One diary entry from a witness suggested the king was “assailed.” There isn’t much detail. I choose to believe the dog did nothing wrong.

I am somewhat intrigued by the task of identifying possible period-appropriate meanings of “to assail,” however.

More questions than answers!

It’s the owners fault, wonder what happens to him? There is a very plausible case for self defense here. Y’all talk a good game but I doubt very much either one of you wouldn’t shoot a mistreated out of control attack dog. I live around assholes with dogs they make aggressive intentionally

I wouldn’t want to shoot their dog but I would absolutely shoot their dog because I’ve seen mastiffs that straight outweigh me and I’m unwilling to die because animals are ultimately innocent.

I highly recommend learning from Mile Shikasio of aggressivedog.com if you are actually interested in non-lethal self-defense around potentially dangerous dogs.

I have been dealing with hood dogs my whole life. I’ve hurt a couple but they lived. Im from St Louis in the 80s we had wild dog assemblies the way kids today have active shooter drills. Dogs killed kids here pretty frequently and still do occasionally so I’ll be fine.

The dog probably just threw a sandwich at him

Hahah I live around assholes who raise dogs they mistreat and intentionally make aggressive some of those dogs are BIGGER than me. In the 17th century Bear baiting with mastiffs was still a thing. You work with dogs trained to fight bears?

One of my favorite aggressive dog clients was in fact a Karelian Bear Dog but yes I work with mastiff breeds who outweigh me.

Again. Are these fighting dogs? Not breeds that used to fight but dogs from a time and place where dogfighting was common? Do you encounter them in the street?

So there’s “work with” and “encounter in the street/park/woods.”. Those are different things requiring different strategies. I don’t carry a gun, but I avoid human and other species predators who are loose in my environment using a variety of strategies.

He had a gun and the king doesnt get to run or hide. It’s nice to be in a position to be kind but I think the dogfighting dogs in my hood and the ferals are much closer to the animal in question than what you deal with and shooting one makes perfect sense and is not an “assassination”

It’s like if I say “I will absolutely shoot a car jacker” and you say “my nephew asks for my car all the time I just firmly say no”

I don’t think any of us has enough information to know how similar that particular historic dog was to your ferals or gentle giant mastiffs.

Perhaps but we know that 17th century London had multiple dogfighting and bear baiting rings (there was bear baiting right next to the globe) and that mastiffs were used in combat as terror weapons so….yeah a strange mastiff MIGHT be gentle or it might have killed 30 dogs in the ring