* Attacking Nature

It was October 2008 (despite the erroneous date on the photo above) that I adopted a 7-year-old rescue Dalmatian from a breeder in Chicago who gave him to me and paid the travel expenses. She even agreed to take him back if he was "naughty."

"Naughty" it turned out was a euphemism for "this dog has a history of attacking other MALE dogs, but we aren't sure it extends to EVERY male dog."

This history was not shared with me before the adoption and I blindly added him to my household of a 14-year-old female Lab-mix and a 7-year-old MALE Bassett Hound.

The result was predictable, but not to me.

Within two weeks he attacked the Basset. The female (or "Queen Bitch" as another breeder describes her) dominated the Dalmatian and he never so much as growled in her direction.

This attack came with NO WARNING: one minute they were side by side and the next second the Dal had his entire jaw around the Basset's neck (fleshy for a purpose, I discovered) growling (no---that is insufficient-- he was ROARING just like a lion) all through the attack. It took me tearing at the Dal for a full, eternally long, minute or so, lifting him and his mouthful of Bassett off the ground, SCREAMING at the top of my lungs to detach him from my harmless and good-natured Bassett.

Having had no warning that this was the latest in a history of such incidents, I decided to give the Dal the benefit of the doubt since he drew no blood and my Bassett seemed placid after the event.

However within a month this happened two more times and on the fourth time, the Dal injured my Bassett.

Within 24 hours the Dal was back on a plane heading to his old owners, who apologized profusely to me and revealed that he had had this problem with other males at their kennels. They described the attacks as I found them, "coming out of no-where in an instant."

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Don't play with Mother Nature---in the form of Dalmatians, tigers, apes, or whales: the latter three of which have killed or maimed their trainers and neighbors in the last three years in famous incidents in Las Vegas, suburban Connecticut, and Sea World (only this week).

Nature's attack-brain exists for a reason:

Survival.

Just because we think wolves should lie down with lambs, doesn't mean Mother Nature agrees.