Well, maybe not exactly a first...but close. I was picking up some archives in NYC...and the client's dog lunged at me, trying to bite me in the face. I slapped her away and she backed down with a yelp. But I was freaked out. Shit, I felt her teeth brush against my skin, next to my right eye. Not a word of apology from the owner, though they did put the beast in another room. So nice of them.
I understand the dog's reaction -- we're taking things out of the boss's apartment and she wanted to protect her territory -- but shit. She wasn't a young dog or a puppy, so they must have known she'd be aggressive. And to just see it happen and not say anything? In fact, I wound up apologizing for hitting the damned mutt. They shrugged that off, too.
I've always said dogs are fine so long as they're someone else's, but what that really means is I don't want them around me much. I think that's mainly because I was bitten by a neighbor's dogs at the age of 4, when I lived with my grandmother. Two of them. The neighbor hadn't had the dogs vaccinated against rabies and refused to let them be tested because it meant they'd have to be euthanized. We were outside San Antonio's city limits and the county didn't require it, so I got rabies shots. In the stomach. Had some lovely flashbacks to that.
This came at the tail end of me working my ass off and getting little sleep. I took a nap after arriving in Miami off a red-eye flight, Sunday morning, before heading down to handle the Map Fair. That move out was work but done in a decent amount of time. Next morning, I was up early to help our trucker pick up the dealers and take them back to the warehouse, where I weighed and separated them according to where they were heading -- home or the California Book Fair in Pasadena. Then I zoomed back to Fort Lauderdale to catch my plane to JFK...only to find it was delayed by an hour.
I didn't get to my hotel in NYC till nearly 1am and had to be up at 8 to make it to the location, where we were being given grief by the building's manager over a Certificate of Insurance...only to find the number of cartons to be picked up were 20% more than we'd been told...and there was a dog that wanted to tear into me, even though I did all the things you do to show the foul thing you're not a threat.
I'm too old for this shit.
I understand the dog's reaction -- we're taking things out of the boss's apartment and she wanted to protect her territory -- but shit. She wasn't a young dog or a puppy, so they must have known she'd be aggressive. And to just see it happen and not say anything? In fact, I wound up apologizing for hitting the damned mutt. They shrugged that off, too.
I've always said dogs are fine so long as they're someone else's, but what that really means is I don't want them around me much. I think that's mainly because I was bitten by a neighbor's dogs at the age of 4, when I lived with my grandmother. Two of them. The neighbor hadn't had the dogs vaccinated against rabies and refused to let them be tested because it meant they'd have to be euthanized. We were outside San Antonio's city limits and the county didn't require it, so I got rabies shots. In the stomach. Had some lovely flashbacks to that.
This came at the tail end of me working my ass off and getting little sleep. I took a nap after arriving in Miami off a red-eye flight, Sunday morning, before heading down to handle the Map Fair. That move out was work but done in a decent amount of time. Next morning, I was up early to help our trucker pick up the dealers and take them back to the warehouse, where I weighed and separated them according to where they were heading -- home or the California Book Fair in Pasadena. Then I zoomed back to Fort Lauderdale to catch my plane to JFK...only to find it was delayed by an hour.
I didn't get to my hotel in NYC till nearly 1am and had to be up at 8 to make it to the location, where we were being given grief by the building's manager over a Certificate of Insurance...only to find the number of cartons to be picked up were 20% more than we'd been told...and there was a dog that wanted to tear into me, even though I did all the things you do to show the foul thing you're not a threat.
I'm too old for this shit.
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