Leash Law Hawaii? Come on!

[MarkP]

The original question was "Should I have done something different?" The answer depends on what you were trying to accomplish. Even if there had been an effective leash law governing the dog in the store, which it now appears there is not, the course of action that the original poster took was optimized for creating conflict, and at this it succeeded. I am not defending the dysfunctional dog owner who tried to follow him and confront him. I am only stating that the consequences of his actions, the irrational defensiveness of someone irresponsible enough to force his dog on others in the first place, were predictable.

I suppose that the proper if unsatisfying thing to have done would have been to call the police. At that point they would have told the original poster that there was no law that applied, which sadly appears to be the truth. I don't think that getting the jerk with the dog to quietly get up and leave was ever an option unless you were planning some kind of effective and almost necessarily illegal intimidation. Practically speaking I have no idea how to get something like that to work and I am sure that it is not something that could be done on the spur of the moment while holding an injured child.

In the end the original poster should have refrained from saying anything to the jerk with the dog. The cops maybe. The store owner maybe. His half dozen burly friends waiting outside maybe.