The Day a Mad Dog Tried to Kill Me

Life as a four year old kid living in rural Louisiana was good. I got to run around without a shirt, without shoes and just a pair of short pants. I was a little Tarzan before I knew who he was. I was living with my mother and her mother (my grandmother) in a house about 5 miles out of Ponchatoula, Louisiana. My dad had gone back to sea. He was in the Merchant Marines where he’d spent most of his entire life.

My Gramma’s house was not very large and sat near a heavily wooded area that ran for miles starting about 30 yards behind the house. I would live in this house for another four or five years. There was a large meadow separating grandma’s house from my aunts house, which I would visit a lot in my growing up years.

I spent virtually all of my childhood years outdoors, much of it roaming the woods, exploring, climbing every tree I could, throwing rocks and sticks at wasps’ nests, playing in the dirt with plastic cowboys and indians, and satisfying my curiosity about everything I saw. It was nothing for me to be outside the entire day playing.

On this particular day I was outside playing in the dirt with my cowboys and indians. A few months earlier, my mother had brought home a collie for me. It was instant love. The dog and I were inseparable, although my mother and my grandmother absolutely forbid the dog to be in the house. He slept underneath the house. I was the only one who could pet the dog. Indeed, after he had bitten a couple of people, he was avoided by everyone except me.

I wasn’t in the back yard but on the side of the house.. There were no windows on that side of the house. I heard a noise, looked up and saw a dog near the edge of the woods. It was snarling and I could see white foam coming from its mouth, which meant absolutely nothing to me. I would be told later that this was a “mad dog.” This was our way of defining a dog with rabies.

The dog and I looked at each other for a few seconds and then with a snarl of rage, he charged at me. Suddenly, my collie rushed out and met the dog before he could reach me. The two began a ferocious battle, snarling and biting each other with movements too quick for the human eye to follow. It was a brief battle lasting no more than a couple of minutes, perhaps less. My collie chased the mad dog into the woods and returned shortly.

Once again, in my few short years on the planet, my life had been saved by a dog.

Not too long after this event, my collie disappeared. I was told that he had been “put down” because he had developed rabies and was dangerous. I did not fully understand it but I knew the collie had changed. While he never bit me, there were times after that when he made me afraid because he growled at me in a threatening manner.

Death had now reached its ugly hand out to me twice in my few short years on earth.

It would not be the last.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”  (Psa 90:12)

The End

copyright 2020 Voyle A. Glover