It’s a dog’s life.
I’m still not quite sure how I feel about an incident last night. It involved a dog. I had my pair on a lead, and this white staffie off it’s lead it’s owner about 100 yards looking a bit puggled shouting something I couldn’t hear because I had my headphones in.
I took my headphones out as Cassie and Luna stood in front of this other dog wagging their tails and it went for Cassie, really went for her, trying to bite her. Now my touch bounce around and mouth each other a lot, but this was vicious and Cassie was yelping, which she doesn’t do with Luna. I was going to kick the staffie in the face, when I saw the owner and her teenage son (who also had a dog running over), so instead stuck my foot under the staffie and lifted it up and backwards. and went to grab the collar, when the owner just beat me to it, shouted at it and battered it over the head a couple of times with a retractable lead.
I checked Cassie, I couldn’t see any blood and it she visibly had a fright. The woman was clearly mortified, the dog has slipped it’s lead or escaped from their house and she couldn’t stop apologising and repeatedly asking me to check my dog. I was surprisingly calm, there was no harm done, and they were clearly worried.
The teenage son said a jarring phrase “She’s a friendly dog.” I’m thinking really? It just attacked my dog, but I gave the benefit of the doubt, I didn’t know the whole story behind their dog, and this purely could have been bad luck.
The woman kept saying about how she couldn’t forgive herself if something had happened to Cassie. I assured the woman Cassie seemed OK and had just had a fright, they seemed genuinely concerned. I continued off to the park and let the dogs off as usual. Cassie wouldn’t leave my side, until I petted her and reassured her. It took a few minutes, but soon she was off chasing after Luna. We wandered through the fields and up the hill Cassie seemed pretty much back to normal, though I did notice a couple of cuts on her legs, so I took them home and washed and treated the small cuts. She spent the rest of the evening lying in her bed looking sorry for herself, like she’s done something wrong.
My wife did ask me if I thought the reason they were so worried, was that the dog would have been put down if she’d mauled Cassie? This had not occurred to me, I was still processing what had happened earlier.
Looking at it from another perspective, how often have my two bounced up to smaller dogs and made the owner shit themselves? One woman picked up her chihuahua and gave me dirty looks, other people with spaniels look a bit worried until they see the dogs are just wanting a chase and seem relieved. It’s the curse of having bigger dogs, people assume they’re vicious, if a big dog barks, it’s vicious, when it’s nothing of the sort. We have a problem with the posties, we leave the front door open so the dogs can wander in and out of the house, don’t worry our garden is fenced in. If it’s a particular woman she comes in to drop off the post and gives them dog treats. If it’s the men they stand at the gate and shout “POOOOOSSTTT!” because the dogs bark, they believe they are likely to try and bite them.
I think the issues of is it the breed or is it the owner? Well the answer is both play a part, I believe that some breeds are more predisposed to certain behaviours, and how the owner deals with that dog will influence how the dog behaves. This will mean that sometimes however, even good owners will get a dog that will challenging.
What I don’t understand though is, why do people with a dog that has issues, walk it to popular dog places, at times when there is a lot of dogs? They have the right to obviously, but where is the sense in it? The dog will clearly be stressed and surely the increased risk of something bad happening would be enough to go somewhere else or go there at a quieter time?
It was a situation that caught me off guard and I’d like to think I could have stood on the dog quickly and stopped her having a go at Cassie, but that’s hindsight, and being in the moment we don’t always think of what we’d like to do, so there’s no point in beating myself up over it. Thankfully this morning Cassie seems her usual self and was curled up with Luna on our bed when I left for work.
