Bad Dog!

So I'm walking along my usual route, walking as fast as I can, trying to get finished with the 2 miles so I can come home and take a shower, make the 1 pm conference call and the 2 pm interview, and The EGE has peeled off (he ran earlier and walks with me sometimes just for fun), and up ahead I see this dog I've never seen before racing across the street. Now, I know most of the dogs in the neighborhood. Like the Goldens who live next door to where this dog was: they're never loose. If their people are home, they have access to the house and the yard, and if the front door is open, they'll stand at the screen and see us and bark, that loud-but-hello-there! bark, and then they'll leave the front door and race up the stairs, and sometimes you can see their heads at the window on the landing, and sometimes you don't see them until they reach the upstairs window and HEYBARKBARKBARK! Or sometimes they'll race outside to the backyard to stand at the gate and BARKBARKBARK! and sound really ferocious until you say, "Hi, guys!" and then they're totally silent. They said, "HI!" and you said, "Hi," and all is well.

This dog wasn't anyone I've seen before. A white shepherd, he had a collar and was really clean, so I figured he lives indoors. He was racing back and forth wildly, the way dogs do when they're never out, trying to figure out what odor to follow first and where to pee first. He wasn't paying any attention to me at all, so I didn't think anything of it until I got near the yard where he was currently peeing (not his yard or even next door, it turns out), and he turned and trotted out to me in the street. I said, "Hey, there," because he looked as if he were coming to greet me, and then suddenly, without any warning, he growled once, bent low, and lunged at me. I was completely shocked, and I yelled--a mistake, but how could I help it?--and he bit my leg. I didn't feel his teeth but knew he'd gotten me because he yanked and I could feel the twang of it. He backed off and circled and tried to bite me again. I was yelling bloody murder and, I'm sorry to admit, cussing mightily at the top of my lungs, and all I had with me was my hat, which I took off and used to beat him in the head while calling him a wide variety of unflattering names. There were several yard men working in the neighborhood. One was half a block away, and he just stood and looked at me, even after the dog ran off and I yelled and asked if he had a cell I could use. Another guy was a couple of blocks away but could see (and, I'm sure, hear) me, and he grabbed a rake and started down the street.


I pull up my pant let and look down and get a little freaked out because it's already starting to swell from bleeding under the skin. I'm also pissed because there's blood on my white pants.

(I took these with the cell on the way to the dr's office)

A young woman drives up and rolls down her window. The dog's name is Buddy, and he's her mother's dog, and she has to go catch him, she says, before he bites someone else. She comes back later and tells me they know he bites, and how he got loose today was that he knocked her down the steps and ran out. She doesn't like him because SHE HAS A NEW BABY (and she nods to her backseat), and I'm thinking, --well, let's just not even say what I'm thinking, because my brain is still in Full-On Alert with the Bad Words Yelling Mode. So I'm not saying much but am wondering what in the world these people are thinking: an unpredictable biting big dog and a new baby.

Plus I'm trying to keep from crying. I look down at my leg, and it's got this huge knot on it, and I'm trembling and just furious: I worked a year for a vet. Never bitten. Four years for animal control. Never bitten (I was exposed to rabies and had a shot, but that wasn't a bite; that was in helping remove the head of a skunk for testing and finding out after that my glove had a hole in it and that the skunk had indeed had rabies). Two years for the SPCA. Never bitten.

I've been bitten twice by dogs, both times when the dog ran out of a yard and lunged at me in the street. Both times I cried, mostly because it's just totally unexpected. Dogs like me. I have lots of dog friends. I've known all kinds of dogs that don't like me--abused dogs, aggressive dogs, crazy dogs. But they have always told me they were going to bite me, and I knew to leave them alone. Once when I worked for the vet I was trying to clean a cage, and the dog told me he was going to bite me. I shut the door and went in and told the vet that the dog was going to bite me. He was disgusted and stomped in and yanked the cage door open and reached in to show me how to do it.

And of course the dog bit him.

Always fun to hear an avowed ultra-relgious Pillar of His Church let loose with a string of profanity. Very hard to keep a straight face when it's your boss and you warned him.

Anyway. So I had to walk home, because The EGE and I are not phone people, and so we don't carry our phones. The Nice Yard Guy (not the one who stood and watched) let me use his phone after he called the police, but The EGE didn't answer, so I walked home, and then we went to Dr. Papica's office--and I give his name here because I'm thoroughly disgusted with his office--and showed them my leg. They finally got off the phone and checked with the nurse and said, "We don't do dog bites. You'll have to go to the emergency room."

Me: "What? You're kidding."
"No, we don't do dog bites here."
Me, storming out the door, "OH, GOOD GRIEF." Fortunately, the spate of Loud White Trash Woman Cussing had passed.

The EGE is starting the truck, and I say, "Hang on." And I call Mendez, my go-to OB/GYN, and I can hear him in the background saying, "Tell her to come on over." Of course. There's a huge difference in health care depending on whether or not they have known you for 25 years.

Anyway--cutting it short here: he cleaned it, checked it, bandaged it, and called in some prescriptions for antibiotics. Two. He said that normally he wouldn't, but that because I've been sick for so long, blah, blah, blah, that "anything that can happen, will happen. To you, anyway." I would be insulted, but since he kissed my hand and gave me big sympathy (after I told him his bedside manner was totally sucky), he's forgiven. He made me laugh, and that was what I needed to quit feeling crappy:  sorry for myself with this huge throbbing knot on my leg, freaked out because the whole thing was totally unexpected and inexplicable, exhausted from the adrenaline and the drama.

Gah.

So now it's all clean and shiny and looks like this:

But I still have to make arrangements for the Animal Control officer to look at the actual bite. They went to Papica's office, where the staff told them I'd gone to the emergency room. By the time they got that figured out, I was home getting ready to do an interview. At some point I'll call them, but I think now I'll go take a nap--wonder when this napping stuff is finally going to be over already.

Well, thanks for listening. In case you don't know--and I'm sure y'all do--the re-telling of traumatic events is part of the processing process. You tell them to clarify to yourself what happened and to process them. In the larger scheme of things, a little bite on the leg is no big deal, but it's scary, and so I really do thank you for letting me tell about it.

~~XO