Once bitten, twice shy

So I promised a few blogs back that I would tell about my experience of being bitten by a dog. So here it is...

The weekend of April 25 - 27, Jon and I go to my parent's house for a garage sale and a birthday party for my best friend's son. We wake up early Saturday morning and things are running a little slow. (Apparently, there was some big festival going on in the next town over, so most people were going to that.) Around 9:30 a large white American bulldog comes roaming into our yard. I have seen him before and petted him before. He is a nice dog (or so I thought!) So I pet him and shoo him away because I don't want him to scare off any garage sale patrons. 10:00 rolls around a little old lady comes driving up our driveway in her tank of a car and asks us if we have seen her grandson's dog. We know this family and the dog, so I tell her that he was here a little while ago and he ran off, but I will keep an eye out for him.

At 2:00, the above mentioned birthday party will start so we start packing stuff up around 1:30 (not the most successful garage sale). 15 minutes later, I see the dog over in the neighbor's yard. I grab the leash and head over there. As I approach, Mr. Talmadge is petting the dog. Note that the dog was happy and wagging his tail. The dog runs over to me, wagging his tail and I proceed to pet him.

Let me set the scene for you. Mr. Talmadge and I are about 8 feet from each other with the dog in between us. We are also standing next to his house, which is approximately 6 feet from us.

I was telling Mr. T that the grandma came looking for the dog because he got out of the house and her grandson entrusted her to look after it (good job lady), and that I was going to take the dog back for her. Now, I have interacted with this dog on many occasions, and he always seemed very nice, maybe on the skiddish side, but I never feared him. As I am petting the dog on his head, I have the leash in my left hand and I start to kneel down. As I'm kneeling, my right hand starts to (gently) slide down the left backside of this neck. I'm about half way down when I hear a short growl and all of a sudden the dog lunges up at me. His snout hits me on the side of the head, I stand up real quick, and I just say, "Holy crap!" I didn't realize at this point the dog had even hurt me, I didn't feel a thing. I guess the dog felt cornered, it all happaned so fast, I didn't even have time to react. I hear Mr. T say, "Uh, oh..." I look at him and see something move out of the right corner of my eye. Then I feel a tickling sensation down my face. I put my hand up to my face and look at my hand. Its covered in blood! I lean forward (I don't want to get blood on my clothes), and just watch it flow. I have never seen so much blood my life - good thing I'm not squeamish. I push the palm of my hand against my head to apply pressure and try to stop the bleeding. Mr. T runs and gets a [clean] rag and wets it, then proceeds to try to clean me up. Poor old guy, he is such a sweet man, I probably about gave him a heart attack. He takes me into his garage, where he has a Lazy-boy recliner (haha!) and he sits me down and pours peroxide on the wound. I ask him how bad it is, and he says, "You will probably need stitches." Great. He gets a mirror to let me see it before he puts a band-aid on it. Oh. My. Goodness. I can't believe how big and deep the bite is.

As I'm walking home, I'm thinking, "My mom is going to kill me. Jonathan is going to freak out!" (Jonathan, by the way, was driving around picking up garage sale signs, so he had no idea anything was going on.) As I'm walking up, my mom has her back to me. I say, "Hey mom, you know that dog that old lady was looking for? Well, I think I need stitches." She whips around and lets out a wail, "Oh, Ginnie!" I think all the neighbors heard, because everyone at the birthday party heard and they sent someone over.

So I go into the bathroom to survey the damage while I wait for Jonathan to get back so we can go to the ER. I was right, when he got back he about had a panic attack. He was like, you should mess with strange dogs! But this was not a strange dog! I have known it for years, and petted it and played with it!

We get to the ER around 2:30. They FINALLY get me back to see the doctor at 8:30. It takes him 30 min to look me over, 30 min to stitch me up, and finally at 10:00 we are leaving the ER with a sore butt from an antibiotic shot, a sore arm from a tetanus shot, 17 stitches, and a prescription for some serious antibiotics. And to top it all off, the dog was overdue for his rabies shot, so the dog had to be put in quarantine. This had me fearing that I would have to have a round of rabies shots as well. They aren't in the stomach anymore, but in the arm. Nevertheless, I don't want anymore shots. Thankfully, the dog was fine. A week later I had the stitches taken out and Mederma has become a part of my skin care regimen. Now that its more than 3 months later, with a little bit of makeup over it, its barely visible. The doctor did a great job of stitching me up.

Lesson learned that day:
"No Good Deed Goes Unpunished." Get your own dog next time lady...