The stay-at-home dad: Dogs keep dissing my daughter

If my 6-year-old daughter had her way, all dogs would go straight to jail.

At age 2, my daughter had a traumatic experience with the neighbor dog. You see, the yippy, no-heavier-than-5-pound canine encroached our yard one day and… well, the dog barked at her. She screamed at full blast until I carried her inside, and she cried and cried for what felt like hours. It was probably just a few minutes, but few things match the unpleasant intensity of top-level screech-sobbing from a 2-year-old.

She’s been skittish around dogs ever since.

I’m not trying to minimize her bad experience with the beast-next-door, as it obviously imprinted on her in a psychologically damaging way. It’s just sort of amusing because the dog in question is incapable of inflicting any physical pain.

Still, I remember a traumatic experience as a middle schooler, while visiting some family in Minnesota in the summertime. We had our then-puppy black lab Maggie on the trip with us, and some awful, much bigger dog ran up on us in my uncle’s front yard. The dog pinned poor Maggie to the ground and bit at her face. When the owner of the dog ran up to me and told me to “kick” his giant, raging dog off of ours, I froze in terror, because it seemed like a good way to lose a leg.

It was an awful experience, and thankfully Maggie didn’t suffer any permanent injuries. However, it can still be triggering to see large dogs run loose around the neighborhood or when I’m taking my family for a walk. In that respect, I can certainly understand the feeling my daughter has whenever a dog runs up to her. Because when I think about it, that little neighbor dog wasn’t all that tiny to a 2-year-old. I’m sure in her eyes she saw something far more dangerous.

More than four years later, we’re still teaching her how to stay calm and interact with the friendlier pooches of the world.

While my wife and I are historically dog people, we haven’t had any animals in our house since we discovered the origins of our oldest son’s allergic skin reactions. Our dog at the time, Ralphie, went to live at Grandpa’s, and while we visited him often, our next two children, including my now-6-year-old, had fewer opportunities to grow comfortable around animals.

We made some progress this past year when my mom got a new puppy — a dog that won’t ever grow to be more than 10 pounds. After a few visits, my daughter will now briefly pet the dog’s head (so long as you hold the pooch and don’t allow her to move), and she’ll throw a ball for the pup to retrieve (so long as you hold the dog 4 feet away from her when she winds up to throw the ball).

Unfortunately, the dogs of the world must be involved in some kind of shadow war against my daughter, because no matter how much progress we make with nice dogs, some loudmouth stranger Rover will run up on her and terrify her all over again.

The latest happened this past weekend, while on a mostly peaceful walk along the shores of the Spokane River. Two different largish dogs ran up to us, off leash, and hopped all over us, barking up a storm.

Look, I love dogs, and these two pooches in particular were great big sweethearts. But when they saw our daughter screech and run away from them, they probably assumed she just wanted to play. So they kept after her, and even dogs who just want to play can be misconstrued to a 6-year-old as a BIG BAD ATTACK DOG.

Everything turned out OK, and the dog owners eventually arrived to rein in their wily companions (for my part I had to chase down my daughter and pick her off the ground, just so the doggie wouldn’t keep leaping at her).

Look, dogs like to be free. I get it. On a public path, however, maybe consider keeping your canines on a leash. I’m just saying, if my kids were prone to jumping all over strangers passing by, I’d probably make them wear one of those backpacks with the tandem rope.

Of course, if my theory about the shadow war is correct, the dogs will find a whole new way to terrify my daughter, even in a land of 100 percent leash law compliance. We may have to recruit the cats if this conflict continues. Haha, just kidding. #DogsRuleCatsDrool.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer and stay-at-home dad to four kids, ages 4-10. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.