Wednesday, 23 November 2005

much worse than his bark


The weekend of the wedding, we left Jasper in the very capable hands of our lovely neighbours, who look after their son's black Labrador during the week and treat Jasper like their own. When we returned, our neighbour apologised profusely and showed us the huge, ugly, open gash in Jasper's ear he received from another dog that morning. Jasper had been attacked by a poodle (don't laugh - standard poodles are huge and were originally bred for being guard dogs), totally unprovoked. The idiot woman who owns the poodle didn't seem too bothered about it, claiming "that's what dogs do". Apparently she has owned "hundreds" of dogs, so obviously she knows what she's talking about. She even had the gall to try to make out that Jasper had a go at her dog first, which is laughable considering the fact that he's so docile that even Jack makes him run away at times. At the time of the attack, she didn't even offer to leave us her details so we could get in touch; it was just luck that our neighbour knew who she was and where she lived as most of the dog walkers around here know each other. She gave us the money to cover the excess on our pet insurance for Jasper's treatment and Paul reported the incident to the dog warden. Hopefully there won't be another incident but if there is, at least there's a record of this one.

What really pisses me off is the fact that she is taking no responsibility for her dog's behaviour. Will it take another attack, perhaps on a child, to get her attention? "Bad" dogs are the result of poor or no training, and the treatment they receive from their owners. It's not the dog's fault that he's owned by an idiot, but if he were to bite a human, he could be put to sleep. What should happen after an incident like this is the idiot woman should be forced to take herself and her dog to obedience school, and she should be fined to deter her from lazy dog ownership in the future.

Thankfully, Jasper's five stitches came out today and he's healing up nicely. Very luckily, he doesn't seem to be nervous around other dogs and hasn't been acting differently from his usual big soppy fuzzy puppy self. Think I'll go over there and bite her myself, the cow.

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