Then, when I met it again three years later, tried to do the same thing but by that point they'd wised up and anchored its leash to something. Although, you know, maybe there existed a more constructive solution.
And my cousin was bit three times (required stitches) by a dog she never approached, and backed away from carefully after it became obvious that it was unfriendly, running away after it bit her the first time. She did accidentally enter the owner's property, though, while jogging. The property boundary wasn't marked.
I don't think you can generalize this stuff, unless you've made a detailed survey of the conditions concerning situations where dogs have bit people.
Anyway my point is not to deny someone that they've had unpleasant or even traumatic experiences with dogs, but to point out that moderately detailed stories, like the one you just shared, are much more informative than judgments given without context.
> "My dog would never bite. He just snarls and snaps like that when he's nervous."
A dog who is snarling and snapping is doing the canine equivalent of screaming ‘GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME RIGHT NOW’. Actually trusting that dog would have to mean believing it when it tells you it is uncomfortable and feeling threatened. If you trust someone and they tell you they need to be removed from a situation, you do it.
> "If you got bit, you must have done something to the dog. No dog bites without good reason."
Honestly, this is the other side of people ‘trusting’ dogs too much. Most people who get bit by dogs are doing something extremely stupid, and most people who get bit by other people's dogs are doing something extremely presumptuous and invasive.
If what you're interested in is whether a dog is vicious (i.e., how easily it can be rehabilitated or accommodated so that it never bites anyone again for the rest of its long, happy life), the secondhand judgment of someone who got bit by the dog is generally unreliable unless it's accompanied by a detailed account. Unfortunately, being a ‘dog person’ or someone who ‘loves dogs’ or ‘has had dogs their whole life’ doesn't at all assure that a person can read basic canine body language, either.