It's official. If the way I "mother" my dog is any indication, I'm going to be one of THOSE parents. You know the kind - the one that's all about don't, can't, won't, what-ifs; the one that will shelter and protect her offspring at any cost from the cruel, evil world. We all know you can't spell "SMOTHER" without "MOTHER." My mom never let us ride our bicycles outside our driveway without a parental escort - for fear that a random tractor trailer may barrel down our little boulevard in suburbia and flatten us. I thought of this a few weeks ago, when me and my "kid" JackHammer, had an incident at the dog park. The "tractor trailer," however, came in the form of an angry German Shepherd.
My 5 year old mutt, JackHammer, is part manic Muppet, part shy skunk. He dislkes the dog park, and would much rather be frolicking freely on the beach or strutting his stuff around the neighborhood, barking and marking his territory at every corner. In the dog park, he is a shivering, squinting, anxiety-ridden coward. Like mother, like mutt.
Usually, Jack gets into a scuffle or two at the park. He patrols the border, quick to snap at anyone that sniffs his ass or comes too close to our "pack" - me, my big, goofy boyfriend and his big, goofier Labrador. Now, for the Labrador the park is heaven - a blessed bonding ritual he shares with my boyfriend of Ball. Run. Fetch. Ball. Run. Fetch. Which is why neither of them were quick to come to our rescue when the Jack Attack occurred.
There was my mutt, innocently watering a tree. His back to the packs of various breeds of dog -- all of which he could be a smattering of: terriers, collies, shepherds, spaniels, retrievers. As always, I was not more than a couple feet away from him, when I saw the German Shepherd charge. One second, Jack was lifting his leg. The next, he was being lifted in the air, tossed to and fro like a rag doll in the German Shepherd's jaws.
There is no amount of screaming and flailing about that could have corrected the shock of this unfortunate situation. Myself and other dog owners tried to kick the two apart, lunging at the Shepherd as he, in turn, continued to lunge at Jack's neck - over and over again. I witnessed poor Jack being picked up by the throat, dragged by the ear. It was like a horrific hybrid of Cujo meets K9 attack video.
Even the Shepherd's owner couldn't pull him off Jack, which, in my opinion, if you can't control your dog when it's trying to kill another living being, then who's got the fucked up parenting issues NOW?!
And it was in this moment when I thought, I was truly going to watch my dog die. That after rescuing him literally off the streets, after coddling him and cuddling him and always walking two steps behind him, after saving him from a shelter and yet sheltering him myself, that there was nothing I could have done, planned for or worried about in advance, to prevent this from happening. In that moment, it was up to my dog to get back up on his two (or four) feet.
But Jack did more than that. HE. FOUGHT. BACK. Here was a 20 pound mutt, pinned on his back to the ground by a beast over 5 times his weight. Despite bite wounds to the ear and puncture marks in his neck, Jack kicked up a dust storm like the Tasmanian Devil. He bared his little teeth, nipping and gnashing and thrashing about until he was free of the Jaws of Death. At one point, I even saw Jack clinging by the mouth from the great furry gullet of the German Shepherd, hoping to exact some vigilante vengeance of his own, no doubt!
When the dust -- and the tempers (both canine and human) -- settled, the Shepherd's irresponsible owner admitted she had not been back to the park in over a year, since her dog "always attacks others." Great. She slinked out of the park, tail between her legs, dragging her Satan dog behind her.
And now, though Jack is literally scarred, I am the one suffering PTSD whenever we return to the dog park. I want to pick him up and carry him around. I want to scoop him up and take him out of there whenever any dog - especially a large one, especially a German Shepherd - approaches.
My boyfriend sighs, "he's fine. Look at him. The only reason he knows nothing's fine is by your behavior. Act calm, act normal. He'll figure it out." I think about the future. Beyond dog parks, to playgrounds and sporting events and when my own children are riding their bikes, one day. They learn how to ride and you let them go, in more ways than one. If they fall, they get back up. And if they get hurt, so be it. All children get cuts, bumps, bruises, broken bones, injuries. We all have scars to prove it.
Even my resilient little mutt, Jack Hammer. After all, for him, the visit to the Vet was more traumatic than the German Shepherd attack itself.
