Who Let the Dogs Out?

Reader Contribution by Cam Mather

A dog attacked me last week, and well, it was a pretty awesome day! I’m sure it was the adrenaline but it’s amazing what a buzz you get after fighting off a dog that is trying to kill you.

I was picking up a load of straw from a neighbor who is trying to clean out his barn. I had met his dogs before and they’ve always been well behaved. I knocked at the door to thank him for the straw and I heard his dogs barking. He came to the screen door and tried to hold them in but they seemed pretty anxious to come out and see me so he let them out.

I am not afraid of dogs. I like dogs. I’ve often shared stories about my own dog, Morgan, in this blog. So when they bounded at me I was prepared for the enthusiasm. But when I realized that one of them had clamped onto my arm and my hand was going numb, I realized that this was not just enthusiasm. This dog really wanted to do me in. As I was beating it off of me I tripped. They’re pretty big dogs and the ground was wet and I was wearing work boots with no treads left on them and there were piles of construction debris that I fell in to. By the time that I hit the ground, one of them had chomped onto my chest under my armpit. These clearly were not love nips. It turned out that it was the large Lab who was trying to do me in. The Bulldog was kind of freaked out by the whole thing a seemed to be trying to stop the Lab, which just made it harder for me to stand up amidst the scuffle. But the growling noises were coming from a dog clearly bent on destruction.

So as loathe as I am to admit it, I retreated to the house. I wanted to take them on, but I felt it was inappropriate to start beating on my neighbor’s dogs. I figured that my choices were fight or flight, and since there were two of them, I decided on flight, for the first round.

I spend a lot of time in my woods, far from another human being and our woods are full of coyotes and wolves. Some of the coyotes have mated with wolves so they’re pretty big. I’ve given some thought as to how to deal with a wolf chomping on my arm. I had pretty much decided I was simply going to free my arm and then grab the wolf by the throat and strangle it. If it’s him or me, he’s going to lose. This time the door was close at hand and seemed like the path of least resistance.

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