Perils on the New Route

This morning I was running on my new route (see Table Dancing post for details), and, ahead of me, I saw a guy come out of his house with his dogs. At the same time that I noticed them, they saw me and started running toward me.... 4 pitbulls coming at me! My adrenaline kicked in...heart started pounding. The owner was running after them, yelling like he thought they would tear me apart. They were a good distance away when they saw me, so I had time to prepare.

Pause for a moment. When I moved to Memphis several years ago, I started hearing about pitbull attacks in the more dangerous areas of the city. Since then, every time I see a dog running toward me, it's a pitbull until proven otherwise. I'm not sure why....I'm not afraid of dogs. I guess hearing about those attacks just made me paranoid. Once, when I was making a visit to a home health patient, a pitbull ran at me from behind a shrub as I was walking to the house. I turned and ran back to my car, went back to the office, and told the supervisor it was an unsafe environment because the patient had a pitbull loose in the yard. The supervisor called the patient to investigate....turns out it was actually a poodle, not a pitbull. The supervisor laughed her a$$ off at me, as did the patient when I went back to her house to make the visit. In my defense, it surprised me jumping from behind a bush like that!

Anyway, back to this morning. I slowed to a walk and had my hand on my oc spray...the super strong law enforcement stuff Jon gave me that's better than regular pepper spray. I made myself keep walking like I wasn't afraid...you don't ever want to run away from or show fear to an aggressive dog. They got closer and closer. Just as I was about to pull out the oc spray and let 'em have it, I noticed they weren't pitbulls after all. They were either some sort of Husky Mix or Australian Shepherd....they had those weird blue eyes. They were all wagging their tails and wanted to walk with me. The owner got so mad because they stayed with me and he had to chase them down.

Scary, huh?