Some years ago I lived in the Stadium District in downtown Tacoma, and on weekends I would ride my bike down to the Ruston Way waterfront area. I could shortcut through Garfield Park, a little postage-stamp sized park. One day a collie dog that was (illegally) off leash saw me and leaped up, running at me full tilt, growling and barking the whole way. It came up on my right side so I jinked left and it ran around behind the bike and attacked from the left side, biting my leg at the knee.

I locked up the brakes, kicked out of the pedals, and planted my feet on each side of the bike, drawing my little Sig P239. The dog’s momentum carried it in front of me and I was just starting the trigger pull (first shot would be DA) when the dog calmly trotted off. I re-holstered and checked the damage; I had a trickle of blood running down my leg from a wound alongside my left knee. I rode home (5 mins) to clean it. While I was there I heard a ‘man with a gun’ call on the scanner so I bandaged up and rode back to the park to wait for the cops.

The dog’s owner spotted me and immediately began her ***-story about how she was on public assistance and had no money, and thus I couldn’t sue her. I told her the cops were on the way and she was in a flat panic, because she knew what would happen to her dog was going to be at least expensive, if not permanent. She went on and on about how the dog had never bitten anyone (third time in my life I’d been bit by a dog that never bit anyone). I was somewhat surprised she didn’t say anything about me almost shooting her dog, so I mentioned how close it had come to getting shot. She hadn’t seen me draw or point the gun at her dog, and even at that moment hadn’t noticed the P239 carried openly in a holster on my belt.

The cops never came and I wasn’t interested in making her life any more difficult so I finished my ride (in hindsight I really should have had the wound checked out). The next day I took the same route and while on Ruston I spotted an animal control officer on patrol for off-leash dogs and poop abandoners. I rode up (same OC) and told her the whole story. She listened and without hesitation said, “It would have been a good shoot”. She said if I had called them they would have taken the dog, and that I should have had the wound checked out for rabies etc.

Looking back after the adrenaline with a more critical eye on what had happened; it occurred to me that the dog, a herding breed, had acted on impulse, doing what its instinct told it to do when it saw legs moving rapidly up & down; herd me. Once I had stopped and was about to dispense a helping of 147gr HSTs, its instinct was satisfied and it walked away. This is what dog owners need to understand; their loving pet still has instincts even it doesn’t understand, and it will act on them immediately if the right trigger comes along.

I am glad I didn’t have to shoot it; it was a city park with kids on the playground behind me. All they would have known is that some mean man shot a beautiful collie dog for no reason. After that I found and ordered a special pepper-spray holder for the handlebars; to give me a non-lethal option. If the attack had continued, open carry was the only way I would have gotten the gun out before any real damage had been done. Zippers or flaps in the way would have been too slow. I was surprised at myself somewhat for the speed and smoothness of the stop, kicking out of the egg-beater pedals, thumb-break, draw, and trigger pull; I had never practiced all that.