Dog bite

I worked some overtime this past Saturday, and got bitten. It wasn't a serious bite, in that it didn't break the skin, it only bruised me. I have been snapped at like this before, on my old job when I had to go into back yards, but all those times it was because I had opened the gate too fast and surprised a dog that was close to the gate. This time it was on a wide-open street, and the dog had seen me coming at least a whole minute beforehand. He stood there calmly and waited, showing no signs of aggression at all, until I got close enough, then he went for me.

I did nothing to provoke him. I had whistled at him to get his attention from a few houses away, and as I got closer I was talking to him. He just stood there looking at me and wagging his tail.

He snapped me on my right wrist, I jumped backwards to get some space and put the hook in his face. In the second or so that it took me to put my computer down, he jumped at me 5 or 6 more times and I banged him one-handed right in the nose with the hook on each lunge. Once I had my left hand free of the computer, I took the hook in my two-handed attack grip and went for him. Of course, this made him run away. He belonged to someone on that street, but I was not able to follow him fast enough to see which house he disappeared into. It was a little cul-de-sac called Cherry Park, just in case anyone reading this is ever walking in that neighborhood.

Of course I was letting forth a stream of rather colorful descriptives the whole time. A few houses farther down there were some people outside setting up a yard sale or something and they saw the whole thing.

A little while later a yard worker stopped me while he was driving out and showed me where the dog had just done the same thing to him. So I reported it and we gave the description and location to Animal Control. They usually do something if the dog has actually bitten someone.

And it wasn't a politically incorrect dog. It was a black Lab. So let this be a lesson, and a reminder to myself: all dogs will bite. It doesn't matter how cute and cuddly you think your dog is, all dogs will bite. And sometimes it's impossible to know what will set them off.