Guest Column

Early morning peace often torn asunder by unleashed dogs

By W.F. VASSAR

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 26, 2000

Re: Loose dogs unleash residents' complaints, story, May 14.

It's 5 a.m. Out for a predawn nexus with nature, I am jarred from the lilting symphony of cardinals and mockingbirds by shadowy figures threatening to slash me to ribbons. Are these neighborhood punks out to bully me? Robbers out to mug me? Gang members angry that I have invaded their territory?

No, I live in a sleepy, middle-class neighborhood of mostly retirees in peaceful Clearwater. If there are any bullies, robbers or gang members living here, they are likely to be sleeping at 5 a.m. If I pass someone, chances are he is trying to walk off a triple bypass.

Who, then? Or what? A deep growl leaves little doubt. A dog. A dog with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth that flash like lightning. Yet it seems like more than one dog, as he shifts now this way, now that, as if testing my defenses, growling menacingly.

What to do? I am especially helpless. I need a crutch to maintain my balance, so I have only one hand free. To compensate, I usually walk in the middle of the street, from which vantage point I minimize ambush. Usually, too, I carry a dog-repellent spray, but today I forgot to arm myself.

I look frantically about for help as I edge toward a parked car, hoping to shelter my back, and all the while trying to baby-talk the dog into peaceful coexistence. It is a Lord Chamberlain strategy with similar results. Leaning on the car for support, I prepare to go down fighting.

The confrontation, as it turns out, occurs between me and the owner, who was lurking in the shadows of a huge live oak on an expansive lawn. He grudgingly calls his dog off after I yell at him. Like a boy made to abandon a banana split, Ripper relents.

I remind the owner of Clearwater's leash laws and of reported instances of dogs tearing people to shreds. Incredibly, the man begins to cite the high crime rate. "Good people," he snarls more wickedly than his junkyard dog, "need a mean dog for protection. Besides, his bark's worse than his bite."

I have lived in Clearwater for 12 years, during which time I have taken early morning walks three or four times a week. In any given month, I can expect two encounters with loose dogs. Usually I see them in time to detour, but I have been attacked by one or more dogs more than a dozen times in my 10 years in Clearwater. The assault scenario is like the one just described, although usually the owner is nowhere to be seen.

No, I don't live in a dangerous neighborhood or city. But experience, whose bite is worse than its bark, has taught me that I have to act as if I do.

Had Ripper been a punk, he might have been guilty of criminal assault. Even the act of blocking someone's path while threatening bodily harm by word or look is in some states considered criminal assault. But what do you do when your assailant is not a gang armed to the teeth but a dog armed with teeth?

Sure, there are leash laws and laws that hold dog owners responsible, but legal recourse has many loopholes and in any case (ouch!) come after the bite. Ultimately, we are dependent on the decency of our neighbors and fellow citizens to restrain their dogs.

Many citizens recently have expressed indignation over rampant incivility -- particularly people using bad language in public. Myself, I'd rather endure a hail of the worst a shipload of old salts might utter than suffer the obscenely terroristic snarling and snapping of one dog, even a piranha-sized Chihuahua, whose owner politely wags, "Oh, don't mind Choo-Choo. His bark's worse than... "

Oh, but I do, and so should you.

-- W.F. Vassar is a retired firefighter who has lived in Clearwater for 12 years.

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