Bitten.

Faithful Readers may remember the incident a few months ago, when the dog next door jumped Murphy. Since then the dog has been wandering loose a few times, and we've always given her a wide berth, without further incident. Occasionally she'd growl. Sometimes Murphy'd growl first. Other times they both were perfectly polite to each other. It was kind of comical, but I made damn sure to pick Murphy up if she wasn't on a leash.

This morning a little after 7 I took Murphy out for his morning constitutional, and the Dog was on her driveway, acting weird - kind of hunched over and wolf-ish, very odd. I hustled Murphy in the opposite direction and she didn't follow, and I thought, "Whew!" We returned from our walk and the Dog was on our driveway - with a turkey carcass she must have dug from somebody's trash. She looked wild-eyed, and I scooped Murphy up, walked around the far side of the driveway away from her, and headed for the front door. She started to approach us, so I called to the Dog by name, and told her to Go Home as I was walking away from her. Normally addressing a dog by name and giving her a firm command works, I've sent many wandering dogs Home that way, including this one.

This time she bared her teeth and snarled, and then attacked me, charging across the driveway at me, snarling and snapping. I ran for the house, with Murphy tucked under my arm like a football, and she bit the back of my calf as I ran. I was so scared and just so fucking angry that a dog bit me on my own front walk, right outside my own damn front door, I whirled around at her and screamed, You BAD DOG!!! You BAD DOG! GO HOME!!!" and kicked at her, and she backed off, and I got into the house without further incident. When I stopped shaking, I called the neighbor- I woke her up - and told her to get her dog, because she just bit me. I was calm and polite and didn't even call it her Fucking Psycho Dog. My neighbor was horrified and oh-so-apologetic, just like she was when this dog jumped Murphy.

Then I cleaned the bite - it's shallow - with antibacterial soap and hot water, treated it with antibiotic ointment and bandaged it. (One thing I really do know is wound care, I was actually specially trained to do it during my husband's illness, I'm better at it than most nurses, or so the nurses all told me.) It doesn't hurt, it's still oozing a bit - her teeth took a chunk slightly bigger than a nickel off the surface of my left calf, not deep, but oozy. It'll heal, and I know the dog has had her shots - her owners aren't totally irresponsible rednecks or anything, they take care of their animals, the Psycho Bitch has had her rabies shots, but she also has a personality defect and needs to be very closely supervised.

The animal control officer came this evening, took my report and talked to them - I said it was fine with me if they quarantine her at home, they don't have to take her away to quarantine her, we've lived next door for 8 years and I'm not trying to start a neighborhood feud, but dammit, they better keep that dog controlled from now on, because if I ever see her wandering loose again I will call and have her picked up. We have lots of little kids in this neighborhood, and who knows what will set her off next? I warned my friends up the street, whose little girls ride their bikes up and down our cul-de-sac every evening, and one of them said he'd had his own encounter with that dog, when she approached them somewhat aggressively - nothing happened, but he's a dog person too, and he knows a squirrelly dog when he sees one. She's not a large dog, but she's probably 30-40 lbs., and that's big enough to do serious damage to a five year old.

I'm not worried about rabies or anything, these people aren't white trash and they do take their animals to the vet, the dog is wearing tags, etc. She just has a screw loose, she's overly territorial and, in this case went insane over her treasured turkey carcass, which was 15 feet away and toward which I had no aspirations at all, I swear. Murphy didn't even know it was there, and it was bigger than he is, so he wasn't going to haul it away either - especially while tucked under my arm throughout the encounter.

Thank GOD I scooped him up first thing as we approached the house, when I saw her on our driveway and looking weird. If he'd been on the ground she'd have been on him and killed him before I could have intervened, or she'd have jumped at my face as I tried to save him and I would have been seriously bitten. Sometimes I think I'm too overprotective of him, but he IS so small and today was another one of those times where I'm glad I'm a bit nuts about my little dog.

So that was MY start to this fine day! Wasn't that special?

Girlchild went home today. I always have a sense of letdown when she goes home.

Everybody in my office - the handful at work this week, anyway - is sick. I was fine when I got there, by the end of the day I was sneezing with everybody else. Apparently this has an incubation period measured in nanoseconds. Boss has it, he came in briefly and went home sick, which he very rarely does. I started sneezing six hours later. Early to bed tonight. What a day!