Friday, July 13, 2007

Alley Dogs

The dog and I faced each other in the dust like two gunfighters at high noon, the dog barking and lunging so hard he flipped around backward every time the leash ran out.  Something was not right with this animal, chained right in the alley in full hot sun.  I had been jogging and picking up litter when this mix of rotweiller, chow and pit bull lit up like a hand grenade.

In our inner city neighborhood a big dog loose in the backyard is the poor man’s home security system: a substitute for functional neighbors, cheaper than ADT and ten times as effective.  Except that unattended alley dogs are like unattended land mines.  So I backtracked to approach the house frontwise and talk to the owner.  But as I came to the cluttered porch I heard the chain rattle, claws skitching and bam the dog hit my leg, his teeth were in deep and oh my God I’ve been bit.  I left a panicky trail of blood puddles up the street into my kitchen, lashed duct tape over napkins on my leg and drove to the ER with my left foot.

In the days that followed I went on a one-man middle-class post-traumatic stress crusade for justice.  Trouble was, I don’t live in a middle class neighborhood.  The dog belonged to an unemployed single mother who was never home.  Her kid with the phlegmy cough who answered the door said, “You the guy that Felony bit?” Felony?  The out of state landlord said, “She’s still there?  I evicted her last December. ” Within weeks the dog owner disappeared into the shadows of poverty, foreclosure and unaccountability.

Weeks passed.  I pulled my own stitches to save money but couldn’t seem to pull the image of that dog off my leg.  I was on high alert all the time, alarmed at the St. Bernard coming off one porch and the German Shepherd off his leash in the park.  Like Congress after 9/11, I saw only two options, fight back or get bit again.  I considered the advice of friends: carrying dog mace, a baseball bat, even a handgun.

Trouble was, that wasn’t me.  I run to let go of things, not clomp around like a combat infantryman.  Weapons might make me feel safer, but they wouldn’t make me happier, because the real damage was on the inside.  The dog had leveled my twin towers of self-confidence and naïveté, leaving only a question: who was I now, after this unprovoked attack?  A victim?  A warrior?  A pacifist?  A dog hater?

Having no answers, I just kept running.  Through fall leaves, winter snow then spring rains.  I stretched the leg out, worked the scar tissue.  Stayed out of alleys.  Dogs still barked, and some came at me so close I got dog slobber on my leg but I kept my eyes forward, as if I weren’t scared.  I talked with my neighbors about their dogs, supported a new county dog ordinance.  As if I weren’t a victim.

Then one day out running, I found myself wondering for the first time, what had happened to that dog, after animal control had eventually picked it up?  Was it put down?  Released?  I realized I had healed up.  Survived a pretty bad dog attack.  And I was still running, a little faster, a little wiser, a little tougher.  I felt oddly…grateful.

And just as that thought slid through my head, I felt those jaws slide off my leg.

Broadcast by Jeff Nixa on July 13, 2007
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