Tonight I was scared to death by giant puppy.

Can you remain calm when faced with your greatest fear? Tonight I was running our flop eared smiler, also known as Sally our dog. About a mile from home, we had a giant, loose rottweiler dog run at us - at full speed!!! Out of the blue, he was there, no owner, no caller, and no place to hide. I did what I would normally do in this situation -panic. Sally did the same thing.

The two dogs circles, sally growled, yelped, and ducked her little behind. I let go of the leash so she could freely protect herself. The dogs went into the road, I yelled and tried to get the rot to go home. After my senses came back to me, a little, I noticed he was full grown in body but his brain was all puppy.

Sally didn't seem to care, he was big and aggressive and she was scared. Two nice teenagers came up and grabbed him telling us to go ahead, we took off, but with no collar the guys couldn't hold our new friend, within a few minutes he was back . For 2 blocks and what seemed like hours, the dogs circled. I did my best to keep Sally and myself calm while keeping the dogs out of the street or at least alerting the traffic to slow down.

By now it was dark, the cars coming home from work couldn't see the dogs darting in and out of the street. Thankfully I was wearing white and my neighbors drove slowly around. I'm sure they didn't know what they could do any more than I did. Finally, this amazing lady stopped and offered to let Sally into her SUV. The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing. Sally got in the back and didn't move a muscle.

With Sally safe, I relaxed for a second until our new friend shot across the street and tried to make friends with a lady walking her little dog. I know just how she felt- scared to death. By now I was pretty comfortable with my big, aggressive puppy brained friend. I couldn't leave this giant no-clue pet to his own wisdom-he had none. He was either going to get hit or scare someone to death!

Sally stayed in the car, our good Samaritan tried to call animal control and I went back to warning traffic. This dog was beyond clueless! He would jump right in front of the cars. Thank goodness they were going slow, no wonder, I was waving my arms around like a lunatic. Finally, a man drove up, said the dog's name was Gabriel and it was his dog, he loaded him in his car and drove away.

And that was it. the excitement was over, no blood was shed, there was nothing left to do but say thank you again, for the thousandth time and go home.

This could have gone so much differently, but just like in life, my own fears (and Sally's) were worse than the reality we found ourselves in. We were not attacked by a vicious dog, but by a great big puppy. I should probably learn a lesson from this. Don't panic first, you can always panic later -if needed. Next time this happens, I'll still panic but it is still a good lesson.

Wishing you a healty and happy home,

Denise