My Fear of Dogs!

If you gave me the choice between a Tarantula or a Jack Russell, I’d be stroking those eight cuddly legs before you had time to say arachnophobia.

It’s not because I have anything against dogs in particular. But unfortunately when they come anywhere near me, my legs turn to jelly and my heart pounds so hard that my eyeballs begin pulsating out of their sockets.

As with most of our adult fears, my phobia of dogs (cynophobia) stems back to my early childhood memories …

I was ten years old and walking to a friends house when a little Jack Russell ran out from a driveway and sunk it’s teeth into my ankles. It managed to bite me many times before the owner eventually came out and threw a large plastic washing up bowl over its entire body.

I can still picture the washing up bowl scraping around the driveway as though it was alive, the covered dog yapping desperately underneath to escape. It was quite ingenious of the owner really, although often I wonder if it had happened before.

It wasn’t just this one episode that caused my cynophobia though. Unfortunately, in the 1980s dog owners were not bound under such strict rules as they are now. Some would just let their dogs roam the streets like cats do now, and attacks on children were quite common.

I was at school one day when a large boxer dog was roaming the playground. With all the children running around screaming, it was only a matter of time before it got scared and became defensive. Sadly, this was to the detriment of a young girl who was mauled to pieces in front of me. There was blood everywhere, which was extremely traumatic for her and also the kids watching.

I often wonder how many kids that terrible day ended up with a dog phobia in adulthood like me. It’s something I really don’t like about myself and would love to be rid of, but my fight or flight reaction always seems to get the better of me.

Whenever I see a dog off the lead in a kids playpark I get really pissed off with the owner. Even though half the time I’m shaking from my own fears, I will approach them and ask why they’re willing to take such a risk. After all, if a child is bitten by a dog these days, it’s more likely than not it will be euthanised. Which nobody wants. Especially the poor dog!

It is recently been recognised by our government that certain dogs are more dangerous than others and have been banned from any future breeding. I realise the majority are them are friendly, beautiful and extremely loving to their owners, but we must also also protect the public from any harm. There have been far too many reports in recent years of children suffering horrific injuries or even worse.

As an animal lover however, I’m glad the majority of these dogs have been allowed to remain with their owners and able to live out the rest of their lives peacefully. It would be completely unfair to euthanise them due to any unethical breeding. It’s certainly not the dogs fault!

I also believe that aggressive behavioural problems are often down to incompetent owners and not the dogs themselves. I once watched a man beating a huge Bully dog with a large chain to try and stop it from attacking me. I was so disgusted and felt so sorry for the dog I could have cried. I don’t understand how people can be so cruel!

I’d be interested to hear about anyone else that’s been through a similar experience and whether or not they have managed to conquer their cynophobia. Perhaps hypnosis might be the answer, or even going to a local dog show and mingling with them all.

But for the time being, I’m happy to stick with my lovely cat Bob.

Thanks for reading!

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Originally published at https://medium.com/never-stop-writing/my-fear-of-dogs-e675b02dfbf8