I cannot comprehend a dog biting me or anyone I cared about and surviving the encounter.
There are plenty of fine dogs on the planet, and I’ve owned a few anad gotten along well with many, many others. But violence against a human is a capital offense, regardless of species or circumstance.
Thanks for the support, people.
I think the real problem for me was that the past behavior of two different couples made me ‘gun shy’ and created unhealthy inhibitions about other people’s animals. Both couples had the attitude that their dogs were in their own houses and could therefore do no wrong. That controlling their dogs was unnecessary and even abusive (!!) and that everyone else should just live with the behavior and shut up.
Hell, the wife in the second couple attempted to demonize me at the house of a third couple when I played with their unsocialized cat. The third couple never paid any attention to the cat, which to me is criminal. So I played with it while we were all together. Being unsocialized, it had no idea how to react and spent most of it’s time hissing and angry. But the key point that the third couple made in silencing the braying donkey’s ass was that the cat kept coming back to me for more. It followed me around, it kept looking for more attention. It just didn’t know how to accept it positively. If it hadn’t liked it, it would have gone off and done something else.
On this one, my sister and BIL clearly had no problems with me smacking their dog after it bit me. And according to my mother (the nanny), the dog has been a LOT better behaved since then.
You laid the pimp hand down. How many people can say they’ve actually smacked the shit out of something?
I love animals, but if a dog attacks me, it’s putting me in a “you or me” type of situation. The dog will lose every time if I have any say about it.