Rabies

As you may or may not know, last week I was attacked by 5 small to mid-size dogs. Total combined weight of these five dogs - 130 lbs. But, as the saying goes: It's not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. But I've always hated this saying, ever since Coach Munninghoff first said it to me after he demoted me to the B-team during my freshman basketball season .....

To begin, everyday my commute to work consists of walking to the bus stop, riding cramped in a bus to a bridge on a highway, getting through the highway traffic on the bridge to the street running perpendicular below, then getting on another bus to my destination. This particular morning I am walking to the first bus stop and after about two blocks from Lucia's house I encounter three dogs. They run passed me, which I don't find to be particularly odd or scary, but now I have realized why they disguised themselves as nice dogs. After they run passed, two other dogs (chow mix) come around the same corner from which the previous 3 dogs appeared... this time, these dogs go straight for me. They start barking and biting my jeans... nothing too bad yet, I figure that if I keep walking and kicking they will leave me alone. But no, the other three dogs come at me from behind and box me in - they're not really biting, just barking loudly and nipping at me. But then one of the chows takes a good junk of my jeans and a little of my knee with a big bite. That's when I start to take the situation more seriously and start to kick and yell "Fuera!" (A phrase I might have to use in the classroom this year meaning, Get out!). I am near a fairly busy intersection and some people get out of their cars to help scare the dogs away.

The dogs finally leave me alone and run back to their home. I'm a little shaken up, not hurt too bad, so I decide to continue to work. After work I do the first thing any young man would do after his Banana Republic jeans were just ripped - call my mom. I get a to-do list of post dog bite remedies from mom and get started to try to find the owners of the dogs. I ask my new friend, Javier - the security guard outside of Lucia's house - and he points us in the right direction. Down a long gravel road, near Lucia's house, we find all five dogs behind a fence waiting for us. The house looks similar to something out of the remake Texas Chainsaw Massacre - windows are broken, bushes are overgrown around the house, old cars have been parked in the yard going on 28 years collecting dust. As Lucia and I walk up to the fence to ring the bell, four of the dogs come up to greet us with barks, but curiously the dog that bit me runs under one of the abandoned cars in the yard. We ring the doorbell on the gate and an old lady comes out to meet us - she is missing a significant amount of teeth and is wearing something she bought in 1941 (again, I'm thinking Texas Chainsaw Massacre, creepy old lady).

Lucia tells her my horrific, yet heroic, tale of that morning and we ask for the most current vaccinations of the dogs. The old woman can't believe that her dogs would do such a thing... she said that they never attack anyone. So the old lady walks inside to find the papers as Lucia and I wait patiently outside the fence as the dogs calmly watch us. We see a little girl walk up to the fence from inside the house... maybe a granddaughter. She asks what we're doing there so we tell her the story. She tells us... with the honesty that only an innocent child can possess... that her grandma lets the dogs out of the fence all the time and they always attack people. Interesting. The grandma comes back out, hears the tail-end of the little girl's story, and gives a good tap on the shoulder to shut her up. We check the papers and luckily the dogs are vaccinated. We spend the rest of the afternoon reporting the incident to the local doggy control center. Apparently my attack wasn't the first reported attack from these dogs... it was actually the fourth, but since this is Peru, not much was done to prevent it from happening again. I strongly encourage them to do something about the dogs since many children and people walk on that street every day. I'm thinking about writing my story into Banana Republic to be included in their "2009 Banana Republic Jeans Hero of the Year Award"... its a pretty good award. Lucia's dad told me that I was attacked because I left Cosmo at home with my parents when I came to Peru (Cosmo is my dog that I ditched with my parents before I came to Peru) and Cosmo is upset so he sent the Peruvian dogs to find me. Bold statement. I tell him that I find it hard to believe that Cosmo is some kind Lord of the Rings villain (Sauron sending his Ringwraiths after me), but whatever, Cosmo is a special dog and I would never doubt his powers.