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.

Seconds later, however as you are twenty or thirty meters away you and every one else hears a high pitch yapping and you turn already knowing with horror as you hear the deep throated roar that that little puppy that you just passed is in some serious trouble. Perhaps even its owner is not able to extricate it from the problem.There are lots of reasons for bad dog behavior. Some of them logical and some well, not quite as obvious. The dog misbehaving may be a dog that has been ill treated, or it might have a long standing chronic problem like a very bad tooth ache or head ache that it keeps under control until something unleashes it. Or the problem could be partially hereditary as in certain types of dogs being more prone to behavioral problems.I heard an interesting tale as I was stroking the hair of my neighbor’s half wolf puppy.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.What happened next was more of a blur, but as he describes it the pitBull jumped and was airborne and in attack mode in no time at all. The waiting half wolf had expected this and when the pitbull grabbed for where the puppy’s throat was, it got nothing but air. On landing, the pitbull tried to launched itself yet again but the puppy was already above it in the air and promptly seized the pitbull’s throat as it attempted to shake it into submission.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.I am told that the angry pitbull didn’t have 3 feet properly on the ground before it promptly launched itself yet again at the half puppy. This time meaning to surprise it. However, everyone was surprised when the puppy itself met the pitBull midway and without ado simply snapped its neck. There was a kind of silence that one hears when everyone is holding their breath.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 not my position to judge as to what was right and wrong about this. We were told however that the pit bull had attacked a youth in the preceding year and that it and or its owner was under some kind of suspension while its case was being decided. Normally, it would have been put down or something, but witnesses didn’t all tell the same story so…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.