Like my dog?

[MTNLaurelPoacher]

Me-
Male Owner- MO
Female Owner- FO
Crew Chief – CC
Mr. Cell Phone- MC

This happened about a year ago on a cold clear mountain morning. I am a land surveyor, and my crew and I were sent to an upscale development to replace a few lot corners. We showed up at about 8:30. We typically don’t announce our presence because by the time we arrive the owners are, (a) gone to work (b) gone for the winter (c) asleep or (d) already know we are there. We pull out the maps and start finding what corners are in and which ones are gone. This requires us to walk around the property, poke about in the bushes, and dig around in the flowerbeds. We find out that every other corner is gone and this lot has more than four corners. This makes our job harder. I wind up with my survey instrument set up on the edge of the road about 40 feet from our client’s front door. We start to replace the 1st missing corner and the front door opens. The FO pops her head out and looks at me but says nothing. At the same time a big German Shepherd bolts straight out the door. When I say big, I mean 100 lbs of muscle and standing about 3 feet (1 meter) tall. Kujo runs at me silently, full force, head down, ears flat, tail low, mouth open and packed full of teeth. All I have time to do is count the layers of clothes I have on (three) and thank my lucky stars that I am wearing leather ski gloves. In that split second, I stuck my hand out in a pseudo greeting for the flying ball of teeth and muscle. The words I was able to muster were, “Hi Bowser.” So… as Kujo was running towards me, the CC sees the dog and starts to run for the truck. The dog goes after the moving target and runs right past me. The CC makes it safely in the truck. Then the dog then lopes over to MC, who is oblivious to the entire incident and talking on his cell. The dog stops dead behind MC and sniffs him. This gives me time to hop in the truck. MC turns around to see Rin Tin Tin standing there and turns completely pale. Then Rin Tin Tin is distracted away from staring down MC by the car door slamming and runs back to the vehicle. The dog standing on all fours, looks into the window of a Toyota Forerunner four wheel drive and stares. By this time the FO calls the dog back inside. At this point we said “F-this” and went back to the office.

The next morning we go back to the house to finish the job. We decide to announce our presence this time. The husband comes out, greets us and we begin to chat. Kujo is at his side the entire time at a perfect heal. The MO is a nice guy, talks to us a bit about what we are doing and offers us some coffee because it is freezing outside. I walk off and set up the equipment, leaving my crew chief to talk with the owner. In the course of the conversation the MO asks, “Like my dog?”.
CC answers back, “The dog is beautiful”.
MO- “Yea. He is a drop out.”
CC- “ Drop out?”
MO- “Yea, I got him up in New York. He is a wash out from the Police dog training academy. They would not make him a police dog for some dumb reason.”
CC- “Why?”
Owner- “Well, he kept biting the people he took down instead of just holding them on the ground.”

ARRRRGH!!!! We all could have been dog chow!!!

Later the FO calls and apologizes to my boss because it looked like she turned the dog out on us, and realized that she scared us. She claims the dog was just going out for his morning pee. I am not sure that I totally believe her.

[justZu]

Wow that is really scary. I'm surprised that someone would allow a failed and dangerous police dog be sold off as a family pet. I would be afraid the dog would turn on its owners one day. I mean, if the police trainers could not make the dog properly obey commands, why should it obey its owner?

I'm glad you got out of that OK.

[BookstoreEscapee]

What justZu said...

If the dog failed because he just wanted to lick the perps to death, then maybe I could see letting it be adopted as a pet, but a dog can't learn not to bite when it shouldn't? Not in my house!

[Gerrinson]

My old next door neighbor was also the chief of police, he always got his dogs as drop outs from K-9 training, and always because they were too violent. He had an outdoor enclosure for them that had a roof and the walls dug down several feet to keep them from getting out.

The real joy, of course, is that he 'felt sorry' for them so he would let them out of the enclosure to run free in his 2 acre backyard, which had no fence.

One of his dogs came into our yard and attacked me and my dad. My dad was able to fend it off with a shovel while we clambered through the cellar door and pulled it closed.

In the meantime, the dog went after our dog who was tied out on his lead. Apparently our dog > failed police dog, as when we got upstairs to the window the police dog was gone and our dog was sitting proudly with his trophy - the police dog's tail!

That was also the last time the chief let his dogs anywhere near our property.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I was working out in the church yard one afternoon (our church is located down a very short dead end road and in a questionable neighborhood. People drive down the dead end to walk on the trails on the property behind the church, often with dogs. This is not a problem.

However, people who let their dogs bother other people IS a problem. Particularly when the people in question is me.

Idiot has let his two giant black dogs (I dunno what they were, labs, whatever.) off the leash and they run straight for me across the yard. I just calmly pick up the machete I had on the ground and flipped open my cell as they ran towards me (it's a big yard.) I suspect he was "one of THOSE people" because they were on leashes until they saw me.

Idiot called his damn dogs back with a quickness. Fortunately for all involved, they were obedient.

Listen, I like dogs. However, don't let your damn dogs run at people they don't know. Was this guy NUTS? What if they bit me and I sued the crap out of him? What if they HADN'T gone back when he called. What if I killed his dogs and THEN turned around and sued him? What if I had had a gun? What if I was someone who was scared of dogs?

IDIOT.

[MadRocketScientist]

The only time it is OK for dogs to run up to people off leash (in public) is at the dog park. My wife one time had a guy, at a dog beach, threaten to kill my dog for running up to him (dog was not barking or acting threatening).

Dude, WTF?! It's an off leash dog park, if you don't want dogs running up to you, don't come here. If you can not read dog body language, maybe this is not the place for you to be.

[Emrld]

The only time I have my dog in public off leash . . .is on my property.
Sorry but if my car is in my front driveway and I am walking to it with her for that short distance again on my property I am not going to leash her.
Let's add in that she weighs less than 10 lbs and is a big chicken.
She is also fully trained and instantly obey's commands.
I also have no problem if specific people come to visit once they have their car turned off letting her out the front door to greet them. Again this is still on my property.
However I may have to stop all this as I have a neighbor with a dalmation that likes to escape and is stronger than one of the kids that walks her. As in the kid loses the leash dog takes off and the kid gives chase.

I do not let her out to greet strangers, and even when I have her at outdoor pet friendly festivles in her stroller . . .she still has her leash on.

[karma_gypsy]

I was doing my paper route one day, I was about 14-15 years old. A family had pulled into their driveway (which was across the street, diagonal from me) and one of their rottweilers had slipped away from the family and came full speed running towards me. All I had on was a thin layer of clothes and the canvas paper bag (the two sided kind).

I basically froze in my tracks and tried to stand my ground, a vain attempt to get my slender, girly body to look bigger than the dog and to remain calm (I don't know if that sort of reaction is to get a dog to back down, but I didn't know any better). The family, not running after the dog, desperately tried hollering after him to get him to stop or come back. I felt I was going to get attacked, or at least jumped on (this was a pretty big, muscular dog).

Something must have clicked in the dog's head .... because he stopped and swung his body around, facing the family again. Which, made him wound up right by my side, almost knocking me over. After more hollering, he ran back to his family.

I think I also got a half-assed apology too. I still don't know if the dog actually had ill-intent in mind, or if he was just wanting to say 'hello....'

[myswtghst]

My mom's 95lb lab, Sunny, is on a leash pretty much at all times, even when in the house, just because it makes it easier to catch her, if need be. She's an obedience school drop out with a VERY SHORT attention span and a very excitable nature. She's very loving, but 95lbs of very loving lab can be a lot for most people to deal with, even if she does just want to lick you to death.

[Shironu-Akaineko]

I had people complain about my 20 pounder of fur and love running around free when her tether breaks (She's STRONG, okay? ) yet these same people leave their GIANT GREAT DANE PITBULL MIX running around freely.

UUuuuuntil I bitch-slapped the mofo for attacking my tiny dog in the middle of the street.

That dog is bigger than me and could pick his teeth with my femur in 10 minutes.

Apparently, when you cross a great dane with a pit bull, you get a chicken.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

The pair of dogs running at me were not in an obvious play mode. They frankly looked pretty aggressive. And the fact that the guy had them on a leash and then let them off as soon as he saw me made my "uh oh" detector go off pretty loudly. Bully with aggressive dogs. Time to quit playing around.

Maybe they wanted to play and maybe they didn't. I don't know that guy's dogs, you know? They weren't bouncing around like playing dogs do.

I was pretty pissed off. I dunno if I would have gone so far as to kill them, I love dogs. Had I felt like I was in serious danger, yeah, I probably would have. I was ready to. But I was more in the mindset to let their owner know I wasn't really interested in fucking around with him and that I was not a good target for his stupid games and that he'd better collect his animals and his stupidity and pound some sand.

Ptaaah.

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

My friend has a small dog. At the time of the 'occurrence' he weighed about 6 pounds. He had just had hip surgery so she had to take him to the front yard to do his business (he couldn't handle the back stairs).

As she's standing there, keeping an eye on him and holding his leash in the drizzle, she sees a car, driving down the road.....verrrrrrryyyy slowwwwwwllllly. And she sees the large dog running just ahead of it, trailing a leash.

Sure enough, the dog ran straight for hers, and friendly or not, with a size discrepancy that big, it's not safe. Acting quickly, she yanked her dog into her arms and turned her back on the oncoming dog.

Lady, in the car 'walking' her dog', finally managed to call the dog back as it's jumping at my friend's dog. The woman never got out of the car. And they continued on their merry way. Meanwhile, my friend is frantically checking that she didn't hurt her own dog trying to protect him.

My friend loves dog but she knew an owner that she wanted to shoot.

[ArenaBoy]

I own a big dog, a greyhound to be precise. He's bigger than most and he's a big chicken but I keep a sharp eye on him and I have him on a short leash when people are around. I don't see how hard it is to keep an eye on your pet.

[Sylvia727]

Looking over the OP, I'm not sure the dog was particularly dangerous. I mean, for a species descended from predators and habitually abused by certain segments of the monkey-masters. All the client said was that he bit suspects who he was supposed to catch. Perhaps, and this is my interpretation since he was released to the public, when the cop said "sic 'em", the dog bit the person he was supposed to hold, as opposed to the dog chasing down strangers and attacking them. Bowser could be perfectly safe for the public, as long as his new owner doesn't say "sic 'em".

And I don't see anything particularly ominous about the wife's behavior. She didn't know there were people in her yard, and she didn't know they had a right to be there. She let her dog into her own yard to pee. The dog bounds over, maybe to say hello, maybe to say shove off, and the people jump into the car. She belatedly (maybe this is before her morning coffee?) realizes that perhaps a large German shepherd chasing folk around the yard could be just a tad scary, so she calls him back in. Later, she apologizes for the incident.

Now, I wasn't there, and a lot of aggression can be transmitted via body language. Obviously, it looked like a vicious attack on the job site, and the fact that the OP "doesn't quite believe her" probably means there's nonverbal cues I'm missing. And some fucktrumpets love to bully people with their dogs. Either way, I would be asking my supervisor how to avoid this set-up in the future.

[protege]

I got bitten by a customer's dog once. I was over there making my daily newspaper rounds, and their rather large dog got out. I didn't even get as far as the porch...when the screen door came flying open--the dog jumped on it and snapped the latch Next thing I know, I'm on the ground, and my leg is bleeding Let's just say that the dog's owner was literally shitting himself! They're lucky I didn't decide to sue them into the poor house.

Sadly, that wasn't the dog's first attack. My brother got bitten badly, and so did a little girl up the street. She was riding her bike, and the dog got out and attacked her. That time, the owner *did* get sued, and had to get rid of the dog.