Maybe there is better subreddit to crosspost this?
Last year there was one potentially dangerous dog situation.
I was taking a short walk in the forest with my pregnant! wife.
It is a rural and well known area to us, so we felt comfortable walking around. And we did not go far from the road.
After approx 1km walk, we saw two very large dogs, one white and other black (60-80kg I would say, standard size for large sheep dog types commonly used in our area) approx 100m ahead which started growling and approaching us (not running fortunately because they would catch us in 20 seconds). Running away with pregnant wife was out of the question, even for me alone it would be quite impossible to outrun the dog.
Only thing that occured to me in that particular moment was to walk into the woods and bushes in hope that they will consider us to be harmless and not follow. We turned around and walked normal pace into the woods. They did not follow. Possibly the bushes were deterent for such large dogs.
After that we continued parallel to the wood path in the direction of the road, white dog was nowhere to be seen, probably went back, but black one was trailing us on the path. Wife was in panic mode and being pregnant had increased the stress. I tried to remain calm, at least outwards.
Due to the foliage and bushes we have lost the sight of the dog and continued towards the road. Fortunately I had GPS application with local map so it was easy to navigate in the right direction.
BUT then... I saw the black dog coming in front-left side of us. He must have went around and tried to find easier path towards us and avoid the bushes. Dog was maybe 20m away. I turned my wife to the right without saying anything, it is very fortunate that she did not notice the dog otherwise maybe she would collapse and blackout from panic. She just kept asking "what now, what is happening, why are we going there now" and I told her that it is direction to the car, not mentioning the dog.
Then we continued trough the bushes towards the path, for the dog it was more difficult to follow, so we came to the path with dog far enough behind us. Then we ran last 100-200m to the car and jumped in the car just when the dog came out of the forest and into our sight.
I must point out that those dogs are there to handle wolves and can be extremely aggressive to anyone except their owner, so they are far from harmless.
Usually such dogs don't follow and attack people if you go away immediately when you notice them. Me and people I know had quite few meetings with the dogs. Normally they give up when they chase you away.
But this was unusual exception. The black one has followed us more than 1km and even made detour to approach us from the other side. It felt like dog was predator.
I have no idea what would the dog done if it caught us?
Final result were 2 pairs of torn sneakers and some scratches. Could it have been worse? Possibly.
Now much later, I am wondering what should I have done in this situation? Does someone have insight?
Was there better method to handle these dogs?
Hold our ground? Walk backwards while steadily looking at the dogs? Yelling at them? Lying on the ground or curl on the ground and waiting for them to leave? All of those options seemed dangerous to me at that moment, but maybe in fact they were not? Pregnant wife adds to the difficulty factor.
If the dogs really started the attack, what could I have done with my bare hands against 2x extra large dogs? There were rocks and sticks lying around, but I don't feel those would be of much help. Other than eye gouging nothing comes to mind.
Usually I carry bear spray whenever I go to nature, but in this instance walk was unplanned so it was left at home. But maybe it is better that I did not have it, instead of doing something stupid and provoking the dog(s) further.
Here is map showing the situation.
Red line are us going back, blue line presumed dog route.
C is car location. 2D where we met those dogs and 1D where black has intercepted us.
Submitted December 04, 2018 at 06:03AM by rockyzg https://ift.tt/2Snm8nE
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