A joyful pup and its mistress once passed me on their walk in the park. The joy in the puppy’s half step half hop was quite evident. To it, every moving blade of grass was an investigative Sherlock Holmes mystery to be unraveled.

Seconds later, however as you are twenty or thirty meters away you and every one else hears a high pitch yapping and you turn already knowing with horror as you hear the deep throaty roar that that little puppy that you just passed is in some serious trouble. Perhaps even its owner is not able to extricate it from the problem.

There are a myriad of reasons for what we call bad behavior on the part of canines. Inbreeding, bad upbringing, chronic damage such as poor dental health. Any of these can be contributing factors as to why a dog would suddenly go off in a public area.

My neighbor tells the story of his dog which is actually half dog and half Northern wolf.

A little less than a year prior, he had chained his big wolf puppy to the tail gate of his chevy pickup. He had then gone inside for lunch while the puppy played outside. He says he wasn’t inside more than about 15 minutes before a deep snarl and a shout caused him to run to the front door.

There, running free of its leash and cutting a line straight towards his big puppy was a vicious pit Bull. He remembers his dog backing up to the vehicle as if to get enough slack in its leash. In no time the pit bull had crossed 30 feet and without so much as a hello, launched itself in the air towards the puppy.

In less than a blink the Pit Bull was high in the air and reaching for his puppy’s jugular. However, his puppy was no longer there at all. Launching itself a split second earlier it was also in the air and much higher than the pit Bull. The pit Bull attempted to twist before it even hit the ground, but the wolf puppy was faster yet and by then had a grip on the throat of the pit Bull.

A very low wolf like growl emitted from my neighbors dog. For a moment the pitBull went slack and the half wolf tossed it about 2 meters.

I am told that the angry pit bull didn’t have 3 feet properly on the ground before it promptly launched itself yet again at the half puppy. This time meaning to surprise it. However, everyone was surprised when the puppy itself met the pit Bull midway and without ado simply snapped its neck. There was a kind of silence that one hears when everyone is holding their breath.

No one knew how long this had all taken. It seemed to simultaneously happen so fast and then suddenly slow down as if time had been holding its breath. My neighbors big puppy, backed to the beginning of its leash and sat itself down gently, almost as if, all in a days work.

I don’t wish any animal ill, but we were later told that that pit bull was already under probation for having attacked a child the year before. In Ontario, a dog can be put down for that behavior but apparently this happened weeks before some law was passed and the witnesses had differing stories so the pit bull was in its owners care while the case was being decided.

Who knows, sometimes nature itself is the great equalizer. Everyone there was certain as they told the story afterward, that the puppy was a goner. No one had thought that there was quite that much quickness or wolf like strength and self preservation in that quiet puppy.

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