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I consider myself a dog lover, although I haven’t owned a dog since my childhood pal, a basset hound, died after a car accident when I was in fifth grade. But I enjoy meeting other people’s dogs—either in the homes of friends or when I see a neighbor walking a dog on a leash. Dogs seem like wonderful creatures, possessed of loyalty, good humor and a bottomless capacity for investing the simplest activities—going for a walk, retrieving a stick—with immeasurable joy.
As a person who spent many decades jogging for exercise several times a week, however, I have seen the dark side of dogs, too. When I was in my 20s and living in rural New Jersey, I was terrorized one day by a fierce miniature poodle who raced down the driveway of a house on the country road where I was jogging, lunged at me and bit me on the thigh before I had time to defend myself.
It was a cold spring day and I was wearing leggings and sweat pants, so I was not seriously injured. But the incident forever altered my perception of dogs. For years afterward, no matter where I lived, I rarely jogged in residential neighborhoods. In that way, I avoided dogs whose instinct to guard their homes brought out their worst behavior.
In the various public parks where I ran, I would often see dogs, but they were on a leash and they were usually well-behaved. Several years ago, in a city park, a dog on a leash got a little too close to me; I flinched and backed away. The dog’s owner, a young woman, seemed offended; she assured me that her dog was friendly and wouldn’t hurt me. I explained I had been bitten by a dog once and, much as I love dogs, it changed my perspective. Unfortunately, my earnest explanation seemed only to offend her more. We parted ways, and I concluded there was little to be gained by telling a dog owner that even their beloved pooch was capable of biting a stranger.
In the fall of 2016, I moved from my city apartment to a townhouse in a leafy suburb near the slope of a mountain. The neighborhood, with its mix of townhouses and single-family homes, was perfect for long, brisk walks—my preferred form of exercise now—but it came with a hazard I had not considered before I moved there. Many of the homeowners had dogs, and many of those dogs were extremely territorial.
In the sixteen months I have lived here, I have had several encounters with aggressive dogs—most of them at a safe distance, but all of them alarming. Once I crested a hill in a townhouse cul-de-sac to find a panicky woman standing in the road, struggling to keep her grip on two leashes attached to a pair of muscular, barking boxers straining at their leads and looking me with hatred in their eyes. Seeing me, she said, in a shaky voice, “I’m not sure I can hold both of them.” I backed away slowly, in cold terror, and said, faintly, “That’s OK. I’ll just . . . go another way.”
Another day I was the target of another boxer—this one behind a metal fence in the yard of a single-family home. I had “met” this dog before; it seemed to have decided I was its mortal enemy the first time it saw me, and it barked furiously whenever I came within 50 feet of its yard, even if I was on the opposite side of the street.
On this day, the dog rushed to the fence, barking incessantly, and seemed ready to jump its barricade, race toward me and sink its teeth into my throat. A man standing in the yard not 20 feet from the dog was unmoved and unhelpful; he merely watched silently as I stood paralyzed in the street across from his yard before I backed down the hill and tried to glide noiselessly away.
One rainy afternoon I was walking under an umbrella when a small white dog suddenly barreled across a lawn next to a townhouse and down the road toward me, barking menacingly. I had the good sense to parry his attack with my umbrella while shouting “Get away!” Although I must have looked absurd, to my surprise and satisfaction the dog backed off. I then called out, “Is this your dog?” to a woman standing on the lawn by the townhouse. She summoned it back to her side, but she offered no apology that her dog—who was violating the local leash law—had gone after me.
I have walked by houses where the doors and windows were all shut tight, but the sound of a dog inside barking in rage at my passing was clearly audible. In one home a dog both barked and repeatedly hurled itself against the front door; I could hear the frantic thuds of its body hitting the solid wood. I shuddered to think what might happen if that dog were ever outside when I passed its house, and I made a mental note to give that home a wide berth on future walks.
I was so concerned about the number of hostile dogs in my neighborhood that I called my local police department to ask whether I, as a pedestrian, had any rights.
The woman I spoke with was helpful and sympathetic; she told me she was a jogger herself and she understood my plight. She gave me the police department’s non-emergency number and urged me to call from my cell phone the next time I encountered an aggressive dog. That way, she said, an officer could quickly respond and visit the dog’s owner.
“The trick is calling while it’s happening,” she said.
I could see her point, but I wondered what my dog-owning neighbors—none of whom seemed favorably disposed to pedestrians to begin with—might do if I snitched on them and their badly behaved pets. To change the subject, I asked if she carried any sort of non-toxic spray repellent when she jogged, in case a dog came after her.
“I personally don’t,” she said. “My imperative is just to get by.”
I thanked her profusely before I hung up, and I later realized that, in addition to the phone number, she had given me a profound piece of advice. As I refine my walking route to avoid homes with murderous canines, I can also concentrate on the mantra, “My imperative is just to get by.” Who knows? That Zen-like approach to exercise could both lower my blood pressure and help me learn to float effortlessly past the world’s supply of hyper-hostile dogs.
Copyright © 2018 by Susan Hooper
References
Painting: Collie Chasing a Frog (Collie verfolgt einen Frosch) by Hermine Biedermann-Arendts (German, 1855-1916) via Wikimedia Commons. In the public domain.
