matriculated wrote:jimlongley wrote:In my 28 years as a telephone man, I was bitten several times on the job. Company rules forbade my suing even in the most egregious situations, such as when I told the owner that the (barking, growling, scrabbling to get out of owner's arms) dog had to be put in another room while I was there. She insisted her little miniature poodle was no threat to anyone, and as soon as I got inside the house, she turned the dog loose from the kitchen, and it ran over and bit me on the knee. By the time I got to the hospital to get the wound cleaned and stitched, and the hospital, following protocol reported the bite to animal control, she had called the VP complaint line at the phone company, and lodged an official complaint about me slamming a door on her dog. Guess who wound up in trouble?
I have backed down a lot of dogs and I have been cornered, and I have been surprised and bit on the butt (twice, in vastly different situations) and I have given the speech about putting the dog in another secure area more times than I can count.
I still think the officer did wrong, particularly considering the timing of the shooting.
People are just stupid sometimes. I'm sure that poodle attack wasn't a life threatening event, but it cost you time, energy, money, and getting in trouble at your job. All because of a stubborn customer who wouldn't follow common sense. I have three harmless dogs who have never (nor would they ever) bitten anyone, but they do yap a lot (especially the little ones) and they get annoying to a stranger real quick, so whenever I have somebody in my house repairing anything, all 3 of them are locked away behind closed doors. For everyone's sanity.
By the way, did you really slam the door on the lady's poodle? Just curious. Was that while it was still attached to your leg?
No, I didn't slam the door on her dog, but I did depart the house quickly, with blood running down my leg and drops hitting all over the floor and front steps, while she loudly declaimed that her dog hadn't bitten me, that I had done the injury myself, despite the fact that she was standing right there when the dog bit me.
My boss went to her house to investigate and told me that by the time he got there, the front steps and walk had been very thoroughly washed, and the lady told him that I had been very rude, that I had refused to fix her phone, and that when her poor dog sniffed at my boot when she opened the door to let me in, I had kicked at the dog and slammed the door on it. This had caused the dog to lose control of its bladder all over the front steps, which was why they were freshly washed.
The amount of blood in the cab of my truck, where I applied a dressing to control the bleeding, made it obvious that I had to have bled a lot getting there, but the lady wouldn't let my boss inside to do the repair, probably so he couldn't look around. The dog nailed that little arterial that passes on the outside of the knee and around the front, the one that makes a knee injury when roller skating look like a major bloodbath. It was kind of comedic, she started saying the dog hadn't bitten me before I even started bleeding, I wondered if she thought she was hypnotizing me.
A Sheriff's department detective friend of mine did a little looking into her for me, when I was considering suing and before I was told it was against company rules to do so, and found out that her dog had been turned in for chasing and biting people several times, when it got loose as she answered the door, and the Sheriff's department had told her that she was on her third strike, which explains a little of her attitude, but even considering that I never could figure out why she let it out of the kitchen when she knew it was likely to attack. The Sheriff's decided to count the bite as a half bite because it occurred in her home, but the next time it happened, the dog got loose and bit a kid next door, they took the dog from her and destroyed it.
Her letter and the complaint investigation stayed in my file, as well as one from me explaining my side, until I was promoted to staff and had access to all of the employees' files, and then it mysteriously disappeared.
I also count the Chihuahua that bit my boot and worried at it for a few minutes without even coming close to drawing blood as a bite, just one of the more minor ones.
