I don’t have a good explanation for why one dog attacks another, a display of dominance, to gain possession of something, feeling threatened — these are some I’ve heard but none do I find completely satisfying. Show me a dog who’s had a really bad day at work, is drunk at the bar, and hears some dude go off about his mother, that I get. But when Lucy approached the Akita-looking dog at the park the other day I thought nothing of it because she and Harry had met this dog before, and while I wasn’t too keen on this dog (I have a big bias against Chinese breeds), nothing bad went down. But this time Lucy wasn’t next to this dog more than fifteen seconds when it exploded on her. And unprovoked, too, so far as I could tell anyway — I was on the trail behind her maybe two hundred feet away when I saw it happen.<\/p>\n
I ran like a track ‘n field star, screaming at the top of my lungs, “No! No! No!” There was no time to think what I’d do when I got there, pull the dog off Lucy I suppose, but thinking back on it now that might have endangered me — this was a big, solid dog ripping into her, but at the time I didn’t care about me, all I wanted to do right then was to stop Lucy’s wailing and shrieking, and had not one of the dog’s uprights finally pulled it off her by the time I got there I might’ve just tackled the sonofabitch. It was bad.<\/p>\n
Back at the parking lot the man and woman both showed concern for Lucy. I was pretty flustered at the time and not feeling very generous toward them, but I appreciated their sense of responsibility. We’d just started out on our walk when the attack occurred, Lucy had suffered two pretty nasty bite wounds so I wanted to get her to the vet quickly to disinfect them and see if either or both required stitches. After I’d got her and Harry back into the car the man appeared, looking repentant, “She’s never attacked a dog before.” I hear this frequently, people saying their dog has never before done this or that, but this time I believed him. He seemed sincere, standing there, his shoulders drooped, obviously concerned for Lucy, yes, but the expression on his face indicated to me he felt doubly bad, saddened that his dog had betrayed his trust (like Lucy she was off lead). He and his wife (?) offered to cover the vet bill, which came to $85 — an exam, antibiotics, and anti-bacterial compresses to apply twice daily to encourage wound healing.<\/p>\n