A simple round with the dog through the forest, ended for Jenny de Groot from North Sleen with a face full of pepper spray. In the meantime she has reported a report, but the shock is still in it after a month and a half.
“Look, that’s how I got home.” Jenny de Groot shows a photo she took from herself, an hour and a half after she got the biting stuff in her face. A face full of red spots and watery eyes look somewhat embarrassed in the camera.
The shock is still clear. “I have been bothered by it for at least two days, from that pepper spray. It was in my eyes, my ears, my mouth.”
Jenny and her husband Anne have been living in North Sleen for more than 40 years. The professional training of dogs is a hobby of both and has been doing them for as long. The couple has two German shepherds: the male Nando and a bitch, Reisja. “It’s a hobby, but a serious one.”
A tour with the four -legged friends through the nearby Sleenerzand has therefore been a regular shot. “It is nice and quiet, we sometimes wander around one and a half to two hours.”
How different did that go one evening in August. Anne goes to a training with Reisja, while Jenny Nando picks up the belt for another round of Sleenerzand. After having been on the road for fifteen minutes, she sees a man and a woman with blond hair coming in black clothing from the opposite direction. “The woman was my age and her and the man frolicking five loose dogs. Our bitch was at that time, so Nando was high in his testosterone. So then he can react unexpectedly,” Jenny explains.
She calls this towards her two oncoming traffic, while she has been wearing Nando briefly. She also calls towards her oncoming traffic to align their animals. “But they didn’t do that, on which the dogs circled around Nando. That started to pull as a result.”
Jenny repeats her message, but becomes angry and irritated if there is simply not listening. “At some point the man kept some distance with a few dogs, but the woman was not at all.” Between the two women, an argument then arises that is getting brighter in tone. “Yes, I was also in my emotion, but also in my powerlessness. What is the effort? I just thought it was disrespectful.”
According to Jenny, the woman started pushing her. “I pushed back and thought: I have to leave here. Nothing can be achieved here, greetings.”
But before she can leave, she gets a sturdy poke. “I hit steeply back. I scribbled up again and wanted to pass her. And then I suddenly felt wetness in my face.” At first Jenny thought of water. But then everything suddenly started to burn. “I didn’t see anything instantly. I was acute blind. So I panicked.”
The man, who watched everything from a distance, eventually guides her to a picnic bench. “He turned out not to belong to her at all. He had walked a bit with her and did not even know her.” The woman with the pepper spray had run away, Jenny is told. They are still together for an hour and a half. “I said: please don’t leave me alone, because I don’t see anything.”
When she gets her view back somewhat, she walks back home. Her husband reacts shocked when she returns. “What’s going on with you,” he responds. “He was really shocked by what he saw.”
Jenny finally decides to report anyway. “At first I doubted if I would do it. But if someone misbehaves that. Walking around with a PepperSpray bus and using it in such a way, I just think that is scary.”
Moreover, it is a not permitted agent. “And that you are not too bad to leave someone in the forest like that. I was lucky that the man was still there.” The perpetrator must be accountable, she thinks. “Although I consider the chance to find her.”
Afterwards she should have turned around immediately and walk away, she looks back. “The worst thing is that I no longer dare to go into the forest,” she says clearly emotionally. “I go on the forest path and that’s it. I am like death that I come across her again.”