I knew something was wrong when my husband, Paul, came into the backyard holding a dog leash and harness.
I was feeding the chickens. Paul had been walking Martha and Quinn. There was no dog attached to the pink harness, and I had a momentary vision of Martha having escaped from it. But she was safe inside the house. Paul had come to tell me she had been attacked.
He’d taken Martha on her usual route around the block. There’s a dog in the neighborhood who often barks, but an electronic fence always kept him contained. This Sunday, however, he stormed the fence (we would later learn he wasn’t wearing his collar) and clamped Martha’s neck in his jaws.
Paul shouted for the owners to come out. A passerby stopped her car and got out to help him. Finally, one the residents of the house called off the dog. Paul, shaken, returned home.
He had checked Martha over and found no visible wounds. I did the same. But just to be on the safe side, we drove her to the emergency vet, which is 30 miles away.
The doctor found some bruising and one superficial cut. But he did prescribe antibiotics (I hadn’t thought about the need for that) and a painkiller/anti-inflammatory. Martha might be stiff in the morning, he said.
Martha was fine at the emergency clinic. She even touched noses with a spaniel. I thought that after her encounter, she would be wary of other dogs.
But over the next few days, Martha begin exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress. She would shake for no apparent reason. One day, she refused to eat. Martha paced, and couldn’t settle down.
I tried a few different remedies to calm her. I took her and Quinn into the family room, which is away from the street and quiet, and put on some light jazz, which usually relaxes both dogs. I dispensed some lavender-scented spray. A “ThunderShirt,” which is a close-fitting garment that calms dogs down, seemed like a good idea, so I bought one.
Martha improved. Then, a few days later, she and Quinn were roughhousing. Quinn did something that must have reminded Martha of the attack. She squealed. Quinn was chagrined, and headed straight for his dog bed.
I opened up my bag of tricks once again, and got Martha settled down.
Meanwhile, Paul was dealing with the law. The animal control officer had to be notified, and Paul had to file a report.
His first inclination was to change Martha’s route, which the ACO didn’t think was a good idea. Neither did Martha. Interestingly, she wanted to stick to her usual routine, and was resistant when Paul tried to lead her in a different direction. So Paul resumed their trip around the block, but carried a short, stout stick as protection.
Martha did not seem to be concerned about going by the house (her attacker was nowhere in sight), but Paul reported that one day she developed “double mohawks.” That’s what we call fur that pops up on dogs’ backs when they become defensive. Two mohawks are more serious than one, obviously. I speculated that the aggressive dog had been out in the yard that day shortly before Paul and Martha came by, and that she could smell him.
Dogs fight. This is a fact of life. One of our most memorable incidents occurred with our now-departed dog Baxter. In those days, back in the early 1990s, we had a horizontal cable that extended from the house to the garage, with an attached vertical cable that could be connected to a dog. The second cable slid along the first one, allowing the dog to move across a good-sized area.
I typically put each of our dogs on the tie-out, one at a time, in the morning. I would stand at the kitchen window, preparing my breakfast and coffee, and keeping an eye out. One day, I had just turned to take my toast out of the toaster, when I heard a bark and a snap.
Baxter had broken out of the tie-out to confront her archenemy, the dog next door.
Now, the dog next door was nice dog. Her owners, however, let her run loose, despite the leash law. She didn’t go far—the backyards of all the houses on our block connect in the middle, so this dog could wander happily without hitting the street.
I suspected the neighbor dog’s freedom annoyed Baxter. I further deduced that the other dog had ventured into our yard and, perhaps, urinated, which had really annoyed Baxter.
These thoughts would come later, however. Baxter was bleeding profusely from her ear.
I bundled her into the car and took her to the vet’s.
Blood was spurting and the car would require a good cleaning. But when the vet saw Baxter, he wasn’t alarmed at all. “It’s just a nick. Ears always bleed like that.”
Of course, the bottom line in these incidents was that neither dog was seriously injured. But both occurred because other people didn’t take full responsibility for their pets. Quinn is a smart dog who can walk off leash in a park or other public places. But I don’t let him, because he is an alpha dog. He always wants to meet other dogs, but if they try any top dog stunts, he will growl at them. Quinn has never attacked another animal, but I don’t think it’s fair to other dog owners to have my dog growling at their dog.
It’s kind of like what we Mainers say about driving in the snow. You can be as careful as you can be, and still get into an accident—because of the other guy.
I did have one light moment after the latest ordeal. I told the technician at the veterinary clinic that Martha had been attacked. “By what?” she asked.
I went silent for a minute, visualizing the wildlife in our city neighborhood. Squirrels, voles, groundhogs and the occasional raccoon. My mind’s eye saw a chubby gray squirrel flying onto Martha’s back and digging in his claws.
“Another dog,” I said. That was bad enough.
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