Big Dog

The girls and I were playing outside the other day, blowing bubbles (aka fighting over who gets to use the bubble wand) and drawing with sidewalk chalk. Suddenly out of nowhere a huge black dog came bounding into the yard and right up to Uno.

She screamed.

I don't think the dog intended her any harm: He looked happy and jumpy and like he wanted to play, but he was certainly big and he was a strange dog and Uno, though she loves animals in the abstract, is terrified of the tiniest chihuahua in real life.

Her screaming made me a little nervous, too. Dogs can smell fear, they say. And while I ran over to separate her from the dog, I wondered why exactly they say that. Do dogs smell fear and become aggressive when they wouldn't otherwise be? Or is it only mean dogs, already bent on attacking you, who sense they have the upper hand and start chomping on little bodies? And forget the smelling, there was some very loud screaming and wailing and shrieking going on right in the dog's ear. Would that irritate the otherwise friendly animal into attacking my child?

Uno ran up to the back porch and scrambled frantically to get the door open. Strange Big Dog thought that was a great idea, so he leaped up on the porch and tried to nuzzle his way in, too. I grabbed his collar (didn't have time to check his tags -- I'd love to know which neighbor he belongs to, though, grrrr) and pulled him in the opposite direction long enough for Uno to get in and lock the door.

Strange Big Dog then jumped up on me -- he was tall enough to put his front paws on my shoulders (not that I'm so hugely tall, but still; that gives you some idea of how scary he would be to a 4yo) -- so I pushed him back down and told him to shoo.

I think he misheard me.

He grabbed a shoe that Dos had left on the deck and ran around the backyard with it. I chased after him, trying to get it back, but he bounded over to the next door neighbor's yard, where he and our neighbor dog Moose (who was nicely contained on a chain) fought over the shoe for a while. Then another dog joined them, and the two loose dogs jumped down to our backyard neighbor's yard, where their yellow lab, Kronk (also nicely contained), wrestled the shoe out of SBD's mouth. Kronk then dropped it to the ground ... and peed on it.

The two strange dogs tussled around with Kronk a bit more before running back to who knows where and abandoning the now peed-on shoe to our backyard neighbor dog.

Uno watched everything unfold from the kitchen window, still screaming, fearing for our lives even after the dog had left the yard. Dos, meanwhile, stood on the deck, smiling and laughing. She found the shoe thing hilarious and asked if we could go down to Kronk's house and play with all the dogs together. I told her no, and scooted Dos into the house (after convincing Uno it was safe to unlock the door for us).


~RCH~