When Animals Attack

On Tuesday afternoon, the new neighbor’s Dalmatians wandered by our backyard window. Our dog Chloe saw their dogs and a barking contest ensued. Our other neighbor’s Golden Retriever often does the same thing to say he wants to play with our dog. When this happens, I throw Chloe in the backyard, she runs up to the Retriever, they sniff each other, then both forget why they were barking and return to normal dog activities like eating grass and finding exciting new things to roll in. Expecting a similar result with the Dalmatians, I threw Chloe in the backyard. This wasn’t Chloe’s first exposure to these Dalmatians. A day before one of them moseyed over to Chloe, they sniffed each other extensively, and the Dalmatian ended up laying down and rolling over and being generally submissive, so I assumed everyone would be nice and friendly and get along great. Chloe darted after the Dalmatians, and the Dalmatians chased her with more of a snarl in their voices than a friendly bark. After a few seconds tearing back and forth, one of them pinned Chloe against the house, barking and snarling in her face while she whined. I yelled at the Dalmatian a couple times to knock it off to no effect, and wound up grabbing its collar, my first exposure to the animal, to pull it off Chloe. She recovered and scrambled back in the house when I opened the door with my free hand. I let go of the Dalmatian’s collar; it glared menacingly at the door, and then continued on with its business.

And so we experienced our first dog attack. I should mention that Abbie was safely inside the house the entire time. That was an eye-opener for me since, from my experience, whenever dogs bark and growl at each other, no matter how ferocious they sound, they always end up just sniffing each other and returning to whatever they were doing. There’s one neighbor dog Chloe does not like, probably because she bites when she plays and Chloe is a giant chicken, and Chloe usually barks in her face until she leaves her alone. Otherwise, Chloe always ignores other dogs once she’s acknowledged their presence, and the other dog returns the favor. This time the other dog decided to assert its dominance. Chloe’s wounds, if you could call them that, are pretty minor: She has a small cut under one eye and I think she’s pretty bruised in her hindquarters since she randomly shows pain back there, but otherwise I think her pride is the only thing that’s hurt. She’s also walking a little funny sometimes, like something is caught in her fur by her tail. I took her to the vet, and he couldn’t find anything specifically wrong besides the cut. He gave me some doggie Tylenol and told me to watch for any other signs of injury. I’m not sure that the Dalmatian ever actually bit Chloe; she may have just sustained her injuries in the chase. To their credit, the Dalmatian’s owners were very apologetic, and have promised to reimburse us for the vet and keep their offending dog tied up and muzzled while in the backyard.

Bringing the blog to Abbie, I now have to watch her closely and keep her away from Chloe who has been awful mopey and grumpy since the incident. I have no reason to think she would ever harm Abbie, but I’d rather not find a reason the hard way. This is difficult since I’ve discovered one of my main tricks for entertaining Abbie is to let her chase Chloe. She gets to laugh, the dog gets to exercise, I get to rest, and everyone wins. Now she just stays put with a look of terror when Abbie approaches, which is unfortunate since I could use some rest to fight this cold, which Ellie officially labeled a “viral infection” today. Sorry about the seriousness of the post. I promise more mucus related talk tomorrow. How’s this for levity? “Dalmatian” can almost be rearranged to spell “Dammit Lana.”