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Encounters of Canine kind

October 2, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
I had intended to squeeze in a quick easy 40-minute run before bed. Half an hour later, I found myself trapped by a stray dog on a dead end street. You see, the neighborhoods sprawled across the mountain ridge overlooking Sarajevo are full of little streets with no outlets, roads the wind around long ravines so that you can't go forward without going up several hundred meters, staircases connecting two roads, inclines steeper than anything in DC save Ft. Reno or BK, and the occasional surprise canine wandering loose in a graveyard. There are a lot of dogs, actually, and they tend to fall into two categories: pet/guard dogs which bark angrily from an upper balcony or behind a fence, and stray dogs which demurely slink away without so much as yelp whenever a human gets close. I was a little unnerved at one point to hear several dogs barking from a cemetery I was passing since this didn't fit either category, but I slowed down to walk and the continued on without being eaten. Later, however, I made a wrong turn and found myself on a street to nowhere as I was trying to get home. I turned around and there before me was a dog standing in the middle of the street. I looked around for rocks or sticks in case I needed to defend myself, but the street was well paved a free of debris. Gingerly, I tiptoed past the dog, keeping it in view and trying to avoid provoking it. Just when I thought I was safely past, it started to follow me. Shucks, I thought, maybe it's a stray dog looking for a friend. Nice as that would have been, I was in the mood for sleep, not 4-legged friends, so I made several shooing motions. Each time it would stop, then start following me again. I figured after I turned the corner onto the main road that I was safely out of its turn so I started to run but that's turned out to be like exposing a werewolf to the full moon. The dog came alive suddenly and start toward me aggressive barking. I wheeled around and bared my teeth growing, then starting backing slowly away. It came toward me. I growled. It growled. I back slowly away. After several rounds of this growling, teeth-bearing, and posturing, I managed to escape without incident. For the rest of the way back every dog back I heard I braced myself for another showdown. This city will turn any runner into a cat person.