The Dog Story

I wasn't originally going post this story for another two years because I didn't want anyone to worry while I was in Georgia but now that we're evacuated I think it's safe to tell. It wasn't a fun experience at the time but it's become one of the favorites around here so I hope you like it too.

I was walking home one day my first week in my village after spending an afternoon at the internet cafe in the next town. You have to go through an alley to get to my house which dog-legs a bit (no pun intended). Now, admittedly, I was probably not paying as much attention to my surroundings as I should have at the time. I did have my iPod on and was pretty euphoric at being able to access a computer for the first time in a couple weeks. I walked around the corner and froze when I realized I walked into a pair of angry looking dogs having it out in the gravel. A huge black dog was doing his best to take a chunk out of a smaller red mutt and I was doing my best not to get involved.

Now we are given training on how to deal with these situations. Dogs are a huge problem in Georgia, both as strays and as pets. You'll find this true of most developing countries unfortunately which is why we spend so much time learning strategies for avoiding and defusing danger. Rocks are a huge asset (I know, that sounded really bad to me too when I first heard it but read on) and we're encouraged to use them liberally. One of the reasons it works at all for the Americans is that the Georgians are even more profuse about using stones and most of the animals have learned by now to fear them.

I started to back away when I saw what I walked into but, as soon as I did, both dogs turned to look at me and growl. I grabbed some pebbles out of the gravel road and started to whip them down the alley. It worked for a bit. The black dog took off running in the other direction but, as soon as he was out of range, did an immediate u-turn and, in what seemed like an impossibly fast time, planted his jaws on my butt.

I don't recall the next 5 minutes or so. I think I set a record for most swears in that amount of time and my neighbors must have come out because I have no idea where the dogs went. The next thing I remember was limping my way back though the gate of my family's house with the Peace Corps Medical Officer on the phone.

PCMO was trying hard to calm me down and assess the situation at the same time, I eventually had to give up the phone to a family member to discuss the animal and the bite while I got my first aid kit. I hobbled my way upstairs and did one of the first things they tell you not to do in Peace Corps which is to show that you have access to expensive medical supplies by flashing them in front of other people in the village. In one of my first blog posts I talked about PCV's being pretty well equipped with everything we would need for such an emergency and its a good thing we are. I tore open the kit and strew supplies across my bed in front of my family and a couple of neighbors as I pulled out gauze, tape, anti-bacterial gel and pain killers. I also changed out of my jeans and into a pair of running shorts in front of my audience.

I grabbed a wash cloth and went down stairs to wash the wound with soap and water at the outdoor faucet. Your upper thigh area is kind of an awkward place to reach under the best of circumstances and I had a stinging pain from the bite so it was difficult for me to scrub like I should have. My neighbor, who owns the dog, eventually saw this and came over.

Now I should mention my neighbor was a 22 year old co-ed who was pretty attractive and who I had known for about 4 days at this point.

She took the cloth from me and, before I could protest, started to clean the wound. If you've never had a cute Georgian girl you've just met wash your butt for you...well, it's exactly the emotions you would imagine. I don't consider myself a religious person but, if God had killed me at that point, I would have considered it a sincere kindness. My host grandmother didn't make the experience any better by, throughout the ordeal, repeatedly pressuring me to apply some kind of home remedy she had with her that she swore up and down by but looked like infection in a bottle to me.

When she was done, and I was sure the situation couldn't get any worse, I grabbed for my gauze and tape to cover the wound and was horrified to find, when I turned around, there were 50 people in my backyard now that had come over to see the American that got bit by a dog. It seemed to me at the moment that the entire village had turned out to see my ass.

It may be the only time I've seen a neat, orderly line in Georgia but all my neighbors queued up to see the bite. I was still in a mix of shock, adrenaline and horror and this point. Each one came up to me, bent over to lift up my shorts, look at the wound, make some comment or suggestion about the treatment, and then make way for the next person. You can't imagine...

Later that night I found that there were two unexpected consequences of the attack. The first was that my stock rose way up in my host grandfather's eyes. He took the incident as some sort of right of passage for me and gave me a hearty thumbs up and a couple shots of whiskey to show his approval. I didn't know a lot of Georgian at this point but some one translated the phrase "real man" for me.

The second outcome was that my host father came to me and promised to go kill the dog that night. I want to say, unabashed, that, then and now, I am 100% for this idea. Unfortunately our medical officer stepped in and squelched the revenge plot because the dog needed to be observed for signs of Rabies. The neighbors swore that he had been vaccinated (there is a program in Georgia that sends veterinarians to villages to give free inoculations) but they couldn't find the paperwork. Since this was my first week in my village I didn't even have MY vaccinations done at this point (Rabies is a series of 3 shots over a number of weeks, I had had only 1 so far) so I was a little put out with the owners' poor record keeping.

I had to start Rabies post-exposure treatment later in the week which is a series of 5 shots over 20 something days or so. I still needed to get my pre-exposure vaccinations at the same time (in addition to all the other things we're inoculated against) so it was a lot of shots. The certification was eventually found that the dog was Rabies free (after 4 of 5 post-exposure shots...) and Peace Corps stepped in to manage the situation with the neighbors to make sure it didn't happen again. Unfortunately they did not recommend killing the dog. They did however issue me a high frequency sound dog zapper which I do not go to the bathroom without.

And once it was discovered that there was no danger to my life the story became a fast favorite of my fellow volunteers. I will forever be that trainee that got bit in the ass his first week at site. It's mostly healed up now but if my laptop is ever recovered from my village in Georgia I have photos of the immediate aftermath which are pretty gruesome. If you promise not to laugh too hard maybe some of you can see the scar too.

It wasn't a pleasant experience but I came out of it with a hell of a story which I'm sure I will retell in bars for years to come in this country and the next. Peace Corps is the few jobs where you take away experiences like this and I'm sure the dog bite won't be the last great story I come out of service with.