I love dogs. That I do not have one now, nor intend to get another, reflects the pain I have felt as an adult on three occasions when a dog I had died. But memories of two family pets in my youth have left me aware that dogs are potentially dangerous – their threat neither far beneath the surface, nor restricted to self-defence.
One childhood pet displayed the canine potential for pack excitation, potentially deadly like rioting mobs. That came to mind recently when several dogs savaged an Edmonton woman.
Perky, a wirehaired fox terrier, arrived on the scene when I was around four. He would take on any dog without regard to size or breed, frequently returning home torn and bloody. Like the famed Scots privateer Sir Andrew Barton, he’d lay down and bleed awhile, then rise and fight again. Perky’s combative instinct came to the fore once when we took him to the Calgary Zoo, off leash – allowed in those days. Seeing an ostrich, he immediately leapt the six- or seven-foot fence into the enclosure – a Glenbow Museum photograph taken a few years later verifies my memory of the height. Perky positioned himself directly in front of the big bird, barking. I saw the ostrich measuring the distance and limbering one huge leg for a kick, which likely would have put Perky through the goal posts of life and into the adjacent Bow River. My father outside the fence was screaming at the dog to return. Luckily, our pooch realized he was outmatched and jumped back to safety.
Some years after the ostrich encounter there was a less benign incident. I was half a block from my home, in the backyard of a friend’s place, yakking with a few other boys. Suddenly a kitten streaked into the yard with four or five barking dogs in close pursuit. I managed to grab the terrified little cat as it raced about, surrounded, and held it up away from the dogs. One sprang up and knocked the kitten from my up-stretched hand. I do not recall my Perky as being the dog who got the kitten from me, but as his fence leaping with the ostrich demonstrates, he could have done. And he was in the chase, and the frenzy, which quickly tore the poor creature to shreds.
A fox hunt depends on the dogs’ pursuit mentality, and the gory end on their killing fever. We have no fox hunts, and these days around here are less used to roving groups of dogs, but those do happen.
A more common problem is sudden, seemingly unprovoked and inexplicable attacks by single dogs. That happened many years later with my other childhood dog. Often these attacks leave owners bewildered – sometimes themselves the victim, sometimes having family or friends attacked.
An affection for dogs should never blind owners to their animals’ primal instincts, which can erupt devastatingly, without provocation.
Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.
