I was walking Boomer around the block when it happened. As we passed one house, I heard some barking and shouting. When I looked over, I saw 2 dogs running toward us. They were followed by their owner who was frantically trying to call them back. One of the dogs was a big German-shepherdy thing and the other was a midsized beagle-like thing. There was no way that I could outrun 2 dogs so I just stood there waiting for it to happen. The beagle-like thing ran up to Boomer and sank its teeth into Boomer’s rear leg. Boomer responded in kind and then the German-shepherdy thing joined in.

I was pretty concerned at this point so I did something stupid. I reached in with my hands and tried to separate them. This didn’t have the desired effect. Instead of separating the dogs, I wound up with doggie teeth sinking into my forearm. Worse yet, they were Boomer’s teeth. I said “Boomer!” Boomer looked as surprised as I was to find my forearm between his jaws and then let go.

The owner of the other dogs put her dogs away and came back to see if I needed tending to. My arm was bleeding and she offered to help clean up the wound. On the way in she mentioned that her mom was a physician and that she was a vet tech. I figured that I picked the best place in the neighborhood for Boomer and me to be attacked. The mom cleaned and bandaged my wound and the daughter checked out Boomer. Boomer had a torn claw but no other injuries. They then drove Boomer and me home.

I called the missus to let her know about all this and insisted that she shouldn’t leave her party because of this. (“No! Really!. I’m fine!)

3 hours later, the wound was still bleeding. I went to the ER where they irrigated the wound, bandaged it, and started me on some antibiotics.

When my wife and older son heard that I’d gone to the ER, they both expressed the same concern: “You didn’t report Boomer, did you?” In each case, I responded, with a possibly withering tone of voice, “They patched me up and I’ll be OK”

Actually, a report was sent to the county animal control. For his crime, Boomer was sentenced to 10 days of house arrest. They said that they wanted to verify that he didn’t have rabies. This left me unimpressed. Boomer was current on rabies shots. He’d not shown rabies symptoms before. Could he have gotten rabies from biting me?

The doctor at the ER said that this wound would leave a scar. It looks like it’ll be an interesting one.