a99kitten's Musings

This morning on our walk, the huskies were attacked. We were walking on the bluffs since it was high tide and half of the beach literally had no beach. There was a section near the end that still had some sand and we saw a dog running around down there chasing a stick. We continued walking along the bluff and all of a sudden I hear the lady scream after her dog and the f***** shoots up – he ran straight up the cliff – and attacks Storm. Admittedly, this surprised me and freaked me out a bit. What I should have done was kick the jackass back down the cliff.

Storm’s cancer medicine is working at a cellular level to not allow the cancer cells to grow. But due to this, all cell growth is slowed down, not just cancer cells. So he is not supposed to get injured. Because of this, I don’t take him to dog parks anymore. He is only allowed to play with dogs he already knows and gets along with. Can something out of the ordinary or an accident happen? Of course. But I need to control the environment and situations as much as I can. Of course I wasn’t thinking this little bastard was going to come tearing up the cliff to attack my dogs for no reason whatsoever. This is literally a straight up cliff of rocks and sand.

Both huskies stepped in front of me and the other dog launched at Storm. I dropped both leashes since if they need to defend themselves, they don’t need me holding them back. Once I saw the dog up close, he looked just like a Jack Russel but bigger. He was about 3/4 the size of Storm. But a savage snarling one. I reached in and pulled him off Storm. He was still snarling and trying to bite Storm and me and Angelus just got in his way and engaged him as I checked on Storm who was bleeding and wanting to get back into the brawl.

In this same 2 minutes, to her credit, the lady pulled herself up the cliff to get her dog. So at least she wasn’t one of those helpless people who just stands there. She grabbed her dog away from Angelus who I pulled back over to me now that her dog was under control. She was very sorry, blah blah and the first thing she said was the standard “he has never done anything like that before.” All dogs who attack other dogs have apparently never done it before. Rather amazing.

Now, I know she didn’t expect it to happen anymore than I did, and she was clearly upset as well, but then she adds how she won’t bring him to the beach anymore and stick to the dog park. And I’m thinking, the problem wasn’t that he ran up the cliff. The problem was that he a) didn’t listen to you to not run up the cliff and b) attacked another dog rather viciously. If he is off-leash at the dog park, same difference. That’s the issue you need to work on.

I do not understand how you don’t know your dog’s personality. I know what dogs or situations will set the buds off. And I also know when they can be off-leash or not. Now, I’m sure the lady didn’t expect her dog to scale a cliff, but what if we were just walking on the beach? I find it hard to believe the dog would have reacted any differently. But she was at least mortified and apologetic. I’ve had people get pissy and angry when THEIR dogs run up and attack mine. Wha? You mean you know you are in the wrong so your first reaction is to be a jerk as a defense mechanism and to put people off and frighten them. However, you will just agitate me and I will yell at you. But this woman wasn’t like that at all.

Storm was bleeding by his right eye. Like – so, so close to his eye that I am very thankful it was not his eyeball as it easily could have been. He seemed fine on the rest of the walk home. He sniffed and peed on stuff like normal. And when we came across his little dog friend Bear, he still wanted to stop and say hi. But I did cut the walk short and brought him straight home instead of a longer beach walk so Angelus got cheesed this morning. But Angelus was a great big brother and charged in and defended him and then came over and checked on him when it was over. He was pretty sweet. And hopefully I can get husband to take him to Maverick’s or somewhere for some beach fun.

Got Stormy home and I cleaned his eye area with some antibiotic wash and it looks like a small hole but doesn’t seem too deep, so hopefully not a big deal. I’ll need to keep an eye on it to make sure it heals normally. He got a cookie and a chicken breast Happy Hip treat when we finished cleaning his eye, so he liked that. The little guy is an amazingly good patient. Such a good boy. He’s resting out on the deck and I’m watching him clean himself, so he seems ok if a little subdued. But he gets his feelings hurt when dogs attack him or are mean to him. It’s kind of funny but you can definitely see how he seems sad after any kind of altercation or even a snarly, leashed dog. He just wants everyone to be friendly. He doesn’t need to be sad or stressed out. He needs happy time.

And I think I need a drink to calm my nerves. 10am on a Sunday seems late enough for that, right?