My friend was paying a couple hundred dollars per month for, uh, the privilege of house-sitting for the nutjob. The owner had planned to be in New York City all summer to pursue a modeling career, and our friend was supposed to watch the dogs while this woman was away. But she never left and it brought on an increasingly difficult living situation. Savvy readers might notice the first problem: our friend should have been paid to watch the nutjob's dogs, not have to pay the nutjob to "rent a room."

At any rate, the nutjob knew we were coming and we arrived about 9PM on a Friday. The first two dogs seemed friendly enough. I grew up around dogs and have been around dogs most of my adult life. I'm probably even still a dog person if I thought about it, though it's been a while since I've lived with one. I knew the dogs would be excited having four or five new people at the house. I held out my closed hand to each of them, like I've been doing for over twenty years. The dogs sniffed my hand for a bit and then let me pet them.

The third dog was, I believe, an enormous Chesapeake Bay Retriever. I don't know breeds as well as I should. Certainly it was one of the biggest domestic dogs I've ever seen. He seemed friendly enough. Sniffed my hand, let me pet him, and then jumped up and bit the inside of my arm. The skin broke and I backed away.

Our "house-sitting" friend got the dog into the fenced backyard, I washed up my wound as best I could (most of my camping and first-aid equipment were still at the "Fork in the Road" shoot), and we proceeded to unpack. I was a little weary of remaining at the house, but I figure a door could be closed between me and the dog. I don't know much about dog bites, having never been bitten. I knew how to immediately react if a dog bit and latched onto my arm or leg, and I know how to get an aggressive dog to stand down from a distance.

But I really just didn't know what to do here. I had heard that dogs that had attacked babies had to be put to sleep often, and I remember hearing it has something to do with the dog "tasting blood" or something. I hated to think the dog, just because he got excited with all the people, would have to be put to sleep, so I didn't make any suggestions.

I was certainly shaken. And on my last trip into the house with my sleeping bag, I about froze with fear. The nutjob had just let the dog back into the house. It was still excited as all hell and it knocked over our "house-sitting friend" to get to me. (I'm not using actual names here, because I'd hate to think there's some legal crap that somebody still has to go through, and that this journal entry could make things worse). The owner was able to grab the dog and calm him down. I was sitting on the couch when she finally let the dog loose and he made a beeline straight for me. He was still excited but not in attack mode anymore, licked my hand and panted pretty near my face. I was still shaken and scared, but I believed at least on the surface that the dog wasn't going to attack me again. I think the initial attack was because I was the only male in the group that he wanted to assert his alpha-male dominance, but I'm no expert.

"You just have to keep telling him, 'it's all right,'" the nutjob said. "It's all right. He never does this sort of thing. He's such a good dog." She did tell us that the dog had had all his shots, which was reassuring until we figured out she was such a nutjob.

The dog jumped around my wife and she leaned away. The nutjob said in a patronizing tone: "You're not a dog person, are you?"

"Not when they attack my husband," she thought, and told me later.

The nutjob took our house-sitting friend into the other half of the semi-divided room and then started telling her calmly that the dog never behaves that way, and if our friend would have introduced us properly (meaning us and the dogs) then there wouldn't have been any problems. The dog seemed to follow her, and then I couldn't see where it went. I whispered to the others in the room, "Where's the dog now?" and nobody knew but we thought maybe it had gone back into the backyard. I wanted to get up, but wasn't sure if the dog would look at that as another sign of aggression so soon.

Meanwhile, the nutjob started laying more and more blame our friend's way. The rest of us just sat there and I whispered to someone next to me, "Is she saying that it's [our friend]'s fault?"

The nutjob shot back to us and said, "Do you think this is funny? Because it's not funny."

We didn't say anything. Of course it wasn't funny, you psycho. I just got bit by a dog.

"I didn't even want you here. You come into my house and you make jokes? This is serious!"

Yeah, we figured that out. And nobody's laughing.

"'Where's the dog now?'" she yelled. I guess her hearing was pretty good. "If you aren't dog people then why would you come here? I have three dogs! You obviously don't know how to act around dogs."

Later we talked about it, and we all agreed that we had plenty of stuff we wanted to fire back at her with. But we knew our friend would have to live with the nutjob and anything we did would only make her living situation worse. So we all kept quiet. I even made my eyes look somewhat submissive, as I might to let an animal know that I wasn't going to to fight her--that she should just calm down. In fact the first thing I wanted to tell her was, "It's all right."

"I didn't even want you here! In fact this is my house. I want you all to leave." One of us suggested we go to a hotel so we did. We packed up our things and left, along with our friend who was paying to rent the room. I bandaged up my wound and we tried to make a pleasant night of it.

In the morning, our house-sitting friend went back to the house to get her bike. The nutjob gave her a note written with the grammar of a two year old, saying that she had to be gone by the end of the week. By the time she returned, we were regrouped and ready for breakfast. Some other friends had joined us by then and suggested we should get confirmation about the dog getting all his shots. Taking the word of a nutjob was a little bit iffy and all. One friend was a med student so she called the nutjob and asked in a very professional manner if she could get the name and number of the vet, so we could call for confirmation. The nutjob said no. Our med student friend suggested that they might be required to call animal control if we couldn't get confirmation, and that she was concerned for my safety.

That's when it broke down completely, I think. The nutjob said if we called animal control then she would call the police because we were tresspassing. The med student wasn't with us a the house, so she said that she wasn't even there. But that didn't calm her down. We called animal control and learned that we actually were required to call animal control anytime an animal bite broke the skin (it's to contain infections and such, I think, and it might even be a federal law--live and learn).

We called animal control and the nutjob called the police. And here's where it gets surreal. When my sister-in-law told the story to her husband-to-be, he said, "Wow. What a crazy dream." She told him, no it really happened. "Yeah, right," he said. I don't know if he still disbelieves it, but now it's on the internet so it must be true.

Our friend and the nutjob had no written agreement. Nothing in writing at all, until she received that poorly written note. In the note the nutjob said how she knew we were coming to spend the night, but that she would have rather that we didn't come. Which, while making us unwanted, kept us from being tresspassers by any stretch of the legal imagination.

But the result was probably about the same. A few hours later, under police watch, my friend got all of her stuff out of the house and into our cars. Meanwhile, one of our friends had a family member in the area that owned some apartments so she found her a place (on a Saturday! for the short duration she required!).

And also meanwhile, I met with an animal control officer who took down my story, looked at my wound, and said, "So... you've met her, huh?" He gave a look of exasperation.

I almost laughed out loud, but I was too shocked. "Yeah," I said. "You?"

"Yeah, I've been to the house a few times." Turns out that same dog has bitten two or three other people that animal control knows about and he wanted to deal with her about as much as we did.

I was advised to get myself to a hospital to have everything checked out. I guess it's standard to take antibiotic after a dog bite, and I wasn't up-to-date on my tetanus shots. The dog was quarantined and I would hear from animal control only if it was bad news (the dog showing symptoms of rabies, etc.).

The nutjob wrote our friend another note and this one explained how cruel we were to want to keep the dog locked away (which we hadn't suggested, I don't think--I was more thinking I wanted to be locked in a room away from the dog) because this was the dog's home. She said she was sorry that "your manly friend, who pushed at me," got bit, but the dog was just defending his home. This bothers me more than the whole weekend, partly because we couldn't figure it out.

The nutjob wasn't in the room when the dog bit me, if she's suggesting that I provoked the dog when he attacked. In fact, I met and was bitten by the dog before I even met the owner. I don't know if this was positioning just in case I decided to sue her or if her command of English is so bad that she meant something else entirely. There's no other reference to it in either letter.

And that's about it. We went camping that night and white water rafting the next day (decided to skip the biking, since we hadn't yet put up the money for it--though at least one of us enjoyed the bike trails near where we camped). The photos were taken mostly by my wife with a $3.33 waterproof camera without a flash. Just as well, as it'll at least obscure the people who were on the trip.

I've had a hell of a time since then. Some lousy health-related conditions which could be (1) a side effect of the antibiotic, (2) a reaction to the tetanus shot, (3) the result of taking too much Motrin between the teeth and my dog bite, or (4) symptoms of infection. Meanwhile, trips to the dentist and doctor, loss of sleep, and getting swamped at the day-job has really put a damper on both working on my own work and on having some nice sanity breaks. But everything's under control now. Still haven't been to the pool as often as I'd like, for my first summer in North Carolina.

In trying to remember/figure out what kind of dog this was, I did some searching online and here's what I found in describing the Chesapeake Bay: From DogBreedInfo.com:

Willful, this breed can be prone to dominance problems if not properly trained and socialized ... These are strong dogs and have a tendency to be territorial, so they require firm training and good management ... if they do not get enough exercise they may become badly behaved from boredom

From the Chesapeake Bay Retriever Relief and Rescue Site (http://www.cbrrescue.org):

[the alpha dog, untrained] makes his own rules and enforces them against other members of the household by means of a dominant physical posture and a hard-eyed stare, followed by a snarl, then a knockdown blow or a bite ... Without training and leadership from you to guide him, the dog cannot judge correctly whom to repel and whom to tolerate. Without training and leadership, sooner or later he may injure an innocent person who will successfully sue you for more than you own.

Sounds like my friend. And it's easy to figure out that the nutjob didn't do much training of the dog. It took a bit of time, but I'm confident now that the dog was the problem, not me. You really start to second-guess yourself for a while. When excited dogs would bounce up and down the trails on Saturday, I put my hands in my pockets for the first time in my life. In my head I thought I should pick up a stick or a rock, just to threaten the playful dogs to back off. I didn't like having those thoughts, and I'm glad they aren't there anymore. I'm still not 100% at ease around strange dogs, but I imagine that'll pass, too.

In the nutjob's defense, I can understand some aspects of her behavior. She could have been scared of both litigation and of losing her dog. To me, just quarantining a dog sounds awful. And in my mind, if my dog bit three people, I'd start to worry that animal control would want to put it to sleep. I still think she's more responsible than the dog is. The dog was excited and was obviously not taught not to bite people when he gets excited or feels threatened. If my owner was a nutjob, I think I might start biting people, too.

Even if we are properly introduced.

Filed under Carrboro Area, Journal, Pretty Pictures, Vanity Smurf

Comments: Discuss this entry at LiveJournal

Posted by: Kathy Vreeland at November 8, 2005 9:33 AM

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