Fending off an aggressive dog while walking with baby

And thoughts on my uncertain role in raising a child

This weekend my family took a stroll in the neighborhood. It was me, my wife, our baby (in a baby stroller), and our two dogs on one of our usual routes. At about the halfway point, we came across two men and one woman, each seemingly in their late 50s or early 60s, with dogs on leashes. Suddenly, one of the men shouted, “Stop! Get back here!” as one of the dogs broke free from its leash and came toward us.

I’m no expert on dogs, but I knew the approximately 70 pound dog was not joyfully approaching us to exchange licks for pets. The first thing I did was try to assess whether it was attempting to attack our baby. It seemed that it was not going directly at the baby, but instead circling around deliberately, in a predatory jog, as if it was waiting for the right opportunity to lunge. I tried to position myself between the aggressive dog and the baby, while shortening our dogs’ leashes. 

Suddenly the dog moved quickly toward us and I sidestepped and then kicked my leg into its neck and upper torso area at about a 45 degree angle to deflect it away from us. The dog bounced off and then circled around us while my wife repositioned the baby stroller to make sure the dog did not have an opening at the baby. When the dog completed its circle it lunged again, and I kicked it, deflecting it, again. This happened perhaps five or six times.

The dog then stopped lunging toward us and began running around us in an ever widening circle. My wife and I tried to keep me positioned between the baby and the dog, although by this point it seemed that the dog was more interested in going after our dogs than the baby. Nonetheless, we weren’t taking any chances.

The two men from the other group were shouting at the dog and chasing after it the entire time, but they were too slow to get close to the dog. Because the dog was giving us more space to move, we turned up a steep hill to get away from it. Each time the dog came toward us on the hill, I stepped toward it aggressively, yelled at it, and waved it back to its humans. He eventually ran off and one of the men apologized for the inconvenience as we walked away.  

I don’t know what kind of dog it was, and I didn’t care to stick around and talk to the owners who still didn’t have control of the dog when we were well up the hill. But after looking online at various dog breeds I’m guessing it was a Dogo Argentino. I found that that breed of dog is quite aggressive, but mostly toward other dogs. I don’t think our two 17-20 pound dogs would have done well if it would have gotten to them. 

By Ricardo Martins from Gent, Belgium - Argentine Dogo Uploaded by Partyzan_XXI, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138416426

The experience, while somewhat alarming, strangely felt good. 

I’ve been struggling with being a stay-at-home dad who is not contributing financially to the household. I know that staying at home with the baby instead of relying on some form of outsourced childcare is tremendously beneficial to the baby, and I feel privileged and fortunate that I do not have to work in order for our family to survive. But I want to generate income while also caring for the baby. I feel it is my duty to do so, particularly because I could if I was willing to take a job given my educational and professional background. And even though I claim to be unambitious, not doing so still evokes a deep sense of insecurity. 

I know my insecurity has a lot to do with my own schooled mindset around the role of fathers in a patriarchal society, as well as an economic system that tells us that our worth as individuals is measured by the income we earn, if not the wealth that we create. But if I cannot provide for my family financially, at least I can protect them physically. And in this one instance, I felt that.

This is ridiculous, of course. The most important contributions that parents of any gender can provide are the emotional ones, as they easily trump the benefits of financial or physical security. And I get a chance to do that every day, whether or not I can generate income, or whether or not I can protect us from physical harm. The parent who is able to make their child feel accepted and unconditionally loved is the ultimate provider.