re: #1008 Aceofwhat?

i’ve had to intervene twice with dogs, once with a friend and once for my daughter when she was younger. it takes a lot of adrenaline, for sure, and in neither case was the dog going for my throat (or larger than a small lab):

*distract and slow the animal down with a kick
*offer your arm for them to bite
*as you pull your arm away, grab their nape with your other hand and lift them off the ground
*rotate the animal in the air and use the second hand to grab a bunch of skin about halfway down the spine
*slam into the ground repeatedly with blind rage (in the case of my daughter being threatened) until the animal is making sounds you’d normally only hear on the Serengetti

it’s not a happy memory, now that i go back over it…

I’ve lost it with animals too. They are not good memories, one in particular still haunts me.

I’ve had to intervene a number of times, both between people and dogs and between dogs and dogs, but none of those dogs were going after me. I’m not sure you appreciate how fast a dog can be, let alone an animal with absolutely no respect for humans and therefore no controls.

I’ve gone up to guard dogs that I’ve never seen before and within 5 minutes I was scratching their backs. My mother made sure I was comfortable with large dogs and knew their body language.

Coyotes, even though they weigh about half that of a decent sized Shepherd, scare me.