I used to have a milk round on a really hard estate in Sunderland in the seventies. Every other house had a German Shepherd back when they were the hardest dogs. All the houses had big gardens and all the dogs lived outside in a kennel. You could get in and out and get the milk on the step in the mornings relatively trouble-free. Friday night after school was money collection night. Yeah.

Then a couple of years of going life and death with psychopathic Alsatians half a dozen times a week Dobermans came to Sunderland and everybody started getting them instead. Ever looked at a Doberman close up? It's an eighty pound missile shaped body on fucking fast legs and just a gigantic set of teeth at the business end. Basically an efficient transportation system for a big set of gnashers.

I have very few visible scars from this period of my life considering. Just a few small ones on my fingers and a couple of clamp marks on my arms that you have to really look for to see. I've got boxer dogs now and they're just not interested in biting you. You can take food out of their mouths, pull their tongue out of their mouths to stuff pills down their throats, drag them away from their food bowls by their tails when they're eating and they just look at you. They are very good at guarding stuff though. I'm pretty sure they'd bite the fuck out of any burglars.