Census work and dogs

There are a few challenges in delivering census questionnaires.   In this post I will talk about one challenge: dogs.

I didn't have any real problems with dogs.  With that I mean dog bites.  In my training class I met a woman who worked for the census back in 2009 to map addresses was bitten by a dog.  Then earlier this week I met a woman who was recently bitten by a small dog as she delivered a census questionnaire.

I did encounter:

• friendly dogs who snuck up on me and greeted me when I opened my car door.  Surprise!

• dogs (and one cat) who got into my car when I left the door open while talking to the home owner.

• dogs who brought me sticks and wanted to play fetch.

• a dog who brought me a Frisbee and wanted to pay catch.  I did toss him the Frisbee for a few minutes and he was good in catching it.

• dogs that peed on my car tires.  I think three of the four wheels were marked.  I didn't wash them as dogs who approached me by the car suddenly shifted their attention from me to smelling my car tires.  Even with all my driving through water and snow the dog urine seemed to have stayed on my car wheels.

• dogs that had a loud or piercing bark.   They tended to be small dogs and constantly barked.  The owners seemed to be accustomed to the bark and only tried to shush their dogs after I started to wince from the sound or would ask them to repeat their answer as I couldn't hear it. I thought my ear drums would burst from one dog's barking. 

• one house had six to eight dogs in the yard to the main house entrance.  They were all Siberian Huskies and all were quite excited to see me, jumping around and barking constantly.  I went around to the other house door and found another six to eight dogs inside the house running around from window to window to sliding glass door to bark at me.  No surprise that the house looked to be a mess inside.

• two vicious looking and sounding dogs inside a house with a glass door.  My, why large teeth they had. 

• a brusque woman who said if I came back not to get out of my car if her dogs were in the yard.

• one dog I kept an eye on as it half slunk and occasionally bared its teeth as I walked to the front house door.

• and the two dogs in the following photos.  I left the census questionnaire on the gate.  It took them 6 seconds to get from the house to the gate.  I guess they took their time as I wasn't inside the gate.  The lighter colored dog has a chain trailing it.