was about a foot away from me. (I had just passed the owner at this point) The dog seemed very friendly and was probably just looking for something new to smell. Regardless, I still didn't know what he was going to do. As I rode away, unscathed, I yelled back to the guy that "leashes work better when they're attached to the dog"
This morning was pretty much the same scene, except the owner was walking towards me. He sees me, several hundred feet away and closing, calls his dog over and attaches the leash. As I got closer, the dog again tried to get near me but the owner kept the leash from untracting. We exchanged our pleasantries "Good morning" "hi" and I was on my way.
Moral: There is none, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened.