From: drury@helix.nih.gov (Richard Drury)
Subject: Re: Dog Techniques
Organization: National Institutes of Health
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 04:45:22 GMT

In article <seah.711850388@sfu.ca> seah@fraser.sfu.ca (Simon Seah) writes:
>
>I don't think I'm cut out to do martial arts.  I would hesistate to hurt
>even a big nasty dog attacking me.  Some compassion thing, I guess.
>At most, I would probably stand about
>and do non-dangerous defensive actions, or just DODGE LIKE CRAZY.
>
>Does martial arts reduce one's conscience, or do dogs from hell that
>try to eat innocent people walking to school  not deserve any
>consideration.

Speaking of canines, here's a weird one folks.  From this
morning's Washington Post:

               Vicious Fox Trapped 7 in Great Falls

      Kathleen Hedges and a friend were heading toward her pool 
   slathering their children with suntan cream, when suddenly an 
   afternoon swim became a cross between the movie "Jaws" and a 
   Stephen King novel, witnesses said.
      In a flash, Hedges said she saw an apparently rabid fox charge
   toward her, her neighbor Vivian Hults and five children.  They 
   jumped into the pool and for the next 90 minutes were trapped by 
   the animal, which circled and threatened to charge them as they 
   huddled helplessly in the water.
      When Hedges' gardner arrived 50 minutes into the incident last
   Thursday, and called 911, Fairfax County police would not 
   respond.  Police referred the second and third calls for help to 
   the Animal Control Division, which did not arrive until an hour 
   later, when the fox had retreated, and the swimmers were safe in 
   Hedges' Great Falls home.
      In the pool, the situation had been terrifying.  "The animal 
   kept circling us and circling us and biting the bricks" 
   surrounding the pool, Hults said.  "We really believed he was 
   going to jump in and get us."
      "It kept coming out of the shrubs and attacking us," Hedges 
   said.  "Suddenly you'd see some movement, then it would come 
   running out of the brush and start biting bricks.  For an hour 
   and a half it kept coming after us again and again and again."
     Fairfax police spokesman Boyd Thompson said yesterday, "Our 
   response to the situation was pretty much standard response in a 
   situation like that.  But in this case, it likely wasn't an 
   appropriate response.... We came up short on that one and we 
   realize it."
      During the ordeal, first reported in the Journal, Hedges and 
   Hults gathered the crying, hysterical children in the pool's 
   center and helped them stand on pool furniture they managed to 
   stack on the bottom, the women said.
      "My 7-year-old was pretty hysterical," Hults said.  "She was 
   blue in the lips, even though it was a warm day."
      "I felt like 'Jaws,'" Hults continued.  "There was something 
   there I couldn't always see that was attacking me.  It was a 
   horrible feeling, horrible."
      When the fox attacked, Hults said she sprayed it with a stream
   of water from the pool's sweeper.
      Hedges said the children thought they were going to die.
      Long after the fox had retreated, a game warden, who had been 
   out on other calls, arrived, Hedges and Hults said.
      Later that day, the same fox apparently scrambled up the 
   stairs to a neighbor's deck, jumped in a hot tub where a father 
   and son were playing and bit the boy on the neck before running 
   off, according to Barbara Snow, director of Fairfax County Animal
   Control.
      The next day, the same fox bit a girl playing on her backyard 
   deck.  Her father beat the fox to death with a baseball bat, 
   Snow said.  Tests showed the fox was infected with rabies, and 
   the two children bitten are receiving treatment, according to 
   health officials.
      Now, Hedges says, her 2-year-old son wakes up in the dead of 
   night, believing the fox will attack him.  "They think they're 
   going to die," Hedges said.

Personally, I identify with the batter.  The swimmers avoided
injury to themselves, but did nothing to prevent the perpatrator
from just moving right along to the next victim.  The cops were
where they often seem to be when you really need them.  The
bathers were unable to defend themselves.  The batter sized up
the situation as one requiring lethal force, and did the
necessary deed.
--
Richard A. Drury
drury@helix.nih.gov
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts