Writes David Sedaris, in "And Your Little Dog, Too/Two small dogs, both unleashed, rushed toward me, snarling, and one of them bit me on my left leg, just below the knee. It all happened within a second" (The New Yorker).
A few days after I was bitten in Portland, I wrote a short essay about the experience, which I read at a show in Anchorage, Alaska. The audience reacted much the way people had at the Salem book signing. “Really?” I said. “I get nothing here?”
“Dogs are really good judges of character!” someone called out from the darkness.
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72 comments:
Tiny dogs can be real *ssholes.
Cairn terriers (like Toto) are bred to work at driving out small pests. David Sedaris is 5'5"... so am I.
"...I do the same thing now. Me, a former drunk and meth addict who could very well have rabies. The only symptom I’ve noticed so far is an almost blinding rage, but give it time. ♦...." Ahh.... this could signal the gestational phase of a new Republican, but I have my doubts.
Dogs are really good prejudice-amplifiers!
My dog (116 pound Pyrenees mix) hates little dogs. We've got two little dogs living upstairs. The dogs freak out whenever they meet.
One time one of the little dogs got free and ran up to my dog, yipping and yapping. My dog Blue is literally 10 times bigger. She put her paw on top of the little dog and squashed her a little bit. And then lets her go. And the little dog runs off. And the owner comes running up, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He's a good guy. And I'm just so amused.
If you have a big dog, you don't have to worry about yippie little dogs, or homeless people, or drug addicts. Big dog takes care of all that. Plus a dog gives you a lot of comedy material. "I got bit last week" is pretty lame.
And the pharmacist goes, "Did you get a tetanus shot?"
And I'm like, tetanus? Dogs have tetanus now? Don't you mean "rabies"?
I sympathize with Sedaris. As a child I was chased by a vicious monkey that the weird brothers down the street kept as a pet and I have held animus towards them ever since.
He suggests he might have rabies at the end of the article. But earlier he says the pharmacist suggested a tetanus shot.
Dogs don't carry tetanus. I doubt the pharmacist would suggest as much. I suspect the New Yorker fact checkers missed another one.
As a child I was chased by a vicious monkey
Monkeys and chimps can kill you.
Unless you have a big dog, in which case, monkeys and chimps are not a problem.
Sedaris should shepardize his case law.The holding in Gultch v. Gale is no longer good law.
The dog should be released for rehabilitation to bite another victim. Do dogs wield liberal license to entertain Diversity (i.e. color, class judgments)? Abortive ideation? There's a judge for that.
It’s a hard world out there for small creatures and the smaller they are the harder it is to survive. Attack first is a good doctrine for some. Dogs cats and babies generally like me. Primates and I remain wary adversaries and avoid each other.
AI thinks chimp might be a problem.
Amen.
"As a child I was chased by a vicious monkey"
I was attacked by a blue jay when I was around 4 years old, pecked in the head. She was protecting her chicks.
"At twenty-one, I was seriously addicted to meth. Yet I managed to quit—not through the strength of my character but because my dealer moved to Florida and there was no one in Raleigh, North Carolina, to take her place."
That would be 1977, way ahead of the curve. So cutting edge.
"Interesting, to me, was the word “destroyed.” That was what you did to a dog that hurt people.... One little shot and it would all be over, I’d think, looking sideways at our live-in grandmother, who hadn’t purchased one of my ten-cent “Wizard of Oz” tickets but was occupying a front-row seat,..."
Well there's the content of his character coming out at last. Sadistic is the word that comes to mind.
There is a tiny dog in our neighborhood who gets walked at about the same time that I take my walk. That dog yips and yips at me and jumps and snarls and strains at its leash until it is lifted up off the ground, even when I am on the other side of the street. I intensely dislike that little dog.
And I don't think dogs are necessarily good judges of character. Some dogs are just assholes.
Being social animals like humans but nonverbal, dogs are good at sensing body language. So it isn't so much that they are good judges of character but good at judging human reactions. And they have no filter unless extremely well trained which few non-working dogs are
When the subject of annoying little dogs comes up, it amuses me to tell people that my grandmother was a Pomeranian.
I recognize that dogs are an important source of companionship. However, I resent encountering them at sit-down restaurants, on planes, workplaces, and social events where they are not the host’s pet.
I need to hear the dog's side of the story, and I bet it's quite different.
If you have a big dog, you don't have to worry about yippie little dogs
I beg to differ. If you have a big dog, you constantly have to worry about vicious little off-leash dogs whose owners will insist that anything that happens to the little dog is the big dog's fault.
So actually, I guess what you have to worry about is the owners, not the little dogs so much.
Other people's dogs are like other people's dreams, annoying and best left at home.
Small dogs are both blessed and cursed by their size.
Until very recently, the consensus believed all dogs were a subspecies of Canis lupus, the Eurasian gray wolf. However, new studies indicate a second origin, either in Europe or Asia, from another, as yet undetermined, Canis species, possibly extinct, but not the grey wolf. Be that as it may, all dogs are descended from pack-hunting canids, and have inherited the instinctive drives and imperatives of the wolf pack redirected to include humans. (Before proceeding, the alpha/beta dynamic that everyone is dangerously familiar with is bunk, so put that aside. Thank you.)
One element of extended family living is dealing with kids not your own. Human children are very quick to wickedly exploit the protective reaction of their natural parents, against a cousin or a neighbor. Once they understand Daddy will punch the lights out of anyone who dares to correct them, then it's Katie bar the door. Many a hippie commune dissolved over conflicts arising from Phoebe's multi-fathered brats tormenting "uncle" Steve. Wolves, however, solved this problem before they were even wolves. The key is physical size. Among canids, there isn't much difference in adult size. Males will be larger than females by about 20 percent, but they won't vary in height and weight amongst themselves by more than 5 percent, 10 at the outside. Consequently, the smallest pack members, those that are about half the size of the adult bitches, are cubs. There are imperatives that benefit the cubs. Everyone in the pack protects them. All lactating females will nurse the cubs regardless of parentage. (The story of Romulus and Remus derives from that fact.) Males will regurgitate food for any cub regardless of parentage. The cubs can roughly play with any adult pack member without fear, but that tolerance stops when cubs become juveniles. Liberties than were once gently accepted by the adult wolves are greeted with snarls and painful nips once the cubs have gained more than about 40 percent of their adult weight. Thus order prevails and the pack endures.
The problem for dogs is human interference in their breeding patterns. For many reasons -- some sound, other ludicrous -- humans have enforced selective pressures on dogs to produce numerous strains that vary in adult size to an extreme degree, from substantially larger than an adult wolf to as small as a neonate wolf cub. Anyone familiar with dogs can recall a comical example of a toy dog dominating a big dog. They can do that because their size triggers the behaviors and inhibitions dogs have retained from their ancestors. The big dog is restrained by the protect the cubs imperative. The little dog is rewarded by the big dog's inhibitions and remembers. Adding to the little dog's advantage is their sexual pheromones which further confuse and intimidate the big dog. It looks like a cub and smells like an adult? WTF!!!
Since dogs regard familiar humans as pack members, the little dogs often try their size advantage on us. Consequently, you're far more likely to be bitten by a chihuahua than an Irish wolfhound.
A 1st cousin of my wife was a devoted cat person and whenever she walked into our house our dog would snarl, and growl, and have nothing to do with her. Very perceptive.
Since dogs can detect things like seizures about to happen, I rekon they do have a sixth sense.
Another pretty good SNL sketch last night was a lost Wizard of Oz scene, with Bowen Yang as Oz, Living Treasure Sarah Sherman as Dorothy, and Kenan Thompson as the Cowardly Lion, who wants, not courage, but a "big ol' thang." And a live dog as Toto. Not political, just silly. CC, JSM
Kristi Noem would have stood up and cheered.
Since dogs can detect things like seizures about to happen, I reckon they do have a sixth sense.
The problem with anecdotal claims is that claimants tend to ignore that which does not fit the desired conclusion. What if the person who is about to experience an epileptic seizure displays subtle behavior changes the nearby canine can observe and react to? What if there's an olfactory element? What if the epiplectic gives off a telltale odor we can't smell, but dogs can. Althouse has spoken about her anosmia on many occasions, but compared to canines, Homo sapiens is virtually anosmic as a species. By dog standards, none of us can smell shit. So there's no need to postulate a sixth sense in dogs. The other five could account for everything, assuming there's anything in the first place.
So it isn't so much that they are good judges of character but good at judging human reactions.
I was thinking the same thing. Gavin de Becker talks about this in "The Gift of Fear".
Small dogs are vicious things. They bite far more frequently than big dogs. They bite people and especially other dogs. Frenchies are the worst but they are all rotten.
I had to boot one of those small yappy dogs when I was 16 and it attacked my legs.
Cat will usually make short work of a yippy little dog that too aggressive. I was only bitten once by a dog, it was dachhound owned by my childhood friend. That dog had it in for me. It was personal. "He's usually so friendly" was the explaination.
@Douglas B. Levene. There's a reason for that. See my 9:37.
"Cat will usually make short work of a yippy little dog that too aggressive."
Dogs are effete urbane sophistocates. Cats are stone age headhunters who wear bones through their noses. It's Eustace Tilley vs. Conan the Barbarian when we're discussing feline vs. canine ethics.
Really. Consider the only social wild cat species in comparison to wolves. A male lion will kill and devour cubs not his own whenever the opportunity arises. This sort of my genes or no genes savagery doesn't happen among wolves.
David is a very witty and funny writer, but he is mentally ill and has done very nasty things to people -- especially to his family. I don't wish a REAL dog bite (pit bull, et cetera) on anyone except leftists protesting that cross the line, but a few nips through a pants leg might be in line.
I was in the USPS for 15 years, 14 in management. But I carried mail for just six months. We carried pepper spray. One afternoon I was making my way up a walk to the mailbox affixed to the house when a barking dog, mid-sized came barreling at me out of nowhere (There was no fence I had entered nor a "Beware of Dog" sign). The Lone Ranger would have been proud of me for my quick draw. I got the bastard in the face and it stopped him cold dead in his tracks. He stopped barking, shook his head and ran away.
From that point on, as I took my six-day-a-week practice runs in preparation for my first marathon, I always carried one of those with me. They also work on nasty humans. Ask me how I know. (I have already related the story of how the FWB's BF at the time tried to sucker punch me. It did not work out well for him)
You humans.
https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/98a58bf8-7cda-43c7-a4b2-9dd432d1d927
I, too, believe that dogs can judge a person as to whether he is a good man or a bad man. I believe that because almost all dogs I have ever come across have liked ME.
Muhammad was a cat person.
You could get tetanus from a dog bite, depending on what the dog had in his mouth and on his teeth at the time. But rabies is much more likely if you get a serious illness (or death) from a dog bite. And what if the dog not only had Clostridium tetani bacteria on his teeth, but he had some metal dental implants that wound up getting rusty and .... never mind.
James Blonde, The Man from T.A.N.T.E., was only allowed to carry "a stick with a rusty nail in it" due to his overprotective mother. Funny record album.
Out here in Wyoming Valley, south of Spring Green, when I was eight we had a deep snow winter and 10 or so of the local farm dogs formed a pack. My parents and grandparents talked a lot about this pack and various sightings of it. The pack chased down deer and also engaged in farmyard depradations. One exciting afternoon, my Mom shouted from the kitchen, "It's across on the hill!" So we gathered into the kitchen and could see this pack criss-crossing the hill across the way after a poor deer, which they took down in front of our eyes. Very exciting.
Once I was in a store and a woman near me had a little dog on a leash. Suddenly, the dog jumped out to bite my leg. Luckily, the dog only got a chunk of my pants leg instead of my actual leg. I don't know what the dog was thinking, but I do know that some dogs simply don't have the ability to be in public without panicking like that and attacking someone.
Kick first and ask questions later. Connecting hard with a mean little yapper is a good feeling. Anyone who says it's not is lying. And who knows how long it will be before you get another chance like that?
Be polite, be friendly, but have a plan to kick every little dog you meet.
I saw a cartoon that had Dorothy and Toto. Dorothy says, "I miss Kansas." and Toto says, "I miss the rains down in Africa."
When you're Petty, you're a real Heartbreaker.
The intra-dog hostility is interesting: My dog is the good kind.
And by "my," I mean you. I have never had a dog. I've seriously considered getting a dog, but I've always come out on the no dog side, so I never need to be the one asserting that my dog is the good kind.
I was walking my sweet, affectionate black lab when a frenchie tore loose from his walker, ran across the street and tried to bite my dog. I kicked the frenchie once, and he came back for another attempted bite, so I kicked him again. You are right, it felt great.
"Once I was in a store and a woman near me had a little dog on a leash. Suddenly, the dog jumped out to bite my leg."
A revolutionary counter-strike against your racist white male colonialist privilege, obviously, all the more effective for being launched where the stolen output of proletarian slave labor is bartered by capitalist exploiters to other capitalist exploiters in exchange for tokens of surplus value.
You have to identify the threat and neutralize it. A preemptive swift kick or a knee strike usually suffice.
"I was walking my sweet, affectionate black lab when a frenchie tore loose from his walker, ran across the street, and tried to bite my dog."
I had an almost identical experience, except the attack came from two Jack Russell terriers against my noble Scottish deerhound. My hound dealt with those miscreants quite handily. Seizing each one in turn by the scuff of the neck, he flung them back across the street to land on the opposite curb and flee in terror and humiliation. A canine able to run down and throttle a highland red deer is not to be trifled with.
"The intra-dog hostility is interesting: My dog is the good kind."
Good, schmud. It's uppity lowborn rabble versus the landed gentry.
Prof: "I have never had a dog."
But you have hung out with borrowed dogs such as the late Zeus.
Were any of them the setup for the Clouseau joke ("Does your dog bite?")? CC, JSM
I was able to read the essay with removepaywall dot com option 3
Did Althouse ever own a pet of any sort? I wonder...
Even some fish can form interesting and complex relationships with humans, particularly Astronotus ocellatus aka oscar. Unlike most aquarium fish, oscars are interested in the world on the other side of the glass.
Received ideas
“Dogs are really good judges of character!”
Bullshit. They always like me.
Ann Althouse said...
The intra-dog hostility is interesting: My dog is the good kind.
My wife and I freely admit that our usually sweet male goldendoodle rescue has not lost much of his street rat puppyhood, complete with being a pit bull baby daddy. He talks so much s#it to dogs that could eat him for lunch that my wife nicknamed him 'Eight Mile'.
"Did Althouse ever own a pet of any sort? I wonder..." You mean other than Meade?
My only serious dogbite came one Wednesday afternoon about 3/4 of the way through my weekly shoppers' news delivery route.
We had to place our papers on the front porch of every house, and I had just thrown one when a medium sized spaniel dog came running over, and damn if it didn't bite me on the back of my right knee as I walked away.
I was wearing shorts, and was bleeding somewhat, and after I finished my route and walked home I ended up at emergency room with a bandage I wore for several days.
Had to go back with my mother to the scene of the crime and confirm that the bitch was vaxxed. The owners weren't all that sorry--of course back then almost everyone's dogs ran free, and the owners had not asked me to place a free paper on their porch.
"He was a good boy. He did nothin' wrong. The bitch led him on"
A dog owner in denial.
I was never bitten but twice nipped by a dog who has a habit if closing his eyes when he goes berserk and sets his mouth on Automated Intention (AI).
Althouse was once a rat enthusiast. She may still be. But there is a detectable I can signal.
Twice in the last month, I was charged by very aggressive dogs while walking in my neighborhood. They were both medium-sized, and I think the second one was a Pitt bull. The first charged at me three times, coming within a few feet of me. The second one charged at me twice. I stood my ground and they backed off eventually. It was scary. I now walk with a hammer and tear gas sprayer. I’ve asked for bear spray for Christmas and I’m considering getting a pistol. Those dogs were big and aggressive enough to be deadly. If they do attack me, I intend to kill them. Generally, I like dogs, but I’m not going to put up with this shit.
The intra-dog hostility is interesting: My dog is the good kind.
Two dogs meeting is kind of like two hillbillies running into each other on Althouse.
"I love you, you're great."
You never know what reactions are going to pop up.
"You can just keel over and die."
And you got to be careful tossing red meat to them.
I have a male Weimaraner and he was attacked twice by pit mixes, while we were walking. He was on leash, the others weren't. My husband beat them off with a stick but our boy had stitches on his face and neck. He is now terrified of any strange dog. We also have a beagle puppy and if a strange dog comes near us, our weim goes crazy to protect the puppy. We have to plan our route on walks so our dogs will be safe.
However, I resent encountering them at sit-down restaurants, on planes, workplaces, and social events where they are not the host’s pet.
Or at a grocery store. In a baby carriage.
The dog was a good judge of character. Being a dog, it was well aquainted with the quality of dogshit.
Since that's all the ever comes out out of the New Yorker, it would seem the dog acted appropriately.
I was struck by Sedaris's description of what and he regularly encounters on his yearly walks in downtown Portland, Oregon upon his yearly visits. Notable, also, was his observation that he noticed a definite before and after 2020, when tent laws stopped being enforced as well as the definite before and after the drug prosecutions were not enforced.
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