An awful thing happened - poor Coco!

Perhaps the most scary thing ever happened yesterday.

The Hubby and his youngest son were taking the little Labrador pup, Coco for her early evening walk, taking a route we have taken with her several times before.

This walk takes us past our neighbour’s house on the corner, where a Staffordshire Bull Terrier lives. In the past the gate has been closed and he has been sitting quite calmly behind it just watching the world go by. Yesterday, The Hubby and Son walked past the neighbour's house just as they came home and as I understand it, four things happened at pretty much the same time:-

1.    Their front gate opened to allow their car in

2.    Their front door opened as their son saw them come home

3.    Coco, The Hubby and Son walked past on the other side of the road.  

4.    This Staffie that has sat so calmly in the past few weeks caught sight of Coco from the hallway of the house, and in the space of about three seconds covered the 20 yards gap, leapt up and grabbed Coco by the neck, then…..

5.    Mayhem ensued.

It took four adults to get this Staffie to let go, and only then by brute force. Despite the fact that The Hubby had acted quickly and picked Coco up, the Staffie locked its jaws on her neck, tasted blood then hung on for grim death. My neighbour was apparently screaming and crying in the road at what was happening, having just got out of the car to admire the puppy, while her husband was unsuccessfully trying to get his dog under control. Poor Coco has a fairly deep puncture wound on her shoulder where this dog was swinging round in mid air refusing to let go. She cried, emptied her bowels and presumably bladder too, and was understandably totally petrified as any baby of just over three months old would be in that situation. Clearly her wound is causing her a lot of discomfort and needless to say she is off to the vet today to be checked out, probably jabbed with antibiotics and generally cosseted. If there is a substantial bill, they can bloody well pay it.

Staffies do have a reputation of being aggressive fighting dogs and one glance at Battersea’s or the RSPCA’s web sites will show you plenty of unwanted Staffies looking for homes, presumably for this very reason. The Hubby says what scared him was firstly the speed with which it all took place, but also the unbridled aggression from a dog that has sat so peacefully previously and given no inkling that it would do anything like this.

The walk was, of course, abandoned and The Hubby and Son were much shaken. The Hubby has scratches on his arm and one or two quite deep wounds on the heel of his thumb, that fleshy bit which can be extremely painful and is now throbbing like mad. We’ll give it another day or so then he’ll be off to the docs – fortunately our tetanus jabs are up to date! Son wasn’t scratched but was clearly shocked not only at what happened but at the level of force that was required to get the Staffie to release. There used to be a theory that to get a dog to let go you shoved a finger up it's a**e (thank you Barbara Woodhouse!) but all this happened so quickly that even if they had thought of it, they probably wouldn't have had time to get the rubber glove on!

Fortunately (or perhaps not) the animal didn’t attempt to attack a human, because if it had we would have to report it to the police as a dangerous dog which wouldn’t do a great deal for neighbourly relations. As it is, we’re not sure what to do; provided Coco is alright and no real harm is done, we probably won’t do anything except take extra care when going past and be vigilant near other dogs. Poor little puppy has gone out for a walk this morning and wasn’t reluctant or frightened, but didn’t meet any other dogs so it remains to be seen whether she has any psychological scars by association.

Our neighbours have apologised profusely and were obviously profoundly shocked at what their animal had done. To say the (nice) lady who it belongs to was devastated would be understating it. But still she made excuses for her dog along the lines of “He doesn’t mean it / he’s a softie really” etc. Rubbish! Yes, this was an accident, but unpredictable animals bred for aggression shouldn’t be family pets.

Poor Coco – what a traumatic evening. For all of us!