Real Estate Hell, Dealing with a Ferocious Dog

Let me set the scene: I've arranged a lsit of showing appointments for my prospects, Mom, Dad, their three year old baby girl and her parents came along too. This was back in an era before centralized showing services came into existance. I made the appointment to show by calling the listing office. "Ring Ring", "Hello ABC Realty? I'd like to show your listing at 1313 Mockingbird Lane this afternoon at 4:00 PM, Can I do that" The duty agent responds: "We'd love for you to show 1313 MockingBird at 4, let me set it up for you, please hold while I call the owner? 'Absolutely, I'll wait'  "OK, back, you're all set for 4:00 o'clock. Theres a bad dog in the house, but they have him in a crate in one of the bedrooms, so don't worry about that"   We get to the house and I've got five people standing in back of me watching me use the key on the car port door. I open the door and the little girl runs past me into the home. The parents and grandparents and I are close behind. She runs through the small kitchen into the adjoining living room. Then, we saw HIM. A snarling large animal with the hair on his neck straight up.  He had come from the back bedroom where he had gotten out of his cage and was very unhappy to have strangers in his house. The little girl is between us and him. The parents, grandparents and I are literally paralyzed with fear. My only thought was "Dear God, help me". I saw a sliding glass door to my immediate right and I moved towards it with lightning speed and flung it wide open. The upset animal ran past the child, through the open door and into the back yard. I quickly shut the door behind him and everyone inside the home breathed a deep sigh of relief. We had averted a real estate version of the Cuban missle crisis. The dog was Khruschev, I was JFK and we had just averted  Armageddon by showing "Khrushchev" that there was a way out of an unsavory predicament. What did I learn from this experience?  Be incredibly careful when showing real estate where you're told a bad dog is "allegedly" safely secured inside it's cage. They can and do get out.