Bad dog.

My dog bit me. Attacked me, really. My lovable, pain in the ass, getting old and has never bitten a single person (post teething age, anyway) smart, human-like black lab. BIT ME. This is a picture of him (a bad picture, but it shows his size really well)

I can’t believe it. I really cant. There was no blood shed, but he did break skin, and my hand hurts quite a bit.

He was on my mother’s bed, which he knows is off limits, and I was going to let him stay there until I left for work, but then I heard him digging on the mattress (I don’t know why dogs do that) and I decided it was time to evict him. I told him to get down and he wouldn’t budge. So I grabbed him by his collar as I have so many times in the past, and he showed his teeth and snapped at my hand and started biting me until I slapped him across his nose.

Even after all of this He wouldn’t move, so I grabbed him again, more forcefully this time to let him know that I was angry but not afraid, and pulled him off the bed.

I have one lone tooth mark in the center of the top of my hand, but I feel the pain all the way down in my elbow, and bad in the palm of my hand. I guess he hit a nerve or something. It’s starting to swell a bit.

He knows I am angry. I yelled at him and made him go downstairs. He went willingly, tail between his legs.

I am not sure I trust him now.

The family had another Black Lab before this one. I never liked him. His name was max, and he had the Parvovirus as a puppy. Very few puppies recover fully from Parvo, and we were close to putting him down when he miraculously recovered one morning. It really was sad. He couldn’t walk, eat, or even wag his tail. When he recovered, he bounced back 100% and we had him for another year before things started to change.

He started by going after my grandmother and biting her hand. We couldn’t have him around the younger children in the family. The worst part was his over-protectiveness of my mother. My father could not sit on the couch beside her, we could not get close enough to hand her a report card, we could not show her affection. For that matter, we could not show affection to anyone but him.

The thing that made me trust Cody, the current black lab, was that you could take anything from him without him retaliating or biting.

Max attacked me a few times, but the worst was on new years day one year. He was chewing on a Styrofoam cup and tearing it up all over the floor that I had just vacuumed. I was angry, and, without thinking, tried to take the cup from him. He tore my hand wide open, and lunged at me. Only my father kicking him got him off of me.

After that, my mother decided that it was time to put him down. He had attacked too many people, He was dangerous. They put him down and bought Cody that night.

Cody was a good dog. He still is for the most part. He has gotten grouchy lately, and I wonder if he is in some sort of pain that we don’t know about. I have always trusted Cody, and even though I do not particularly like dogs, I like him. But if he bites me again, we are going to have a serious problem.

Lately he has taken to barking at everything. He barks to go out, barks to come in, barks for food, barks for attention, barks to play, barks for everything. One of those loud barks that just pierces into your skull. I don’t know what started the barking, but he never did it before.

Perhaps it is the introduction of Milo, my sister’s boyfriend’s beagle puppy. Milo is friendly and loveable, and has no clue about boundaries and territory. Milo seems to rub Cody the wrong way. I wonder how much of Cody’s irritability is a result of Milo.

No matter what, my perception of Cody has changed. Something is not right when a dog that does not bite attacks its owner. There was no major harm done this time, but I am sure it can happen again.