You have to love Ridgebacks:
I couldn’t make this up if I tried, guess what came flying over the six-foot privacy fence? A FUCKING PIT BULL. A large, fence-jumping, snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth gray pit bull. WHICH LANDED ON SUNNY.
I shit you not. She was a few feet behind me, resisting the moving-on that I was enforcing, and that psycho pit bull came down right on her hind end. I wish I could truly convey to you the unholy terror I felt for about two seconds. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life and it was incredibly startling and genuinely scary. Pit bulls are not my favorite dogs. I don’t like the way they look, and waaaaayyyy too many lazy fuckers own them and don’t have even a sliver of the gonads to know how to handle them, so they get a bad reputation as killing machines. Which may or may not be fair; all I know is that a crazed snarling pit bull leaping over a fence and landing on your dog is extremely frightening.
But I have to tell you the truth: I am fantastically pleased that it happened, in retrospect, because I learned something about my sweet baby Sunny that I’d never had the chance to know before: That bitch is bad to the bone.
As soon as the pit bull landed on her hindquarters, she immediately spun around and the two of them were suddenly facing each other – Sunny’s butt to me and the pit bull facing me. I walk her on a short leash, which was yanked out of my hands as soon as this happened. They were doing that posturing/threatening thing to each other – cheek to cheek and all growls. And here’s what scared the living crap out of me: that pit bull was staring ME in the eyes. And growling in a very aggressive way.
But do you know what? I didn’t have to worry about it because Sunny – fat dumb lazy Sunny who will never be insulted by me that way again – showed that dog how things are DONE. They stood face-to-face for a few seconds, sizing each other up, and suddenly the pit bull made a move to attack her and tried to bite her neck. However, Sunny had apparently decided she was, in point of fact, the superior dog, and as soon as the pit bull started attacking, she channeled the souls of all her ancient lion-hunting ancestors and brought holy hell upon Mr. Pit Bull’s head. She didn’t even bark or growl any more, she simply ATTACKED like she was Mike Tyson and that stupid pit bull was Woody Allen. It wasn’t even close to a fair fight, partly because she outweighed him by about 20 pounds. She simply threw her bulk into the little shit and chomped in the general vicinity of his snout, and do you know what that pit bull did? HE TURNED AROUND AND RAN IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION AS FAST AS HE COULD.
Apparently a neighbor with a pit bull just moved in across the street and I’m hoping a similar situation won’t unfold, because the Dainty Flower and I aren’t quite as forgiving as Sunny and Rachel. I like dogs, so I doubt there will be any problem, but if the pit bull is dumb and aggressive enough to attack, the only question will be if the little girl crushes its head before I break its backbone.
The Viszla, of course, will be busy lying in the sun, looking good, watching everything with complete aristocratic disinterest. Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful, it’s just how he rolls.
Spacebunny’s pets tend to be very protective; her Rottweiler once slashed another dog’s ear just for pushing in between them. But I’ve never seen anything like the Ridgeback’s combination of speed, athleticism and power, they’re truly awesome animals.