One day, mail carrier Jerry Croak was lugging a mail bag down the street when he noticed across the road a 60-pound German Shepherd mix being walked by an 8-year-old boy.

When the dog saw Croak in his letter carrier’s uniform, he charged across the street, dragging the child in his wake, growling, barking and baring teeth. Eventually, the child let go, Croak remembers, and the mail carrier reached for his pepper spray.

The barking dog and the screaming mailman danced around a parked car until Croak could spray the dog, which then calmed down while Croak retreated to his vehicle. Croak didn’t deliver mail to the entire block.

Such is the life of a postal carrier.

Croak, now a supervisor and no longer carrying mail, said he alone knows of seven dog-bite incidents in Bend in the last year. Nationally, thousands of carriers are bit each year, he said.

Because carriers are faced with defending themselves everyday, a national policy allows them to curb mail delivery at any given house, or even on an entire block, if a dog is loose.

Local postal officials have cracked down on an age-old policy that says carriers are to avoid any chance of being bit.

Even if Bend resident Linda Bach is outside with her dogs, Maggie, a black Lab mutt, and Deeder, a dumpster dog from Madras, in her front yard on Delaware Avenue, the mailman can withhold the goods.

”I don’t blame them for being pensive,” Bach said. A dog bit Bach’s daughter once, so she’s particularly sensitive to anyone who might fear a Fido. Bach’s neighborhood, the Old Town Historic District, is notorious for pooch problems, postal officials say.

Carrier Supervisor Randy Woodbridge said it’s always been a policy, but whether to enforce the policy has largely been left to carriers.

”They’ve been instructed to use their best judgement. If they know the dog, they’ll deliver it,” he said.

If a dog is roaming the street, the carrier can curtail the whole block, the postal workers said.

”It’s unfortunate that everyone has to pay the price,” said Woodbridge.

What’s more, Woodbridge said, is that carriers in Bend and all over the country are no longer supposed to pet dogs or feed them snacks.

Bach understands why. She used to have a 125-pound Shepherd Collie that adored a previous mailman who reliably brought him snacks. When a substitute carrier came sans snacks one day, the dog charged in anticipation, drooling like Pavlov’s dog, and the carrier was terrified.

Bend Postmaster Bob Zlatek said he has in recent years reinforced the policy that was already in place.

”In the last year, we have experienced more aggression with dogs,” he said.

”When people say My dog doesn’t bite,’ it doesn’t hold well with me.”

He has ordered his carriers not to deliver to houses where dogs are in the yard, but he said he doesn’t have postman police to chase carriers around.

As far as carriers taking strides to win the pooches over, he doesn’t think that’s the mailman’s duty.

”I don’t think it’s the employee’s role to feed animals,” he said. ”It’s their job to deliver the mail.”

Woodbridge said carriers can permanently cut off postal delivery to a resident after three warnings.

Residents receive a warning the first time a dog is loose in the yard.

Then they are required to come into the office and sign a notice, and the third time carriers are unable to deliver mail, the resident must move his box to the curb or rent a post office box.

Zlatek said the post office tries to be reasonable.

”But if people can’t understand the severity,” he said, ”we have to suspend mail service.”

Anne Aurand can be reached at 541-383-0323 or aaurand@bendbulletin.com.