bad dog!

I met my neighbors last week. Gunner, our 80 lb. Boxer, decided to introduce us to each other.

Our neighbors have 2 dogs: a long-haired Dachsund and a Feist. Gunner hates them. Actually, "Hates" is an understatement. Every time he is in the yard at the same time as our neighbor's dogs, he scratches, barks, and carries on while trying to slam his body through our 6-foot fence to the other side. If he had his way, he would eat our neighbor's dogs. Seriously.
On Wednesday morning, David came into the bedroom and told me that Gunner had slammed himself onto the fence so many times that he had broken two of the boards off of the fence and that he had just watched him put his head and entire torso through the hole. David and I agreed that the fence would have to be fixed as soon as he got home from work that day.

Evidently, that wasn't soon enough.

Later that day, while Avery was taking a nap and I was trying to get rid of my nausea, Gunner started whining at the back door to be let out into the yard. Not thinking about the fence, I let him out. !0 minutes later, I hear my neighbor screaming in her backyard. Immediately, I knew what had happened. I jumped up and ran into the backyard (in a coffee stained t-shirt, pj pants, and no shoes) to discover...no Gunner. Shaking, I ran into my neighbor's backyard to find my neighbor in her robe screaming at her back door and Gunner with our neighbor's dog in his MOUTH. I screamed for him to stop, but he was in total Aggression Mode. There was no stopping him. In my frantic panic, I grabbed a brick to hurl at him... in a moment of clarity I realized that hitting him with a brick was probably not my best option. Instead, I grabbed a stick and started hitting the mess out of him. He finally stopped chewing on the Fiest and looked up at me like, "what?!" . To say I was furious is an understatement.

Try dragging an 80 lb all-muscle Boxer somewhere he doesn't want to go... while your are nauseated. It's really fun.

After putting Gunner back in his crate, I went back outside to talk to my neighbor. She was really nice and said that the dogs seemed fine, but I told her that if we needed to pay for vet bills or anything to let us know.

David spent his lunch break that day mending our fence.

Later that night we met up with our neighbors again and discovered that the Feist had a cut and puncture wound on his hindquarters and that they had to go to the vet to get antibiotics. Thankfully, our neighbor opted NOT to get the $500 stitches that the vet said might help heal the cut. However, the bill was still a good $150. Thanks, Gunner.

Our friend Garrett (a vet) came over that night and checked out the wound as well. He prescribed an additional topical antibiotic for good measure. We are VERY thankful for his generous trip out to our house after work.

Our neighbors could not have been nicer about the incident. David and I, on the other hand, were totally embarrassed and horrified by the whole experience. Not that this makes things any better, but we did find out later that Fiests are notorious for acting "bigger than they are" and being aggressive toward other dogs. Obviously, that is not an excuse for Gunner's crazy behavior, but it does shed some light on why he was so aggressive with him.


He was a sweet little angel the rest of the week. He's going to have to be good for a really long time to make up for this one.