This week, I experienced a home invasion. I was in my kitchen when I saw, out my glass front door, a big yellow Labrador retriever looking back at me. I didn’t recognize him from the neighborhood, but I figured he was lost, as no humans were evident on the street. I live two blocks from my city’s biggest park, right off a tree-lined boulevard that’s popular for walking with dogs. I’ve lived here 30 years, and I’ve helped out countless dogs missing from their homes. I even found one ferret in my back yard years ago! I’ll help them if they’ll let me, either by calling their owners if the dog is wearing tags, or by calling Animal Control if I can’t reach the owners.
I thought I would walk out onto my porch, shutting my front door behind me, to see if I could get a good look at this dog’s tags so I could figure out what to do next.
I opened the door just enough to slip out—and this big dog pushed right past me and flew into my house! I was able to grab his very snug buckle collar as he passed, and there I was, flying like a windsock behind the beast. He was huge. He must have weighed 90 pounds, maybe more. Not fat; all muscle. And he was strong!
He immediately headed up the stairs to the second story of my home toward my own two dogs and a visiting geriatric mini-poodle. (Behind a closed door, thank goodness.) I don’t know how I managed to pull him off the stairs, but I did. He lunged toward the kitchen. All I could think was that I had to get this dog out of my house, out of my house now.
It was raining outside and the dog was very wet. When I later looked down at my sodden pant legs, I realized how physically close we’d been as I’d wrestled him one way and he’d lunged another. He was dripping onto the hardwood floor, and the soles of my shoes starting slipping. I felt myself starting to fall.
In that (very) long second, I realized that if I fell, my head was going to go through the French doors, original to my 1912 house, to my living room. I reached out, grabbed woodwork on the doorframe, and precariously held myself up. Had I fallen, I honestly don’t know what would have happened. Something would have broken. The doors, the glass, me? Whichever—I wouldn’t have stood up again easily, if at all.
At some point I remember yelling, “Help!” at the top of my voice, but no one was around. I was on my own and my home invader was a yellow lab.
Somehow, I twisted and turned and levered that dog right back out my front door. I don’t know how I did it. I’d like to think that the experience of handling dogs since 1980 helped—but remember, I was the fool who let the dog get inside in the first place!
I do know that, hours later, my right hand (which had held the dog’s collar), my torso, and my knees all ached like crazy . . . the ache you get when you’ve been to a new, grueling exercise class, or you ride a bike for too long after not pedaling for years. (Yeah, it hurt. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.)
I’m pretty good in emergencies, but once Home Invasion Lab left the porch, I started shaking and didn’t stop for several hours. The dog could have easily bitten my hand off—or worse. I know that. But what could I do? The dog was in my house! Had any of my own dogs been loose, there would have been either a fight or a shake-to-death killing. That dog was in their house, too!
I have a new rule: I will never again open the door to a dog I don’t know.
Are you wondering what would have made this scenario less dangerous?
Would you want your dog behaving like Home Invasion Lab if he or she somehow got loose and were running around your neighborhood looking for help? I think not. Imagine that I had been injured—from a fall, from broken glass, or worse yet, from a bite or bites. What if the dog hadn’t made it into my house, but instead had jumped me on the porch and I’d tumbled down the outside stairs? How would you feel if your dog caused bodily injury to a human who was only trying to help him?
Is it possible that this obnoxious behavior was due simply to lack of training?
You bet it is!
Home Invasion Lab had never learned some basic lessons that dogs are taught in puppy class:
- Respect all humans and their space.
- Don’t barge through every door that opens.
- Don’t muscle your way to what you want.
- Don’t intimidate with your size or strength.
- Don’t be more interested in what you want than in what the human wants.
- First and foremost, when a human has hold of your collar, don’t resist! Stand still—or even better, sit calmly, and wait to find out what the human wants.
Do we think this dog went to puppy class? No, we do not.
Do we think this dog has had any training? No, we do not. At least, not any training that worked.
Has this dog learned any boundaries? Yes, I think he has. He did not use his teeth to intimidate; he was not, in fact, aggressive in a fearful way at all. If he had been, I would have been seriously hurt.
Was this dog taught not to use his teeth? I doubt it. He’s a retriever, a breed that’s been bred for centuries to have a “soft” mouth so that the game retrieved isn’t damaged. I posit that part came naturally to him.
Thank goodness.
I think about my own dogs and the few times one of them has accidentally gotten out of a fenced yard. My first dog, a golden retriever, was in the back yard when a not-quite-latched gate blew open and he had access to the alley behind the house. The gate blew closed again, and latched. He did not run in the direction of the busy street half a block away. He ran to the end of the alley, around the corner away from the busy street, and back onto the throughway our house fronted . . . to our house, up the front walkway, and onto the front porch, where he barked until he was noticed and let in.
I felt terrible about that at the time, all those years ago, and feel bad about it to this day. I was lucky. In that case, my dog was a heck of a lot smarter than I was. He saved himself.
I’ve seen the same behavior from other dogs in the home where I live now—back gate accidentally left open, two dogs run out. The leader then was yet another golden retriever (one in a long line since 1980), followed by his “little sister” dog, my now 15-year-old five-pounder. They were out to play only a short time when I went to let them in and discovered the side gate open. I ran around the house. There to my wondering eyes, what should appear? My two dogs on running walkabout, across the street—the boy dog peeing on bushes in the neighbor’s yard, the girl dog trying to keep up.
I called them and they ran like heck across the street and back into my arms.
That’s what you want your dogs to do if they accidentally get loose. You want them to run to your gate or your door or your window and to make enough fuss that you discover them there. You want them to stick around home, waiting for you, staying out of trouble while they do. That’s what you want; if you’re lucky, that’s what you get.
When you’re not lucky, what you get is Home Invasion Lab. It’s your choice.
Don’t wait to decide until it’s too late . . . because it’s really not a matter of luck. It’s a matter of raising your dog from Day One of his life with you to be the dog that doesn’t run away from home because home is the best place he can be. In every minute that you live with him, raise him to be safe and sane around all human beings, and to act in a way that does not jeopardize life or limb. In the long run, that’s better for your dog and better for the humans.
Please, raise a good dog. Don’t raise a home invader.
