Appliance repairman reflects on shih tzu, shepherd attacks

Bitten by a dog bite tale
By Alan Linda The Daily Journal
Published 12:00 p.m., January 19, 2010
http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/news/2010/jan/19/bitten-dog-bite-tale/

This woman wrote a letter to a newspaper man who hands out advice about people’s pets: “Dear Dr. Dog (Not his real name, but it should be.): I have a four-year-old dog who is precious, but I am having a bit of a problem. She gets very aggressive when I take her for walks. She has never bitten anyone yet, but she is absolutely uncontrollable. When I try to calm her down, she bites me.”

Before I go any further, perhaps it would be helpful to first divide people into a group that has been bitten by a dog, and a group that hasn’t. Obviously, opinion as to whether one feels strongly about dogs that bite will depend ultimately on whether you’ve been bitten.

Remember, I spent many years making service calls on folks’ appliances. Furnaces, washers, dryers, dishwashers, and so forth. On many calls, the home owner would say: “Oh, go ahead on in. Precious is in the house but she doesn’t bite.”

Maybe I could have determined if lying about ones dog also meant lying about “the check is in the mail.” I knocked on the door. And I walked in. And shortly found Precious, a 20-pound ball of white fur, hanging off my posterior, jaws locked tight.
Liars. Just like this woman. Her dog never bites, but has bitten her. Perhaps her extended logic here is true: The dog never bites anyone but her. Hmmmmm.

So she goes on to say that “my dog is great with people, and wants to know what to do.” Before we get to Dr. Dog’s answer, I have an opinion on what to do, but it would be based on an experience I had with a large German Shepard, out on Mr. Notathomegooninthedogwon’tcare’s farm, which dog kept me pinned inside the storm door, trying to fend it off with the only thing I had on me, a blue magic marker. The door was locked, I couldn’t go in, and I was trapped in between the storm door and the entry door. Eventually, after several harrowing minutes, the dog chewed the magic marker out of my hand, laid down with it and shredded it. Now, drooling blue froth, he came for me again. Finally, the dog got bored and left, which left me considering the likelihood that it was hiding just out of sight, waiting for me to make a run for the service van. Which I eventually did.

The worst part is, after telling one of my very first customers about their dog chasing me around, and them obviously not believing me, it became apparent to me that no dog owner truly believes that their dog would bite anyone. So it became useless to point out that their dog was dangerous. They never believed me.

I pulled my van into the garage of a split entry, because I could walk out the kitchen-garage entrance and get right into it. On the first trip back to find a nut driver to remove the dishwasher front panel, the little white dog fastened her teeth onto my trouser leg and hung on, growling and digging in. The owner was watching TV in the living room, and said nothing. I finally got rid of the dog, got the tool, removed the cover, and had to go back to the van for something else. The dog once again hung on my pant’s leg, not even big enough to really get into the meaty part of my leg.

After four or five trips of this nonsense—and the guy had to know, he was less than fifteen feet away—I finally dragged my leg with the dog attached firmly to it out to the step in the garage, kicked my foot vigorously out at the van, and saw the dog come loose and WHOOOOMPPP!!! Into the side of the van flew the dog. “YIPE YIPE YIPE YIPE” cried the dog, now run off and hiding somewhere. My first thought was that I would catch heck from the guy for bouncing his white puppy off my, well, white van. Instead, his voice boomed out from the living room: “About time you did that!”

Dr. Dog replied to the lady who wrote in: “You should cradle your dog, because it just needs love that it obviously didn’t get as a puppy.”

Um, Dr. Dog? She said it was a Shih Tzu (pronounced ‘Poop’ Sue), which must weigh over forty pounds, minimum. Real good advice, disregarding the fact that cradling a dog that bites her already leaves some of the veracity of your customer advice lagging.

Back on the farm, growing up, I don’t think this was the advice generally accepted as constructive.

But then, we never had a dog whose name rhymed with manure.