Almost a Really Bad Day, Dog!

We went to a park today to let the Zoo run around with the Zoo from another friend-family we know. This park is actually pretty big and a (now dry) creek runs through the middle. We had crossed the creek and I eventually went back to Bad Robot to change the soaked diaper on #4. I jogged with him across the field until we got to the creek, and he loved it because he was bouncing and going fast. I jogged back across the same field on the way back, and he loved it again. There is a dog park associated with the people park, and sumdood had his dogs off-leash where we were jogging through the field. One of them thought I was suspicious but kept his distance as I ran up. Then all of a sudden I was running away, and looked tasty. He gave chase, and his little doggy buddy saw this and ran up also. Barking.

This, while I'm loping with a 1 year-old in arms. Spidey senses on full alert, I kept jogging. Sumdood's dogs are badly enough trained they wouldn't come on command, but kept chasing me instead. One of them, some sort of knee-high Terrier thing, decided to get close enough for tasting.

Hold on there.

You see, I have a special creed when it comes to dogs: If I'm close enough to taste, you are close enough to kick the shit out of.

But his heart wasn't really in it. One glimpse of my double-wide coming right at his snout and he stopped short. My lightning-fast reflex speed kicked in and I stopped short also. No kicking of dog head this afternoon, which was VERY fortunate for the brave hunter chasing me. I was still in my grubbies from work, to include heavy steel-toed boots. That dog would have been well and truly in the hurt locker when the kick landed, and then (as I was observing rule 2) if necessary it would have been stabbed/slashed as required by the little stinger that lives in my pocket. But hey, no harm no foul, and the little dog pack kept its distance until they lost interest in chasing the mailman.

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Which of course reminds me of this one time in Spain when I was out for a walk with my Darling Wife. The sidewalk was nice and broad, a couple of meters wide, opening up to maybe 10 meters. It was a pavilion almost. Some Spani was out walking his dog, also a rat terrier thing, also off-leash. Whatever, it was a nice day, let the man walk his dog right? Except that his dog got one look at me and it was instant hatred. It ran up on me from like 30 feet away and grabbed the bottom of my pants (about the height of its whithers). I punted that little basterd right across the sidewalk and we kept walking on our merry way. The dog decided I was no longer tasty-looking. Later, my Darling told me that the Spanish dude thought the whole thing was pretty funny, right up until I kicked his dog. Haha.