The BBC has published a namby-pamby article about what to do if a dog attacks you. They suggest that you put your hands in your pockets and turn away. I prefer the advice Richard Ballantine gave in his excellent Richard’s Bicycle Book. He points out that humans are bigger than dogs and thus should be able to win any fight. With big dogs he suggests that you stick your fist down their throat so that they choke. With a whole arm in their mouth they won’t have enough leverage to do much damage. With smaller dogs he says you can quite easily break their sternum by pulling their front legs sharply apart, or with tiny dogs you could wave your bicycle pump around until they grab hold of it with their teeth and then dash their brains out on the pavement.
If you’re a dog lover and are tempted to comment I’d point out that I’m talking here about self-defence against attacking dogs. My youngest daughter has been literally terrified three times in the last two weeks by nasty yappy dogs that jumped up in her face in places where they should have been kept on a lead, in every case the owners acted as though it was her fault and didn’t apologise. Saying that it’s the owners and not the dogs that are to blame is like saying it’s not guns that kill people, but people. In other words, of course a dog can be safely and responsibly owned, it’s just that they frequently aren’t.
I don’t think that dog ownership is sufficiently well regulated and until any dog (or its revolting by-products) can be easily and definitely traced to a specific owner I don’t think that they should be allowed to roam freely in our cities.
I got knocked off my bike by a rampaging dog in the park just before Christmas. The owners shouted a half arsed “sorry mate” from about a mile away, called their dog back then wandered off while I lay onn the ground rubbing my knee and collecting the pieces of my shattered front light.
Initially I was furious and a month later I still am. If I let my 2 year old child run out in front of them on their bike they’d say I was an irresponsible parent. Let’s have leads surgically connected to all dogs necks and owners hands then accidents wouldn’t happen and the dogs would have to crap right under their owners shoes
sticking arm down throat leaves open the possibility that the dogs teeth will rip open some nasty veins. No way would i be doing that.
If you’re being attacked by a large dog, the best option in my view is to go for its eyes. Pop your thumb into its eyesocket. Game over. If its a pit-bull, you may need to do both eyes.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ve had big dogs turn their tails and run like scared wimps, when they’ve barked at me, and i have shouted at them at the absolute top of my lungs. You have to really put an intensity of sheer rage into your voice, and look straight into the dogs eyes and advance on it shouting stuff like “yeah cmon motherfucker i’ll fuckin rip your fucking head off”. That can scare the living shit out of them, because the only person who ever has the balls to do that to them, is their owner…