Man's Best Friend

That was the title of a movie I saw advertised on TV a few weeks ago. I never watched the movie, but from the ad I gathered it was about dogs becoming altered by some kind of chemical or scientific accident. These dogs became ruthless killers, terrorizing and preying on humans, making for a sci-fi, horror type movie. It has become quite popular for Hollywood to take something familiar and harmless from our everyday lives and turn it into a scary nightmare.

I’ll share some of my amusing experiences with dogs. As I grew up, my family had several dogs. My dad had a Doberman when I was little that I don’t really remember. After my mother’s death, my dad remarried and my new mom brought her dog into the family. She was a fluffy, white Spitz breed named Muffy. The funny thing was, she adored her immediate family but declared war on anyone else entering our yard. She would bark viciously at them and act like she was going to bite. We had to restrain her any time guests came over. My grandpa thought throwing rocks at her might scare her away. Think again, grandpa! For that, she did bite him on the ankle!

Eventually, we had to give her to Mom’s uncle because she bit another person and wouldn’t let anyone come near the house. The uncle had a construction business with valuable equipment and tools in a fenced yard. He’d had some problems with some of it disappearing and placed two Doberman guard dogs in the yard. Stuff continued disappearing. Then he let Muffy loose in the yard. “Man!” He exclaimed, “Those two Dobermans are worthless! They’d probably lick an trespasser to death while waggin’ their tails! But that little Spitz won’t let anyone in there!”

We got an Airdale Terrier named Esther and a Daschund/Poodle mix name Mordecai the same year when I was about 8 years old. I would grow to be 21 before Esther had to be put to sleep and 23 by the time we lost Mordi, as we affectionately called him. Fortunately for the dogs, we always lived in the country with no close neighbors and they were able to run free, exploring the woods and creeks, just like us boys. The dogs both had very distinct personalities. Esther was a happy, friendly dog. She loved to play tag and keep away games. Keep away as opposed to fetch, because once she got the ball or stick we threw, she preferred to have us chase her rather than bring it back. But she was definitely the boss of the two, and if Mordi forgot that (by trying to share a dog food bowl with her for example) she reminded him with a sharp snarl. Mordi developed the quirky temperament of a grumpy old man. He was picky about what he ate and wanted to be left alone by anyone outside our immediate family. If visitors ever tried to pet him, he would allow it but make low growls the whole time. He didn’t like little kids at all. But he followed Esther everywhere and he was very affectionate to us.

Esther was a smart dog. Sometimes I got the impression she had planned escape routes in case she got in trouble. When she was about half grown she used to like to run jump on my toddler brother, knocking him down. She thought it was a game. But we had to teach her not to do that. So Dad saw her do it and whacked her side, firmly telling her “NO”, and shaking his finger at her. She didn’t do it for awhile, but eventually she couldn’t resist knocking little Bradley down as he walked through the yard. Dad saw it and took off after her. She knew she was in trouble and began zig zagging across the yard trying to lose Dad. When he kept after her, she made a bee line for the sawdust pile. Dad nearly caught up with her when she made a sharp turn in the middle of the soft sawdust. When Dad tried to follow her, his boots lost traction and he fell on his side. As he went down his hand caught the side of her rear leg with a thump. She learned her lesson and didn’t knock little Bradley down again.

I didn’t think anything about the sawdust pile until a couple months later. Some visitors brought their German Shepard. Esther was timidly trying to make friends, but the bigger dog lunged at her and began to chase her out of the yard. She ran straight toward the cars. It was the dry season in Arkansas and there were places in our long, dirt drive where the dust formed in deep, soft “puddles”. One of these places had formed where the cars braked and backed out of parking spaces, churning up the dry, sandy soil. I was standing behind the cars and saw her run around the back end of the visitor’s pickup and zip back into the yard with the bigger dog hot on her heels. But he didn’t make it past the back of the truck as his feet slipped out from under him in the soft, sandy area and he landed on his side with a thump. He got up slowly and looked around as if he forgot about the chase completely. Then the thought occurred to me that Esther might be leading her pursuers through tight turns on slippery spots intentionally.

One night when Esther was about 7 or 8 years old, she was lying on the porch below my second story bedroom window. I had just laid down in my bed. Then I heard a deep but quiet growl. She rarely growled, and never like that. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. As my eyes did a quick scan of the side yard, I spotted a coyote standing out on the edge of the circle of light shining from the porch. Then I looked down at Esther just as she launched from the porch without making a sound. She didn’t bark or growl again. She just shot across the yard at top speed, straight for the coyote. The coyote was looking out into the darkness in the opposite direction. When he did turn to see Esther coming, it was too late. In her last bound, she lifted her legs under her and hit wild canine in the shoulder with her chest. The coyote went spinning and rolling, and bounced back onto his feet which where already running. As soon as they made contact with the ground he was gone. Esther trotted calmly back to the porch, pausing once to look back, as if just making sure the wild animal was gone. I guess it was all in a day’s work protecting her family.

The amazing thing was that Esther was fast enough to catch rabbits. Having come across rabbits myself out in the woods and observing how fast they ran and dodged, I knew this was no easy task. Even a lynx or bobcat has a hard time catching one. But we found the outsides and insides of rabbit carcasses strewn across our yard from time to time. She must have done it for sport, because she was well fed. Mordi catching a rabbit was out of the question. He did his best to keep up with Esther, but his weiner-dog/poodle breeding limited his speed of travel.

We moved back to Washington when I was 17 years old. I always loved riding bikes, but I traded my Huffy for a Giant (same company as Schwin), which was a great jump up in quality. Since we lived in the country, Gregg and I could ride on the paved roads with very little traffic. I was riding over to a friend’s house one day. There was a house I’d passed before and had to peddle for all I was worth to keep ahead of their dog. Sure enough he came running out when he heard me coming. He was a medium-sized dog, not quite the size of a German Shepard. And he was a smart dog because he adapted to my last run by leading me enough so he’d catch me by the time he reached the road. When I realized I couldn’t pass him fast enough, I slowed my pedaling and racked my brain for half a second, grasping for options. Then we met. I took my foot off the pedal and pointed my straight leg at the dog like a jousting knight. The force of the impact nearly knocked me off my bike! The flat bottom of my foot hit the dog in the shoulder and spun him around twice. He went yelping back to his house. The next time I rode by he came streaking out from the side of the house at top speed. Once again, smart dog! When he saw it was me, he screeched to a halt and just stood there on the driveway watching me go by.

Later that year I was on a long bike ride, almost home. A big German Shepard mix dog came running and barking out from a house to my right. I was already going at a pretty good speed down the road, but the dog was leading me. Just as he reached the road bounding at full speed, I clamped my brakes hard. The combination of this sudden drop in my speed and his lead caused him to run onto the road in front of my bike. I began to pedal again and ended up chasing the dog down the road! He kept looking over his shoulder at me, checking to see how close my spinning tire was to his butt. But it didn’t occur to him to run off the road until I had chased him for about a hundred feet. Then he finally veered off the road and made a beeline back to his house.

This reminds me of another experience a few years later. My younger brother Gregg was studying for his Airframe and Powerplant certification (aircraft mechanics) and had a newspaper delivery route to help pay for it. I went with him one day, just to see what his early morning paper deliveries and classes were like. As we drove down a small, paved country road where the houses were on acreages rather than lots, Gregg said “There is a dog up here who likes to chase my car every morning. I’m gonna try something different today.”

Sure enough! A medium size dog came running out after the car. Once again, the dog was smart enough to lead the car, running toward the corner of the yard, rather than straight at the car. Just as the dog reached the road, Gregg slammed on the brakes and the dog ran onto the road in front of the car. Then he revved the engine and began chasing the dog down the road. The poor canine was so confused by the sudden role reversal – the chaser becoming the chased – that he ran as fast as he could straight down the road, looking over first one shoulder then the next at the huge, snarling, metal beast pursuing him! Finally, he ran into the bushes as we zoomed by.

When I was in college, I worked for a group of doctors. One of the doctors frequently took trips out of the country for a week or two at a time with her husband. They paid me to watch their house and take care of their animals. They had two 150 gallon fish tanks, two snakes, one Pug dog, and five Akita dogs. The fish and snakes weren’t difficult to feed and I just had to monitor the water levels. The Pug took all the attention and was a co-dependant dog if I ever saw one. She followed me everywhere and if I went into the bathroom and shut the door without her noticing, she ran around the house barking and whining. When she discovered I was in the bathroom she would scratch and sniff under the door and continue whining until I came out. She even had to sleep on the bed with me at night. I put her in a small travel kennel once, but she kept me awake barking and crying.

The Akitas were a whole different story. The breed is similar to a Husky or an Alaskan Malamute. They have very stocky bodies and heads. In fact, I found out just how solid their heads are one morning as a large male tried to bolt from his kennel when I opened the gate to feed him. I saw his intention, and being in a squatting position to set down his bowl, I moved my knee to block him. THUD!!! His head impacted my knee. It felt like somebody gently swung a bowling ball from a rope against my knee! That’s how big and how solid their heads are.

The catch with the Akitas was actually a bit scary. If two males or two females were allowed to enter the same space, they would fight until one of them died. So I had to rotate one male and one female into the large yard at a time so they could get their exercise. The owners stressed to me that if two same sex dogs had access to each other they would kill each other. I was very careful and never had any close calls until about a year later.

The way I fed the dogs in the kennel house was: 3 dogs in the cages, one male in a separate washroom, and one female in the hall crossing the front of the cages. It was a precise sequence to safely feed the dogs, lock the dogs from the yard in the washroom, let a caged male and female into the yard, then bring the male and female from the washroom into the cages. When a female passed in front of the cage of another, they would begin snarling and snapping at each other through the wire.

One morning I was feeding the dogs. I had taken the pin out of the “Y and pole” latch in the cage door and laid it on the counter when I placed the bowl inside the cage of one of the females. With my back turned, taking care of one of the other dogs, she pushed up the Y with her nose and got out. She went straight for the other female eating in the hall. Before I knew what happened, a deafening commotion of snarling and snapping fangs erupted as the two females went for each other’s throats. Surprisingly, I reacted very quickly, grabbing the escaped dog around the shoulders with both arms, placing my head against the back of hers to protect my face. I picked her up as high as I could so that all four legs were off the ground. As I kicked open the cage door I thought she was impossibly heavy, even for a stocky Akita. Then I turned my head and saw the other dog also dangling in mid-air, having half swallowed the nose of the dog in my arms. Still bear-hugging the escapee, I extended my elbow and forcefully struck the biting dog in the side of the head, knocking her loose from her grip on the nose. Then I threw the dog in my arms into the kennel and slammed the door shut. But not fast enough. The dog hit the floor and recovered fast enough to rip a large section out of my pants, from the knee down, before I yanked the door closed!

From the time the dog got out of the kennel until I threw her back in and shut the door could not have been more than 2 seconds. It all happened very fast! I am just thankful that both the dogs only had minor scratches, and that I only had a small tooth scratch on my calf. If I had been a fraction of a second slower, I would have lost a good chunk of flesh. She was still after the other female, but she was blind with rage and got my leg instead. At all other times, all five of the Akitas were very friendly and playful with me.

Just recently, my wife and I were staying at my in-laws over the weekend. The next door neighbor's house was about 10 feet away. Between the houses was a fence with cement walks on either side. The next door neighbor had a dog that always barked at anybody or anything passing on the street, and didn’t stop until they are long out of sight. Sometimes he got other dogs at nearby houses barking, and they barked back and forth endlessly. I had been wanting to do something for a long time.

My wife came out of the bedroom. "My dear, that dog keeps waking me up." The concrete walkway where the dog was barking was right under her window. I got her younger brother to help me find a large pan and a big pitcher, and fill them with water. We took them up to the second story bedroom. We shut off the lights, pulled up the blinds, and removed the screen. The dog was watching us the whole time, but he was peeking around the corner of the house and "woofing". Then he went away and was quiet.

I went back to my computer again. 30 minutes later I heard the dog barking and my wife calling. I ran into the bedroom and shut the door behind me to make it dark in the room. I slid the window open and grabbed the pitcher. The dog heard me and switched from barking at the street to barking up at me. I threw the whole pitcher of water on his head. He took off for his backyard like a race horse out of the gates! No more barking all night long!

In fact, any time we visited my wife’s parents after that, the dog only barked on the opposite side of the house. We were amazed how fast he learned! Only one soaking required. My wife said that she’s heard him when the window was open. When he walks on that side of the house he sniffs and whines, but never barks.