Family Pets Aren’t 100% Predictable
I have two dogs. Our main dog is a black chihuahua and our backup dog is a black lab-border collie mix. I grew up with dogs and know my way around them whether they are big or small, wimpy or domineering. However tonight I made a stupid mistake and got one of the nastier bites I’ve received from a dog.
After running an errand the dogs were happy to arrive home. They are also happy to “go bye-bye” but they are dogs, so they are also happy to come home. Now the lab mix and I attended training classes and she behaves herself fairly well. She’ll obey commands unless she’s distracted. The chi won’t obey anything, and since he’s older – and a chihuahua – I pretty much don’t try to train him. Anyway we get home and as soon as I open the door the chi bolts down the alley. I call out to him but he ignores me. The lab gets out of the car and looks at me. “Get your brother,” I tell her, and on command she runs off after the chi – not to corral him as I had hoped but to have a run down the alley herself.
Since she listens – most of the time – I run after the chihuahua; he eventually gives up and rolls over onto his back which his way of saying “I’m done now; pick me up and carry me back home.” So I pick him up and I command the lab to follow.
She obediently does but as we are passing the next door neighbor his dog, a long legged and beefy mix of something bolts the fence; immediately the lab and the neighbors dog start tearing at each other. The neighbor comes running as I yell at the dogs to break it up; I have one hand free and the other holding the chihuahua. I cannot let the chi go because he’s 9 pounds and a chihuahua. I quickly learn that you cannot separate two dogs with one hand, especially a forty pounder (mine) and an eighty pounder (my neighbor’s). Of course as I am trying to grab one of the dogs by the collars the neighbor’s dog bites my hand, piercing the thin skin on the back of my hand as well as the thicker skin of my palm.
Being in IT my hands aren’t as thick as a mason’s or a landscaper’s but I do a fair amount of yard work and carpentry so the skin of my palm isn’t exactly girlish either. Nevertheless the neighbor’s dog bit a nice chunk out of it – enough that I was dripping blood while trying to break up the dogfight.
My lab’s name matches her sensitive nature. She one of the gentlest animals I own. But she’s a dog, and for some reason known only to her she doesn’t like the neighbor’s dog. She wasn’t cowering: she was going for the other dog’s throat. The neighbor ended up picking her up with one hand as I finally got a grip on his dog with my bleeding one. He carried her into my fenced yard while I held his dog back, and boy she really strained to get at mine.
The point of this is not to blame my neighbor for the fact that his dog jumped the fence as easily as one of our cats leaps onto the sofa, rather it is what he said after the fact “I didn’t think she could do that.”
Dogs are animals but they are also our pets, and as such we believe we know them and understand them completely. That might be true 99.9% of the time; the problem occurs during that .1% when they manage to surprise us. Although the lab-mix has never bitten another human, I always hold her leash tightly when a child approaches her wanting to give her a pet. In fact to use a driving analogy, I manage the dog the same way I handle driving: defensively. I try to always anticipate what could go wrong and plan ahead just like I do with the idiot drivers from New Jersey who infest our Philadelphia area highways.
But there are the times when I don’t and I let her run down the alley after “her brother.” The chihuahua isn’t her brother, and she is not a child who can be ordered around to do my bidding. I broke the cardinal rule of dog ownership and forgot she was just a dog.
It was a stupid mistake on my part, and luckily for me no one but me was hurt. This time.
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[...] of Its Behavior Wednesday, September 10, 2008 by: Susan Thixton (see all articles by this author) Key concepts: Food, Pets and Pet food Want stories like this e-mailed to you? Click here for free email alerts
12 September 2008, 3:36 am