Once Bitten twice shy

[doc]

I took my daughter (she is 7) prefishing with me this weekend. Things got off to a beautiful start, nice weather, fish were biting, a good day. About 7 am or so I realised i had left my Glasses in the truck, and my daughter had to use the restroom. So we made our way back to the boat ramp. At the ramp, is a parking lot of course, with a campground and a little mom and pop store.

I parked the boat, and we walked across the parking lot to my vehicle, when we got close to our vehicle 2 dogs came out from around our truck. one was a chihuaha and the other a Pit. I guess we may have startled the pit by walking up on it, but it immediatly went for my daughter and bit her once on the pants leg. When that happend she screamed, like any little girl would and the pit got ultra excited, by this time I had moved myself between the dog and my kid, and had my daughter in my arms trying to get her in the truck. Every time I turned my back on the dog he would come in and bite my legs, grab, and shake. Once I got my daughter in the truck I was able to get my tire iron and take a couple of swings at the dog and it ran off.

No one was around, and I figured the dog belonged to some campers. I made my way to the store with my daughter (and the tire iron.). The dog belonged to a gentleman behind the counter of the store, who was verrrry apologetic. The dog never broke the skin on my daughter, but I have 2 pretty nasty bites on my legs( I have a tetnus shot this afternoon. Most of the time he was biting at me, he got my pants thank goodness. The owner, loaded the dog up and it was put down(he said), he had no shot records but swore the dog was up on his shots. Had it been my daughter with the bleeding wounds I would have pressed that a little further. I was just glad she did not get hurt. Jayden (my daughter) is pretty messed up about the whole deal, she is now terrified of dogs, sad that that dog got put down, and said she will never go fishing with me again (verrrrry, sad.. I'm hoping she was just upset.)

I did place a call to the sherriffs office, to ask that they pay the owner a visit and verify that that dog was put down, as this place is a public area, and I would hate to read in the paper next week that someone else was bitten or mauled.

I learned a very valuable lesson saturday, I will never go out with my kids again without my pistol. This could have very easily been alot worse of a situation. I almost sent my daughter across the field to the truck by herself as it's a very open area and there was no one around, luckily I did not. I should also add that this was not a full grown dog, 6 to 7 months old, had it been a full grown pit I think it would have been worse. I could have handled the dog fine on my own, but with my kid screaming, and me holding onto her trying to get her in the truck, and keep the dog off it was a handfull.