So last night I was walking home and this woman was ahead of me on the sidewalk, this guy starts talking to her dog, homeless guy I think, or drunk, anyway I walked out in the street to take pictures of the trees with blue lights on them. When I came back on the sidewalk she had stopped to talk to a man walking his dogs, so I walked behind him. His dachshie ran toward me, it was a mini, a puppy mini very small and very mini. I thought, You are a very friendly dog. I then looked at the dog the woman had been walking, and got scared. So I walked on.

Why did I get scared? He had a “HI PLEASE FEED ME!” look on his face, he was also a puppy, and friendly. So why did I run? When I was a very little girl I got bitten by a dog. It wasn’t a stray dog, it was the family pet and I am told I deserved it. Not in so many words of course, but through the years that is the memory I’ve retained. I took the dog’s bone, the dog bit me, it wasn’t the dog’s fault, it was mine. At two years old I should have KNOWN not to take a bone away from a dog. I have no memory of this, my only memory is being told it happened and seeing a slide of me with the dog, and I was crying. The slide is black and white so you can’t even see if there was blood. I have no visible scars from this event either. No marks on my face or arms or legs to ever show I was bitten by a dog.

My scars therefore, must be on the inside. When I see a black and white dog, with a long pointed noise and upright ears, I get scared. I won’t walk down a street if such a dog is there. Big black dogs that run up to the fence and bark ferociously don’t scare me as much. Of course people laugh at me, for being afraid of a ‘little dog’. I get defensive, I don’t want to be afraid. The truth is, I am afraid and embarrassed of being afraid, because I don’t know how to not be afraid.

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