Scrappy Jack

Since Jack is nearly healed, it is safe to talk about "the incident" from last week. Behold, bloody dog face:

It seems that our neighbor's dog does not much like Jack. Because of the way the building is set up we have to walk past their door when we leave the building. Whenever their dog hears us coming with the dogs, he body slams their door and barks like crazy. Up until recently it was nothing more than an annoyance and just required that Paul and I kept our dogs from having a hissy fit in response.

Then, about a week ago, I was coming home from walking the dogs. When we walked past the neighbor's door, their dog did the usual body slam, except this time the door opened and out came the dog. He went straight for Jack. I tried my best to keep them apart and yelled up a storm both at the dog and in hopes of getting our neighbor's attention. I found out later that he was in the bathroom, which was why it took him so long to get his dog away from us.

After bringing the dogs up to the apartment, I examined Jack and found that he had a pretty deep puncture wound on his face. Tchazo wasn't involved in the fight. He pretty much stood aside and barked and jumped around like a maniac. I imagine that if his barks were words, he would have been screaming this: "What? Where did you come from? Where is your leash? Leave us alone, you meanie!"

I had some ointment from Tchazo's recent visit to the vet so I cleaned Jack's wound and put the medicine on it before going down to talk the the neighbors about what happened. They were appropriately apologetic and swore to keep that door locked so their dog couldn't bust out. I confirmed that their dog had his shots and we had a nice neighborly chat about other stuff. I was hoping that would be the end of the situation.

Unfortunately, Paul had another run in much like mine a few days later. He was able to keep our dogs from getting hurt by giving the neighbor's dog a swift kick as it approached. I don't know if I am up for that, so I hope they follow through with their promise to get the latch fixed.