Scaring the Heck out of Others

Over my career I’ve trained scores of new letter carriers. It’s always amazed me that someone with a pathological fear of dogs would even consider the job. One such trainee soiled himself when he saw me charged by two of a customer’s dog who managed to get out through an improperly latched door. One spring I encountered a college-aged summer replacement hydro meter reader out alone for his first rounds. We exchanged greetings and I thought nothing more of it until we next met on another street outside a customer’s back gate. His strikingly handsome features were contorted in a look of abject terror; he’d just punched up the house on his portable data terminal and gotten the message: dog, Bear! Well I knew this dog and opened the back gate to show him a medium-sized dog house in the back yard with the name, “BEAR”, mounted over its entrance. The look of relief on his face was palpable.

On another occasion another Hydro employee had arrived at an east-end home to replace a meter; found no one at home; and the huge female Landseer Newfoundland dog in possession of the back yard. I knew that dog as well and offered to hold it while the technician performed his duties. He agreed but obviously didn’t trust that I would be any impediment if that dog decided to attack—he made a thirty-foot circuit around us in making his way to the hydro meter.

Yet again a child opened the door and let loose a large black mongrel. It charged and attacked me with amazing ferocity leaving permanent teeth marks on the mail bag I was carrying at the time. My only wound was an abrasion on one finger and in my panic I couldn’t determine whether it came from the dog or the metal clip that attaches strap to bag. It was days later that I learned that a hydro reader was across the street when this happened and sat in a neighbour’s kitchen for an hour having a full-blown panic attack having witnessed the event. Apparently he repeatedly stammered, “That, that, that cou’, cou’, cou’, could have b’, b’, b’, been me!”