Parenting's got nothing on pet ownership.....

Holy crap.

The thing that has always been in the back of my mind as a pet owner finally happened.  You hear about it in the news, you judge the animals and their owners, or you sympathize, there is no middle ground.

My lab Sonny bit the garbage man this morning. I saw it. I heard him barking and went out the back door just in time to see him go after the poor guy.

We have Invisible Fencing.  Sonny did not train well with it, because he refused to leave the front porch for the first several weeks we had it. The beeping sound the collar made if he went near the line was more than enough, he never actually cooperated with us on the shock training day. After witnessing in horror as Cooper ran across the line and freak out as he got zapped, Sonny turned around and sprinted full speed back onto the front porch.

So for the last few years Sonny and Cooper have done well in the yard. They bark at the big trucks, of course. UPS, FedEx, Garbage, Streetsweeper, you name it. If it isn't a passenger vehicle they will bark their fool heads off until the truck is out of sight.

BUT, they are very friendly. The UPS guy and the Mail man love them.  They pet them and play with them.  I have had Cooper (who is a Boxer) for 10 years, since he was 6 weeks old, and he has never bitten anyone. But he has always barked at trucks.  I have had Sonny for 6 years, since he was a year old, same story. They have never bitten anyone. Until. freaking. now.

So last week Mr. Corbin from Animal Control visited me and told me the garbage crew emailed him and said the dogs were "too close for comfort".  That is a far cry from "nipping at their legs". I told Mr. Corbin they probably just aren't aware the invisible fence is there and he was happy with that logic and said he would email them to let them know. So this morning when I ran to get Sonny and the garbage men told me this was not the first incident I was extremely upset.  Had I known Sonny had done this last week I would have known there was a problem with the fence and could have fixed it to prevent this.

The guy who was actually bitten was very nice and reassured me over and over that he was not hurt, Sonny got his pants and grazed his leg, no skin was broken and it was not painful.  But this does nothing to reassure me that my dog is not on some level aggressive.  I am concerned by it, because now I feel like I cannot trust him to not do it again with or without an issue with the underground fencing.

So I guess I'll figure out a way to come up with a few thousand dollars to install a real fence.

Damn dog.