A delivery driver in Lichfield threw down a Subway order and climbed a fence onto a rubbish bin after two small dogs approached him, a panic now seen by hundreds of thousands online.
The driver rang the doorbell on September 5 at a house in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in England, still holding the food. Then the dogs appeared. He dropped the order on the floor, bolted onto a neighbor’s property, scrambled over a fence, and mounted a black dustbin while the barking pair closed in around him.
Video later showed him balanced with one foot on the bin and the other on the fence as the animals circled below. The clip spread online and drew more than 860,000 views and about 5,400 likes.
Daily Mail reporting described a household caught mid-chaos: Lydia Starkey, 27, was in the back garden; her brother had placed the order and never heard the noise; her mother was feeding a newborn; and her mother’s partner was in the shower.
Starkey opened the gate. One of the dogs burst out. She shouted for help. The dogs’ owner eventually stepped outside, looking perplexed, to find the driver still perched above the bin and fence line.
No injuries were reported. No police action was described. After checking on the driver, the family treated it as one of those messy pet moments that get out of hand fast.
Starkey put it plainly:
"After making sure the driver was okay, we did find it funny. These things happen with dogs getting out."
The Subway order stayed on the floor in the scramble. The driver’s name and employer beyond that delivery were not identified. The dogs were described only as small. Their breeds and names were not given.
Commenters did what commenters do. Some mocked the panic. Others defended it.
One wrote that it did not matter whether the dogs would bite, some people are terrified of dogs no matter the size, and not everyone is a dog lover. Another said they had never seen someone panic so much over two small dogs. A third joked that a poor dog “got a footlong thrown at its head.” Someone else argued delivery drivers take the job knowing dogs can get out and bark, and that a gate sign would have settled any complaint.
That last point stayed unproven in the available account. No reporting confirmed a warning sign on the property. The footage’s original uploader and platform details were not laid out beyond the online spread of the video.
What was clear was the sequence: doorbell, dogs loose, food abandoned, fence cleared, bin used as high ground, owner appearing late, household otherwise occupied with a baby and a shower. A working driver trying to finish a simple drop-off ended up stranded above a neighbor’s front garden because two small pets got a free run at the gate.
Small dogs can still startle people who do not live with them. Delivery work already means strange doors, tight schedules, and animals that do not read the job description. When a gate opens and the pets spill out, the person holding the sandwich is the one who has to move first.
Starkey’s household eventually checked on the driver and laughed it off. Fair enough after the fact. The driver still had to choose between standing his ground and getting vertical on a dustbin.
Viral clips make the fear look comic. They do not change the basic rule: if you keep dogs, you control the gate when food arrives at the door.
A man doing his job should not need a rubbish bin for cover because someone opened the wrong latch at the wrong time.
