While I was on my Saturday morning run several weeks ago, I was bitten by a dog. It was on a route that I have run many times before and I have always heard the dog barking behind a high stockade fence at the end of a cul de sac. On this particular morning, I turned the corner and immediately stopped when I saw the large black dog which immediately saw me. I knew exactly what was about to happen and there was nothing that I could do about it. I couldn't run, since Rule #1 is to NEVER run away from a dog attack. I carry nothing with me when I run, so I had nothing to defend myself (not that a cell phone would have done any good unless I had the taser attachment). I was standing in the middle of the road and had no where to hide. And so I stood still, waiting for the inevitable to happen. The dog charged right at me, aggressively barking. He stood a foot away for a second or two and I thought he was done, but then he turned back and bit me on the butt. As he ran back towards the house, I started running/walking away as fast as I dared. When I was out of his sight, I booked it back home as quickly as I could (my running mojo was totally shot) and ran in the door yelling at my husband to get the camera and take a picture of my butt cheek. The bite didn't break the skin, but I had four distinct red marks from his canine teeth, which turned into four pretty bruises over the coming days.
My point of telling you this is not to warn you about big black dogs (little white dogs bite just as much), but to marvel about the power of an experience. I know that the probability of that dog ever being outside the fence again are near zero. In five years of running on that road, it has never been loose. One part of my mind knows that, but the other part is still very nervous and cautious. I avoided that route until this past weekend, when I practically forced myself to run that way just to prove that it wouldn't happen again. However, I couldn't bring myself to turn into the cul de sac and run right by the house. It just seemed like I was tempting fate, even though I knew the odds were against it. I normally really enjoy running through that neighborhood - there is a lot of green space, not a lot of cars - but this one little love bite left a negative impression that lasted long after the bruises faded.
It makes me wonder about my daughter and the power of experiences that she is having. Will she remember the events that are occurring in her sub-three year old life? Has she experienced a traumatic experience already that has made a mark on her conscious, but that I just wrote off as no big deal? I know that we learn new things when we are pushed out of our comfort zones. Facing our fears, blah, blah, blah. But the problem is that we each have different fear levels. It makes me think about the cliched story of a Dad teaching his child to swim by tossing him into the deep end of the pool/middle of the lake/dark and stormy ocean and leaving the kid to either sink or swim. The child hopefully was able to figure out some desperate doggie paddling, but he also probably lost just a bit of his trust in Dear Old Dad. I'm not speaking from personal experience here; my traumatic childhood experiences with my Dad involve hiking. After you hear, "We're so close I can almost spit on it" several times and you still don't see the top of the mountain*, you sort of give up hope of ever making it to the summit. However, something about that family nature time stuck with me for the better, because now I love hiking. And you know what? I have already uttered that infamous phrase to my daughter.
*We're not talking Everest here - a mountain in central Pennsylvania is actually just a large hill.