[NAGDU] Dog Attacks

[Rachel Grider]

Hello, Again:

This is my last post today...

I wanted to talk about something that happened to Demi and I last
Saturday which is still very upsetting to me. As we were walking along
a residential street on Saturday morning, a small dog (my mom, who was
with me, said later it was a Chihuahua) came running across the street
to us and began snarling and snapping at Demi's throat. I could hear
the ladies who seemed to be the dog's owners screaming threats at the
dog from across the street, but they did not make any effort to come
over and get their dog. Reflexively, I made a large shooing gesture
with my arm and yelled at it to get away, and my mom also yelled at
it; luckily, it immediantly backed off. I wanted to get away from that
dog as soon as possible, so I gave Demi a quick command, and we
continued down the sidewalk. My mom said somethink to the ladies along
the lines of: "Your dog just attacked this dog," and they didn't even
respond but just simply hustled away with scared looks on their faces
(according to my mom); I didn't trust myself to say anything that
wouldn't be full of anger, and I wanted to get to a place where I
could examine my dog more thoroughly for any wounds. It turned out
that she was totally fine, and she really didn't seem all that
bothered by the attack...I think that it upset me more than it did
her...

I am still mad that those women wouldn't take responsibility or even
acknowledge that their dog had not only caused a major distraction to
my service dog but had tried to actually hurt her. I am a bit worried
now because it could happen again, next time with a bigger, more
threatening dog that could really hurt my sweet, little Labrador. We
have already had several encouters with friendly dogs that are
off-leash when they are not supposed to be and with unfriendly dogs
that bark and growl from behind fences...If a dog really were to hurt
Demi, how would I go about reporting it? The owners of the Chihuahua
didn't stick around after their dog came bak to them, so I couldn't
have reported them if Demi had indeed been hurt...

I just wanted to vent a bit more about this and to see what some of
you have done in similar situations. I don't know if I handled it the
best way, but I can't realistically think of anything I could have
done differently.

Cheers!

Rachel