Gone to the Dogs

[heirloomgal]

OH MY! Horrible! Makes me feel nausea and anger at the same time.

My nervous system is still vibrating all wrong from that.

 

[Marie2020]

DD & I walked the dog together this afternoon. We were going down the street in the direction of the sun, and I could see someone else coming up the street toward us with a large dog on a leash. So we moved far to the right to give them room and I caught a glimpse of their silhouette, (I was blinded by the sun a bit), and thought wow the dog looks like a senior. My dog started to act up, which was very odd. He's trained. He knows not to bark unless someone is right up on us, and we had actually been charged by a little dog not long before that, and he never even paid attention to him.

My dog seemed seriously freaked out about this approaching dog. I was astonished when they got closer as I had seen them before several times, a man with a very well behaved Doberman, truly superb obedience, an athlete. She seemed young to me. My dog was getting more riled as they got closer and he really wanted to let loose a full throttle intimidation routine on her, so DD and I ducked behind a building to build some distance and block his view. We were utterly bewildered as this is so out of character for him. When we came out on the other end the man had walked past the building and I noticed the dog was now standing still. He was petting her in a way that made me feel deeply uncomfortable. It all seemed to happen so fast that I couldn't process it, and we had to keep our own dog moving forward because he was so agitated. He never made a peep, because my daughters timing for corrections on a flat buckle collar is excellent, but it was darn close.

The distance between us was building and I looked back again and now the dog was laying in the snow, the way a dog would do in a dog bed. A terrible feeling came over me. We circled the small block and when we got to the car I drove straight away to where the man was. I don't know what I thought I could do, I don't have a cell and I couldn't get his dog in my car since my own dog seemed so cross toward her. But I went anyway feeling urgency. When we pulled up I saw that another man had come already. The back hatch was open and it looked like they had laid her body in there. I saw them close the hatch and they both stood there, the owner started to dial the phone. I honestly felt gutted by the whole thing. When I saw her laying in the snow my inner alarms all started yelling. I can only guess that my dog was well aware of what was about to happen. I've read about how dogs will register another dog with illness as a threat, but never seen it in action. Terrible experience!

What on earth happened
Was the dog really ill?

I found this story very strange. Was that man who your dog was aware of?

 

[digitS']

I think that beyond a bit of nausea of another animal,

dogs have trouble understanding illness. The reaction, especially of a young adult dog, may be fear and of "get away from me!"

Quickly, that may evolve to one of aggression.

 

[flowerbug]

rambly morning post, i'm not going to redo/rewrite it, good luck, you've been warned...

i really can't tell from the description what went on. perhaps the dog was ill or had a stroke or the man did something to the dog while they were out walking because he knew the dog was on it's last legs and didn't want it to suffer, but i really have no idea from the written description of what happened other than the one dog was being walked by the owner and another dog was upset that normally doesn't react, but you really don't know. i've seen dogs go off and been in the middle of them and gladly was able to shut them up and get them under control before they attacked each other (the same two dogs did later go off on each other again and my sister did try to get in the middle of it and she did get bitten and ended up putting one of the dogs down - the dogs were siblings who had been together their whole lives and had lived with my sister that whole time). since i cannot know exactly what happened i would put this down to "stuff happens and at times we don't know what it is"... if you need a more scientific answer you can look up chaos theory, quantum physics theory, random events and coincidences. stuff can happen and it has to happen to someone, so why not you? a simple philosophy in the end but it keeps me from stumbling about in the fringes or weeds and muttering to myself (which i do not do as i don't like noise - mom does talk to herself and i do have a negative response to it when she does but i also have to tell myself that that isn't going to change so i just suck it up buttercup and get on with life, etc. etc. etc. it's morning... i'm going back to sleep... zzzz....).