I was out for a walk with my father. I remember being tired. My legs didn’t want to go on. I whined the way children do when they’re exhausted and still want to feel just a little important.
“Dad, I don’t want to walk anymore.”
He lifted me onto his shoulders.
And from up there, everything felt different. Higher. Wider. But above all, safe. I was with him. With my protector. I didn’t have to do anything. Just sit up there and be carried.
We came back to my grandfather’s house. My grandfather bred Rottweilers. Dogs were part of my childhood. I had played with the puppies, had spent summer holidays there. To me, they weren’t threatening. They were part of my world.
Just before we reached the house, my father lifted me down from his shoulders. He said I could walk the rest on my own. It was only a few more meters. I ran ahead.
And then everything happened in seconds.
In my memory, I see a movement from the left.
A fence.
A dark body jumping over it.
What comes next are images. Fragments. Maybe real, maybe shaped by stories told later, or by what my mind made of it afterward.
A Rottweiler.
Its weight.
Its teeth on my left leg.
A pain in my face.
Then emptiness.
The next clear memory is the front door being thrown open. My grandmother is standing there. I will never forget her face — a mixture of horror, fear, and immediate action. Gauze bandages. Kitchen towels. Blood soaking through the fabric. The car. The drive. Two weeks in the hospital in Wuppertal.
I was four years old, and something inside me had understood that the world is not only safe.
The Invisible Fracture
In retrospect, what almost feels stronger than the bite itself is the moment before it.
Just seconds earlier, I had been sitting on my father’s shoulders.
I was carried. Protected. Safe.
And then, suddenly, there was something no one could prevent.
Perhaps it is in moments like these that a quiet crack forms in our basic trust. Not consciously. Not in words. But deeply felt. An early experience of losing control. Of helplessness. Of realizing: Something can happen even when I am being protected.
Experiences like this do not simply disappear. They settle beneath your life like a thin, almost invisible layer. You develop vigilance. Perhaps a stronger need for control. Perhaps diffuse fears that seem to have no clear origin.
Fear no longer defines me. I have understood it, reflected on it, integrated it. But I know it began somewhere — on that summer day, by a fence, with a leap out of nowhere.
And perhaps the most important part:
Today, I am not afraid of dogs. On the contrary. Dogs are my favorite animals. I interact with them daily. We have a dog of our own. I love their loyalty, their presence, their directness.
When I encounter a Rottweiler today, I am sometimes briefly reminded of that experience. A quiet reflex. An old bodily memory. But it no longer controls me.
I can forgive the animal now.
I can forgive the situation.
And perhaps also the four-year-old boy who could not understand why safety sometimes breaks.
This experience showed me early on how fragile safety can be.
And at the same time, how powerful trust can become when you rebuild it anew.
