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Perhaps your dog was more relieved to see both of you, and perhaps he was in less pain by the time your fiancee came out. There was a study done showing that dogs often recognise their owners by the way they look as well as their smell. Not faces, but general body outlines, I believe. If this was the case, smelling strange and stooping over the dog may have led it to believe you were someone else, but seeing your fiancee walk toward him (generally the outline a dog would see in common greetings) may have helped. However, dogs have such powerful noses that even with all the chemicals on you, he probably would have been able to recognize you by smell anyway. He may have been confused at first, but make no mistake, no matter how many years you spend with a dog and how friendly it is, if it is frightened or in pain, it will do what instinct tells it to do, and if that means biting the hand that helps it, no matter who it is, then so be it.

All I can do is report what happened with my dog. I doubt he was in less pain because he'd broken his hip and leg. As I didn't approach him from behind and he also was responding to my voice I know he recognized I was there.

When he bit me I was standing and then squatting down next to him in the same place my fiance squatted down shortly afterward to pick him up. He also wasn't able to see either one of us walking up to him because of the position he was laying on the street. In the position he was in he could see both of us once we walked up close enough to his head where we could squat down and then lift him up.

I was concerned when fiance did pick him up because I had thought we could make a sling type of thing with the towel and carry him in on that. The fiance picked him up under his front legs to where he could lay his head down on fiance's shoulder.

Not sure he'd have been able to smell me over the Windex, Clorox CleanUp and Barkeeper's Friend I'd been using. Anyway, I survived the bites and our pup survived his injuries.

I had to keep him still for 5 weeks after his surgery. Our vet let us borrow a playpen he wasn't using and I kept it padded with a couple of comforters as well as a regular blanket. For the first 3 weeks I could lay those plastic liners like they use in the hospitals under him and would only occasionally need to wash stuff. The last 2 weeks were entirely different though. I was washing his bedding 2-3 times a day. He and I both were glad when he was finally able to get out of 'jail'.

My mom and dad had a german shepherd when they were first married. One night, he got a chicken bone stuck in the roof of his mouth and was going nuts. My dad was scared to death to not help it and scared to death to help it. His dog did not recognize that he was trying to help him and it took quite a lot of manpower to keep the dog wrestled to the ground and my dad getting bitten while dislodging the bone.