As a university student, one of the first things that I learned when I started school there last September was that the school prides itself on keeping its community safe. We were handed campus safety whistles (I’ve tried mine out before, it’s pretty loud) and there are special phones located everywhere on campus with bright blue lights – they say that if we are outside of a building on any of the streets, we should always be able to see one of the phones. But there’s plenty that my school doesn’t supply us with. For example, if we want to learn how self defense, we can choose to pay for a course through my school, and other personal safety equipment, such as pepper spray, is an expense that we have to pay for ourselves.

But, there is one product at planetmace.com that I would not mind getting for myself. For those who don’t know me very well or have ever read any of my blog entries where I talk about dogs, I really don’t like dogs. I liked them just fine when I was really young, but then there’s just the little issue of my eight-year-old self getting jumped on by an adult German Shepherd (who was owned by my best friend, at the time). Previous to that, I hadn’t had any issues with dogs. But when I was 8, I was short and tiny so having something that is 6-feet-plus when standing up on it’s hind legs jumping on me, pushing me down and barking right over my face isn’t exactly a situation that I am dying to go through again. And in my neighbourhood, a lot of people own dogs. Actually, allow me to correct myself: a lot of people own dogs and let them off-leash in residential areas. I don’t care how ‘good’ or ‘nice’ you think that your dog is, it’s not a fenced in park for off-leash dogs, it’s not your own backyard or living room. You should keep your dog on its leash at all times when you’re walking in it in area where little kids can run around, where cars are going and where people, such as myself, are walking. So there’s this great product at planetmace.com that I was checking out, it’s called Mace Muzzle Canine Repellent and it comes with a keychain. I like animals, I do. I just like the idea of able to tell a dog ‘no means no’ in the event that it decides to jump and start pawing at me. Plus the website says that it’s a “safe, effective and humane defense against dog attacks” and is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) approved. Hey, if the government says it’s okay to use, why not?