Once bitten, so what?

If Marilyn Monroe met Alfred Harmsworth, John B Bogart and Charles Anderson Dana, wonder how that’d pan out. Monroe, a dog-lover, was quoted implying the back stabbers in her life with, “Dogs don’t bite me. Just humans.” While the three prominent newsmen are attributed to the quote that journalism is only about ‘breaking news’ – “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” Squashing this sensitivity vs sensationalism debate is a WHO report that says India sees 1.75 million cases of dog bites every year. A peer-reviewed 2015 study by the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal further amuses – men are 1.81 times more likely to get bitten than women, and dog owners are 3.31 times more likely to get bitten than non-dog owners.

Yet, those puppy eyes, enthusiastic tail wags, wet nose kisses can crumble the toughest cookie. The specimens below are a case in point. These four were once bitten by ‘man’s best friend’, but can’t stop loving them.

Not out of anger

When Mumbai-based model-actor Maradona Rebello, 32, bagged a big assignment, eight years ago, his pious mother felt the good fortune must be acknowledged with an act of charity. “I began distributing vada pavs to street kids. Everyone was jumping to snatch one, including a stray dog who didn’t aim for the vada pav, but my butt!” The wound bled and Rebello rushed to a vet. Luckily, he was only administered an anti-rabies vaccine instead of stitches. “Next day, the flight to the shoot was so uncomfortable...” It took few weeks to physically heal, and four months for Rebello to love dogs again. “Interacting with friends’ pet dogs and small-sized dogs helped.”

Brand consultant Aanchal C Saigall was bitten by a “cute, shaggy, Lhasa pup” at age four. Saigall had begun paying attention to a new dog in the building and this angered the pup. “One day, he got territorial and pulled me away from the dog with his mouth. I still have the stitches... but did I stop loving the dog?” she wonders aloud, to which her mother quips, “No, you were very calm and still wanted to pet it.” Today, Saigall advocates adoption of strays, handles public relations for a pet grooming brand, and is pet mom to Hobbs – a six-year-old naughty brown cocker spaniel-and-Indie mutt. “Dogs will use their jaws to communicate, so they don’t always bite out of aggression.”

Dogs, like every living being, attack when they feel a threat. Even then, judging the dog from the lens of being dangerous is debatable. “My mom had every right to hate dogs, yet she never did,” says Rita Ovejas, 34, a finance editor with an multi-national company. Once, four dogs bit her mother all over her hands and legs, while she was cradling three-year-old Rita in her arms. She was admitted to a hospital, administered an anti-rabies injection and had to be given multiple stitches. “Yet mom felt the dogs were only protecting themselves because we were in their territory.” So when Ovejas, at seven-eight years-old, was playfully bitten on the lips by a friend’s Pomeranian, she thought of her brave mother and didn’t make a noise. Still, at the behest of her friend’s mother, she took the rabies vaccine shot.

Don’t poke the dog

When Lloyd Saldanha, a tech entrepreneur, was about seven or eight years old, and on a family vacation to Goa, his cousin used a big stick to push the food to their pet dog, and nudged the dog a bit. “I wanted to copy my cousin, and also nudged it. But this time the dog just charged at me. I ended up with a deep scratch at the back of my palm. Till the 5th-6th standard, I stayed away from dogs. In time, I started playing with street dogs and grew attached to street dogs.” Saldanha is now pet parent to a 10-month-old mixed breed called Spirit, and extensively researches YouTube videos and follows the Mexican animal behaviourist, Cesar Millan. “If a bunch of street dogs start barking at you, locate the leader and [try to] pet it. The pack will quieten down,” Saldanha dishes out a tip.