Critical smarts from hitchhiker’s guide to dogs

A sign on the gate said Beware of the Dog. The gate was open. Beyond the gate, a porch. On the porch, a large dog, its head on its paws. As I walked past, the dog looked up. Involuntarily I found myself thinking what I would do if the dog charged. And a memory flooded in.

Summer in the late 1970s. I was 20 years old and hitchhiking through France. It wasn’t a holiday. It was going for the sake of going, a salve for feet that itched. And where they itched to go was anywhere that wasn’t home.

It was hardish going. I had a battered old backpack and a rolled-up tent and a change of clothes and a notebook and not a lot else. The further south I went, the warmer it got. But I was lean, fit and young.

The essence of hitching is to consider the driver. You need to give them cause to stop, which means facing them and looking as engaging as possible. And you need to give them the chance to stop, which means a place to pull over and the time to do so. To find such a place you need to get out of the towns and villages and into the hinterland beyond, where settlement begins to yield to country. And it was there in France, that the dogs lived, especially German shepherds.

I was brought up with a dog. I have owned four dogs. But that does not stop me fearing some dogs. And it is wise to fear some dogs, or at least to be cautious of them. If you have watched a dog tear gristle from a bone you know what its jaws can do.

The German shepherd is a fine dog when trained. Untrained they are less fine. One almost killed the dog I was brought up with. I have been nervous of them since.

Sometimes a sign on a fence would say Chien Mechant. Mechant translates as naughty. More often there was neither sign nor fence. Only a German shepherd in a front yard guarding a property whose boundaries it knew to the millimetre, but I did not. It would watch me as I walked past. Sometimes it would growl. Sometimes it would shadow my movements. I shuddered and walked on, not daring to look it in the eye, and not daring either to run.

For I knew enough of dogs to know it would be more likely to chase a runner, and you’ll never outrun a dog. Also, given the weight of that pack, I was more likely to fall on my back like a flipped tortoise, exposing my soft underparts to those iron jaws. To think of it even now is to remember the throat-gripping nausea of the moment. Fear is debilitating stuff.

Somewhere in the Dordogne one afternoon, I stopped for a beer in the heat. The only other man at the bar asked me what I was doing there and how I was enjoying myself and it wasn’t long before I told him of the dogs.

"Boof," he said, more or less. There was no need to fear.

I said it was all very well for him to say "boof", but what if one of them went for me?

"I will tell you," he said. He took a sip of his pastis and then he told me, acting the thing out as he did so.

He explained that it is fatal to run. You have to face the dog and stand your ground. When a dog attacks it will leap for your throat, so what you do is to cross your wrists and extend your arms out in front of you like the gun-barrel on a tank. The front paws of the leaping dog will pass either side of the barrel. As they do so, you push your arms out sideways. This will force the dog’s front legs out unnaturally wide. But the dog’s momentum will keep it coming forward and its sternum will snap. The shattered bone will pierce the dog’s vital organs. The impact of the dog will still knock you over, but you will find yourself lying on your back underneath a dead dog. "Et voila!"

Had he ever done this?

"Of course not," he said. "There’s no need. All you have to do is to know that you know how to do it. Then just look the dog in the eye. It’ll know you know. Try it."

I did.

Did it work?

Who’s writing this?

• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.