Let me set the scene. There I was, sitting on a curb minding my own business when I hear the sound of dog tags jangling in the distance. Curious, I looked to see an adorable long-haired chihuahua heading right for me. His owner was walking him on a flexi retractable leash. The length of the leash was locked at about 6ft. This little dog, who couldn’t have been more than 5-lbs, was pulling his owner like a freight train down the street!

Seeing the dog approach I turned away assuming the owner would see me and reel the dog in a bit to avoid me. That would have been the polite thing to do anyway. It wasn’t like I was oohing and aahing over the little bugger. Nor did I ask the woman to see her dog. Instead she calls out to me, or the dog (I’m not sure which one), “say hi!”. Turning to see what she was talking about, I created an opening for the little dog to climb on my lap. And so he did…

…So there the little Chihuahua and I were, trapped in each others’ personal space. Not knowing a thing about the other. After working with bitters for a while I quickly learned not to put a body part or my face near the mouth of just any dog that crosses my path. I am constantly watching a dog’s body postures. Unless the dog is real loosey goosey, where its whole body is in a continuous relaxed wag no matter what I do, I don’t touch them and stay far enough away that he/she can’t reach me if they suddenly change their mind. So many times I’ve seen a dog come up to take a cookie, realize they are too close and don’t like the person, and then bite. Unfortunately, this is basically what happened to me.

Since I had no warning the owner was going to let the dog on my lap, I sat there helplessly as this perfect stranger realized that I was too close and launched his tiny Chihuahua mouth at my nose! He then followed the bite up with a growl to which the owner FINALLY reacted to, pulled the dog off (since I was basically a sitting target). Casually she said, “sorry” and walked away as if nothing happened. This woman had no concern about my face, the behavior of her dog, or my emotional well being after being attacked!

It all happened soo fast I didn’t have time to prevent the attack! Thank goodness the bite was inhibited and left no mark or bruising. I’m assuming the woman knew her dog is a face biter since she wasn’t surprised nor horrified that her dog just bit an innocent stranger in the face! Knowing this you’d think she would have kept her dog away. Who knows what she was thinking! Maybe she thought that her dog wouldn’t bite this time. I mean really, does that make any sense at all? Your dog reliably bites faces when they get “too close”, you do no training to fix the problem, and you expect the dog to react differently the next time an unknowing person’s face gets close!

Reflecting on what happened, there were a number of red warning flags. The biggest warning was the fact that the dog was not relaxed at all. He was dragging his owner down the street, choking himself the entire time. Pulling, choking, along with walking in the searing hot summer heat probably made him pretty agitated as well. Finally, the dog had no connection with people. He was as far away from his owner as possible. Plus, I truly believe he had no idea he was walking on to a person’s lap. I think I was in his path and, to him, another bump in the road. When his path was blocked, it was like he suddenly realized he was in a person’s lap. I have no idea of his behavior history. I do know that somewhere along the line, he learned a bad association with people and, in response, learned biting causes the fear eliciting stimulus to go away.

How or why the Chihuahua developed this problem doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that size doesn’t matter. So many times people, myself included until now, become mesmerized by the cute factor and/or size of a dog, and end up treating them differently than they would a bigger, more intimidating dog. Thinking back, I wouldn’t have continued to sit on the curb if an out of control Rottweiler was coming up the street at me instead of a Chihuahua. The truth is that little dogs are still dogs. They are wired the same and make the same positive and negative associations with their environment like larger dogs. They can also do just as much damage as a larger dog. From now on, no matter the size of the unknown dog, I’ll assume the dog is potentially dangerous and proceed with caution.