A joyful pup and its mistress once passed me on their walk in the park. The joy in the puppy’s half step half hop was quite evident. To it, every moving blade of grass was an investigative sherlock holmes mystery to be unraveled.

Moments later, you hear a repeated high pitched yap yap yap yap and the deeper growl of a less playful dog. Without turning, you already know the problem. Playful puppy has been stopped dead in its tracks by another dog which may not be quite under control of its master.

In many parts of North America that problem dog is actually a dog that has inherent anger problems perhaps due to an owner who wasn’t loving and caring or problems due to inbreeding and or its part of its gene makeup.

My neighbor tells the story of his dog which is actually half dog and half Northern wolf.

A little less than a year prior, he had chained his big wolf puppy to the tail gate of his chevy pickup. He had then gone inside for lunch while the puppy played outside. He says he wasn’t inside more than about 15 minutes before a deep snarl and a shout caused him to run to the front door.

A Pit Bull Terrier had torn itself loose from its owner and was running full speed at his tied dog. His dog went suddenly silent and ears perked alert as it appeared to test the length on its leash. It backed up quickly towards the car and half sat and waited the second and a half for the pit bull to cross the 40 feet between them.

This all happened at high speed, but when the Pit Bull leapt high for his dog’s throat with uncanny speed, his dog was eerily not there anymore. It was airborne and above the pitbull. As the pitbull landed and simultaneously twisted, my neighbor’s half wolf clamped its jaws on the PitBulls neck and held it motionless while the pitBull shook itself viciously backwards and forwards.

A very low wolf like growl emitted from my neighbors dog. For a moment the pitBull went slack and the half wolf tossed it about 2 meters.

What happened next is the stuff of legends. The furious pitbull twisted before it hit the ground. Some say that it never touched the ground before it was instantly airborne again. But the story was different this time. The wolf puppy didn’t wait this time. It timed the rush perfectly and met the pitBull almost at the end of its own leash. In a moment it was over. The big puppy snapped the neck of the pitBull and it was over.

Time that had rushed faster than anyone could probably recount, suddenly stood still. The only slow movement came from the puppy as it backed to the vehicle, slunk down and looked around.

Its truly sad when something like this happens. The savagery of the episode is lost in the speed and suddeness of an attack like this. We heard that an older child had been threatened by the same dog a year earlier and that there was pending investigations about that due to those on the scene telling different versions of what they thought they saw.

Who knows, sometimes nature itself is the great equalizer. Everyone there was certain as they told the story afterwards, that the puppy was a goner. No one had thought that there was quite that much quickness or wolf like strength and self preservation in that quiet puppy.