Is unarmed defense from attack dogs taught in any of the traditional martial arts, or to special forces personnel? I’m not talking about fending off ill-tempered house pets through body language, but somehow stopping a trained and determined attack dog without the use of a weapon.
I don’t see how any unarmed human could stand up to even one dog…
But weren’t there Roman gladiators who specialized in fighting dangerous animals with their bare hands? If I remember correctly, the technique was to let the animal close distance, and then “feed” it one of your hands. If you can stay on your feet, the next step is to grab the back of its neck with your free hand, and proceed to shove the hand that’s in its mouth all the way down its throat, and suffocate it.
Supposedly, men were able to kill full-grown lions in this manner…?
I also recall reading somewhere that Mossad agents were taught a similar technique for dealing with attack dogs. That account included a suspiciously ludicrous embellishment, however - supposedly, rather than waiting for the animal to suffocate, the agent - whose arm is buried to the elbow in the dog’s throat - forcefully drops his elbow and raises his wrist, snapping his forearm to the perpendicular and breaking the dog’s neck…
A human should be able to kill a single large dog in most cases.
The human needs to come to terms with the fact that they will get hurt.
Ideally proffer an arm to the dog and let it clamp down on that. With your other hand kill the dog (grab its trachea and squeeze as hard as you can, poke its eyes out, break its arm/wrist and so on). Make no mistake where the dog bit you is going to be messed up. Puncture wounds, maybe shredded skin, maybe broken bones but better than being dead.
This is not to say a dog can’t be very dangerous and that they can’t kill a human. They certainly can. But if we did a series of Thunderdome tests where two enter and one leaves my money is on the human most times.
I suppose if you get a truly massive dog like a Mastiff things might be different.
In the wild remember dogs/wolves are pack hunters. A group of dogs will mess you up.
Dogs also have some distinct weak spots. If you can grab the forearms of the dog pull them sideways from the dog’s body. They do not go that way and you’ll dislocate both of their shoulders. Fight over, dog won’t be going anywhere after that.
I also saw a small woman at the dog park stop a dog attacking her dog by grabbing him by the hindlegs and lifting its rear end off the ground. The dog was not pleased by this and clearly wanted to turn on her but was utterly foiled. It was helpless. Of course you have to let go sooner or later but I was surprised at how well that worked.
I have never seen a martial art offer training to ward off animals but perhaps it exists.
And recognizing a dangerous animal from one who has an owner with delusions of fierceness … the storage place in Norfolk we had temporarily had dobies. One got out and was romping around terrorizing the customers until it got to me. I whacked it on the nose with a roll of christmas wrapping paper and yelled bad doggie at it and it hit the ground in the bad doggie pose. Moron owning it never actually trained it to do anything except look fierce. You could tell by the way it barely obeyed him. Real trained dogs behave impeccably.
Most animals are actually very nose sensitive. Many times a good solid blow to the tip of the nose will startle it enough for you to do something to the animal. Blows to the nose/eye area will frequently cause the whole tear and blink reflex.
As a general rule in Thunderdome-type scenarios, you can predict the winner by one simple question: Which animal weighs more? Now, the larger animal might still be hurt pretty bad, but you can count on the smaller one being hurt even worse. Given that humans are larger than dogs, this gives us the edge.
Of course, that’s for a Thunderdome scenario. Very few animals will allow themselves to get into a fight to the death, if they can help it. In the real world, you don’t have to kill the other animal; you just have to convince it that you’re more trouble than it’s worth. And that, a human can certainly do to a dog.
I have no training on this but I used to do this to my old Chow Chow. She was ill tempered and would sometimes act aggressive towards me. I would feed her one of my fists that she would barely be able to fit in her mouth and then I would smack her on the head and tell her to calm down. Once my fist got in her mouth, she was more interested in trying to spit it out than bite me, so I never got hurt doing this.