vicious

Another vicious dog encounter, this time two St. Bernards and a smaller herding dog about knee high. But for a woman passing by, who stopped to join in the fray, one or both of my dogs would surely be dead.

Little Bill, Deaf Betty and my sweetheart, Mike, all confronted with the slavering jaws-o-death while innocently trotting through the neighborhood. Mike's been taking an ancient Irish shillelagh on his walks, but forgot yesterday afternoon. I told him to start packing my little purse sized .22, but he won't do it. Wyoming boy, the one who got me started carrying guns.

I'm not sure what to do about this. Every time we get comfortable after a few weeks of not having seen any free roaming animals, something like this happens. The terriers are like crack for big dogs: high spirited, cocky little smarty pants dogs. I imagine the lumbering St. Bernards and Pit Bulls and Rottweilers look at these little dogs, who imagine they're giants, and want to put them in their little dog places.

Yuck. Reminds me of one of my worst ever boyfriends, who said he was attracted to me right away because "you looked like you needed to be taken down a peg." He mentioned that as I was shrieking at him to "leave me the fuck alone." That was only moments after I attempted to crush his pelvis with his kitchen table, which effort succeeded only in crashing through the drywall and studs into the next apartment. Whew! Ever had one of those out-of-body rage experiences? I could see myself doing it, could say "stop it, stop it!!" in my head, but it was as if a wild thing had taken over my body and simply couldn't be stopped. The real me had taken a step out and was observing the madwoman in action. Thank God for sobriety.

If that's anything like how these big dogs feel when they see my little ones, that's very, very scary. From dogs to men. Not so much of a leap in some cases.