One of my most vivid memories of my Dad was him coming home one night, and he held his hand over his face. Ignoring me he said to my Mam “Audrey I don’t want you getting upset, it looks bad but I’m OK. Are you listening?” She nodded and he moved his hand, his entire top lip hung down on a strip of flesh. You could see his teeth looking like Skeletor. As a Gas engineer he had been called out to a job, and the woman had a dog. The Jack Russell took exception to him picking it up and chewed at his face. He loved dogs and always messed with them, but said he would never have one. This stemmed back to when he had a pet pig, raised it from a piglet, then seven years on returned home his Dad sent him to the butcher for a pork sandwich. On getting there, there was his pet pig hanging up in two halves by his heels. “Do you want the sandwich from your pig?” asked the butcher callously. He would never have a pet again, it hurt him too much. He went to the hospital and 123 stitches later he was back, and demanding his supper. Hard as nails my Dad.
 Maybe it was that strength that explains how he treated me after I got bitten too. We played football on Condecum Road football field, and often German Shepherds and Dobermans would run onto the field. I was never scared and would tap them on the nose and send them packing. Yet this day a tiny little Yorkshire Terrier ran on, his hair in a red bow. I tried to shoo him away too. It latched its teeth on the back of my calf and began ripping. Within seconds he had bitten the muscle and it dragged behind me in the dirt. I got home to get help, and my Dad brought in all the kids, ‘to show them the damage any dog could do!’. Instead of an ambulance (we never had a car) he walked me the mile and three quarters uphill to the General Hospital, where i had been born.
My Uncle Jack had a bone headed Staffordshire Bull terrier, and whatever my Dad was eating he would put his plate on the floor to feed it. I hated that, fully knowing I would be given that plate down the line.
Since then I had a fierce respect and doubt about dogs of all sorts. The worst time with dogs was on a TV and Radio trip to Romania. Transylvania in fact, to visit Dracula’s Castle, Countess Bathory’s Citadel and a haunted forest in the Carpathian Mountains. I had hosted a Dracula show, and the following day I was driven 136 miles deep into the Carpathian Mountains, home to wolves, bears and numerous other things capable of killing you. On reaching the edge of a particularly dense woodland, off I went, leaving my driver to wait the half mile behind me. I was visiting the wood where Vlad The Impaler had ambushed the Turkish Army, impaling each soldier onto the young trees. There was said to be thousands of men spiked on these young trees. As the trees grew the dead bodies, the armour and weapons grew into the trees. High up these mighty fully grown trees you could see skeletal fingers, skulls, the glinting of swords, helmets, breastplates and such. As I reached the area I noticed a few dogs sniffing about, and thought nothing of it. It was the first hour of my LIVE radio show and I was just getting started, when more dogs arrived. I was in the middle of a pack of thirty or so dogs of numerous types. Two of them growling and behaving aggressively. So you can hear the recording here on Robsonsworld.com and many other fierce and unique adventures. They began nipping and testing me. I picked up a birch twig, sweeping it around me to keep them at bay, all the while talking to my audience all those thousands of miles away. Just then two dogs sank their fangs into my right knee, i felt blood pouring down my leg, and knew if I fell I would die right there. Instead, rather than running, I began walking fast towards the car, on getting a little away from the bulk of the feral creatures I started to kind of limp run. On doing that I heard them all hunting me in a pack. Bizarrely most did not bark, they were far more intent to bite me. Just then, as I thought I was about to be overwhelmed, from the bush ahead raced my Romanian driver, swing a huge lump of wood. The dogs yelped in pain as he swatted them like flies, and he helped me into the car. As we drove away I heard a bump or two, as he ran over dogs, reversing to turn. Once about two miles away he got a basic First Aid Kit, and wrapped my three huge open wounds with basic bandaging. Probably to stop me bleeding on his limo. The nearest hospital capable of dealing with me was the capital Bucharest, six hours away. I couldn’t believe that as we had landed at Timisoara, and there was a hospital there. He explained that many wild dogs in Romania had rabies, and Bucharest is the only place they could treat me. I was shaking, in shock, and hoping that I would not be foaming at the mouth any time soon. On getting there they took hours stitching me up, 64 stitches in three places. Then the treatment in case I had rabies, which involved a dozen injections directly into every one of my internal organs, quite simply one of the most painful and scary things I have ever endured. I had no sleep, as the following morning I got a plane back to Timisoara to do my TV filming and radio show later on.
People are often surprised when I say I am not a ‘Doggy’ person. Perhaps this goes some way to explain it!