Dog Daily 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.”

– John B. Bogart, New York Sun editor of long, long ago

I was thrilled when I read the above quote. I had been wanting to write about something I read in an article on CBC News today, about a man in Canada who recently bit a dog (who also happened to be in Canada).

I’ll get into the details in a moment, but first I want to describe the dissention this created in the office. Half the staff (Ida and me) thought it was a very legitimate story to include on Dog Daily News. The other half (Zulu and Jasper) just about had a riot. Jasper said he’d go on strike. Zulu said it was a travesty. Their argument was that if we started including stories about people biting dogs, we’d have to write about all the dogs who bite people. And we all know there are a lot more of those kinds of stories. “Think of the bad rap dogs would get!” Zulu stammered nervously and loudly. (Actually, he always speaks that way, being pushy and anxious by nature.)

I was on the verge of heeding his shrill voice when Ida calmly called my attention to the Bogart quote. And victory was ours.

So back to Jonathon Schacher, the Saskatoon man who bit the dog…He actually bit a dog who was biting a dog. It’s a bit of a chain reaction. He said he saw a “wandering” pit bull terrier attacking a neighbor’s dog. He tried unsuccessfully to pry the pit bull’s mouth off the victim’s muzzle. So he took a rather dramatic step: “I could just feel I needed to do something, and so I bit the dog right on the nose,” he told CBC News.

The result? A pit bull who not only spat out his victim’s shnoz, but became a majorly beta dog. “He just sat down and his tail started wagging, and then I let go of him,” Schacher told the CBC. Then the pit bull licked him in the face, and went on his way, wandering back out of the neighborhood. (The concept of a wandering pit bull is rather foreign to us San Francisco dogs. But Canada is also rather foreign to us too, come to think of it.)

And there is your man bites dog story. John B. Bogart would be proud of us.