UNDATED (CNN) -- In North Carolina, a police dog nearly lost a chunk of his ear. But it wasn't another dog that chewed him up. The suspect is not in the doghouse, but in the jail house.
They say take a bite out of crime. But this is about taking a bite out of a crime fighter. Travis Glaspie says, "I ain't never been bit by dog or nothing, so I bit the dog on ear."
Travis Glaspie, 22, has some bite marks all right, but the dog's look worse. This isn't just a man bites dog story. Its man bites police dog as police dog bites man.
Wilmington, North Carolina officers and police dog Maxx were chasing Glaspie, a convicted felon wanted for shooting a firearm into an occupied car. Maxx got Glaspie by the leg, while the suspect tried to get the dog off, Cpl. David Pellegrino says, "He was actually poking at his eyes."
The bite on Maxx's ear required stitches. Pellgrino says, "Maxx was bleeding pretty bad. I was covered in Maxx's blood. I didn't know ears bled that much."
Lest you think man bites dog only in movies like "The World According to Garp." we've even heard of woman bites dog, when this woman was being attacked by a Rottweiler. And one man says he bit his neighbor's growling dog after it had messed with him and his dogs for years.
Glaspie admits biting the dog wasn't exactly a smart move. On the other hand, he says, "I got the dog off me. So, evidently, I must have done something right, 'cause I could have been killed."
Maxx, by the way, is fine. It was his first bite, dog or human. After only 10 months of K-9 duty, he's already looking a little dog-eared.