The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Day-Time

BTW, that was a good book. But this is a different kind of story, not involving a kid with autism. Just a friendly dog minding his own business at the dog park.

A few weeks ago the Culver City Dog Park opened, and we decided to take Jake. For those of you who don't know him, he is a Snoopy-looking little guy (English pointer mix) who weighs 48 pounds. Sometimes he thinks he's big & tough and he growls, but he's exactly like the guy in Office Space who listens to rap music but then gets scared when he sees real black people. Oh yeah, that's Jake. He's all growl but push comes to shove, he hightails it for Mommy's lap.

Anyway, so we took him to the park the first day it opened. He's been to 3 other dog parks dozens of times and never had a single incident. Here, within minutes this mean looking dog name Shiloh came over and growled at him. She was a reddish brown Chow/shephard/?? mix. Jake moved away and gave her this look like "ok, lady, I'll give you your space. i'll just go over HERE and you go over THERE and that's fine". Then he & I went to get a drink at the water fountain. She followed us over to the fountain, put her face right by his in the water bowl and growled again. This time, he growled back like "hey, leave me alone, I was here first!". Then we left and walked over to a bench.

I sat down on one bench, Ryan was on the other one next to me and Jake was over sitting next to Ryan, getting petted. Not doing a THING wrong. Out of nowhere, Shiloh went under the bench where I was sitting and crouched, then SPRANG in the air, landing on top of Jake, and just started biting him! :( Jake was crying and whimpering and people came running over to pull her off. Jake was covered in mud and shaking. Shiloh's owner came and took her and shouted "bad dog" to her. Jake tried to get in my lap for protection. We immediately took him out of the park and back to the car, then upstairs for a bath.

Ryan had a lunch appointment he was late for so he took off. We thought at this point that Jake was just dirty and shaken up. BUT, when I gave him his bath I discovered a deep bleeding puncture wound. I finished the bath, dried him off and had to rush him over to his vet. (Not that easy to do when 8 months pregnant by myself!) It turns out the other dog had bitten right into his muscle! :( He needed to have part of his back shaved around the wound, to get an antibiotic shot, and to take antibiotics pills and acidophilus. I also had to pour this stuff "Flush" on it 3 times a day. Total vet bill $140. We would like to find Shiloh's owner and have him pay, but don't even know if he'll realize the damage his dog did since we were so freaked out and left so fast that we didn't exchange info.

The good news is that we have been back to that park about 5 times since then and Jake is completely over it. He has a great time playing with all of the nice dogs, and we have not seen Shiloh ever again. Jake's patch of shaved fur is growing back nicely.