At 8:30 a.m., I was about six miles into a run. I heard barking from a distance, and it seemed really far away. I could tell it was coming from a rural area about 250 meters from where I was, so I was not too concerned and just kept going on my run.
I was running in a suburban development where my in-laws live, and was doing loops around an area where the neighborhood was expanding with construction closer to a rural road.
The barking got louder and louder, but I rationalized that the barking still didn’t really apply to me. The dog was so far away, where no road connected the two areas, that it couldn’t possibly be that close. Perhaps it was barking at someone on the rural street, but it couldn’t apply to me.
However, I turned the corner and saw a dog coming in my direction. It was a brown, medium sized pitbull, and now it was only about 70–80 meters away, chasing me like I was his lunch. My survival instincts kicked in, and I started to run faster to run away from the pitbull. I didn’t sense that I needed to fear for my life, but my body started to act like it as my running effort went from 8/10 to all out. I have interacted with pitbulls before, but they were usually either leashed or peaceful.
As such, it was my first interaction with a pitbull not on a leash, and I had no clue how fast they were. This pitbull was gaining on me, fast, and when I looked back, it was getting closer and closer.
I was in an all-out sprint to try to shake the pitbull. It was the fastest and most high adrenaline sprint I’d engaged in for months at that point, but I still was not shaking the pitbull. The pitbull got within 30 meters of me, so I needed a backup plan because, as nice as being a 15:36 5k runner was, the pitbull was faster. I did not seem like I was going to outrun it at this point.
Around a turn, 50 meters away, there was a porta-potty by a house under construction. My plan was to get into the porta-potty and stay in there until the pitbull went away. I sensed this was my best chance at making it out of the situation unscathed.
Fortunately, once I turned the corner, the pitbull stopped chasing me. It was tired and could only walk, not run, and started to walk balk in the direction it came. I did not need to hide out in a porta-potty for five or more minutes. I knew I had the stamina to last longer, given what I had done in training up until that point, but I would have eventually slowed down, too.
Although I did not outrun the pitbull, I outlasted it. I probably had about 20 seconds before the pitbull could catch up to me at the speed it was running. I would have had to defend myself and put up a fight, and who knows how that would have gone.
People not controlling their dogs or leashing their dogs is, in my experience, an occupational hazard of running. I encounter a lot of people not leashing their dogs in a park I regularly run in, and I try to navigate around that situation.
Whenever I visit my in-laws in Alabama, I still run in that development, but generally avoid that area under construction in case the pitbull comes back. I put that update on my run on Strava, an exercise social media application, and told my in-laws about what happened, thinking it was just a funny story. I was reminded by multiple people that it was not a funny story — pitbulls are disproportionately represented in fatal dog attack injuries. Although unlikely, I could have been killed by that pitbull.
That pitbull must have been very far from where it started chasing me, so something I haven’t thought about until writing this article is whether it made it home. I’m still not sure, but I certainly hope so.
In that moment, I followed my gut instinct to run. I think that’s what a lot of people would do as a first instinct. It was not the first time I’ve been chased by a dog, but it was the closest call. In other instances, the dog stopped chasing me after it strayed too far from its owner’s home, or the dog stopped chasing if I just started walking instead of continuing to run.
I was frustrated that whoever owned this pitbull didn’t seem to have a great fence or fence at all. But this wasn’t New York, where I grew up — this was the border between rural-suburban Alabama, where I honestly should have been more prepared for such an encounter. I don’t think anyone assumes the risk of having to fight or run from a dog while exercising, but in some areas, it’s more expected than others.
After spending a good 15 minutes on the Internet, I learned running was exactly what I wasn’t supposed to do. Instead of running, the maxim is to stop, drop, roll, and make no eye contact with the dog. You never know whether the dog is just playful, protective of their territory, or whether it’s a genuinely dangerous situation, but giving chase is going to increase the chances of the dog chasing you.
Since then, there have been dogs that I’ve encountered on runs. On some of my runs in Baltimore, when a dog is not leashed and the dog starts chasing me and other runners I’m with, the owner will reassure me that their dog doesn’t bite. But since my close call pitbull encounter, I would rather stay on the safe side, stop and walk for a second if their dog starts chasing me, and then continue on my run.
I never thought too deeply about the relationship between dogs and runners until that pitbull chase, but
I realize this is not always the dog owners’ fault, even the ones that don’t leash their dogs. I used to live with a roommate who had a dog, and on days he was away and could not bring his dog, I would walk the dog in the park. He was incredibly well trained and well behaved around human beings and would never bite. But the dog would get startled around other dogs and I had to pull him away from these potentially adverse encounters.
There is something about runners that does just trigger dogs. We trigger a natural predator/prey response, and often, runners like me come out of nowhere. If I am passing someone walking their dog, I try to give as much space as possible after saying “on the left!”
How we coexist in shared public spaces has always been an interesting question to me. There have been a few times in my life when I was passing someone on the sidewalk on a run, and tried to give as much space as possible. Despite that, and sometimes yelling “on the left,” the person was still very, very startled by my presence and would say “I thought you were going to rob me” or “you scared the shit out of me.” One memorable time was while visiting family in China, when I was running in a crowded university space and they were not used to runners, and the other was in a part of Baltimore where people are not used to runners.
I will say the vast majority of dog encounters I have on runs do not result in any chasing. Very few have resulted in near bites. The smaller dogs are often more aggressive than the bigger ones, so the pitbull near attack was an exception to the usual trend in my experience.
My wife and I also plan to get a dog in the next year, and we will also bear the responsibility of making sure the dog is well-trained. I don’t know much about training a dog yet, but we want to be good citizens of the community.
There is a neighborhood social media group where there is a post once every few months about an unleashed dog in the neighborhood, roaming the road. Each time, someone comments that it’s owned by someone who has lived in the community for a long time, but I remember coming across this dog myself and then just running in a different direction to avoid another encounter with another dog on walking on the road and not on a leash.
This is probably a good time to mention that, as a kid, I had a fear of dogs. This likely comes from a time I lived in China as a toddler and was bitten by a dog (I don’t remember it, but this is what I’m told by my grandparents). When I was 6–10, I often did not want to visit my friends’ houses if they had dogs.
Now, however, I regularly dog-sit and walk my friends’ dogs, and obviously encounter a lot of dogs in my time outside. It took quite a lot of exposure to get over this fear, but I know people who maintain this fear because of similarly adverse experiences.
The next time I encounter a stray pitbull chasing me on a run, I now know it’s a dangerous situation. I can’t outrun it, but maybe I can outlast it.
But next time, I probably don’t want to take the chance.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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Photo credit: iStock.com
