Another dog attack- 4 year old killed. Devastating

[singingsussie]

Just woke up to this news this morning. It's just so incredibly heartbreaking for all involved. Seems to be happening so much more than ever these days

It won’t have been rescued.

Unless you count bought off gumtree for a sob story and £400 as being rescued.

I read it was a husky/boxer dog..?

Daily Mail is showing picture of a huge American bulldog.

@Babyroobs it will be a Stock photo, they always do that even before they know the breed. I read a neighbour said it was husky/boxer they had for 6 weeks.

Might not be true but I don't think the actual breed has be officially confirmed it's all hearsay

Ok but the article does say the child was mauled by an American bulldog with accompanying photo of one.

I’m a dog owner (small yappy breed) and I love dogs. I hate those XL Bully breeds though. I grew up with a Staffy who was lovely and had a great temperament but wouldn’t have left her unsupervised with a child.
I think the police should run an initiative where people shop their neighbours for having one of these Bully breeds: the person shopping them gets £50 and the owner has to prove the dog is properly looked after, trained etc. Dog would have to be neutered, microchipped, insured and checked in on yearly otherwise it’s destroyed.

My sister lives next door to own of these clowns who breeds these dogs. They’re housed in kennels in the back garden and exercised on a running machine. They never get taken out. It’s a privately owner house too (not council or housing authority as mentioned upthread). My sister says it unnerves her when she hears the dogs fighting each other and I worry the fence won’t keep them out.

I wish people would get as upset over social media and lack of mental health assistance, that kills far more than a dog.

“On average one child a week is killed by a parent in the UK” and where’s the mn outrage? Oh wait …. silence……

Maybe help her put up some 6 foot feather edge fencing using concrete posts with two feet of concrete gravel boards at the bottom. That would give a total height of 8 feet. If you used four arris rails per section, I doubt anything could get through. You might have to do all three borders of the garden, in case the dogs got into a neighbour's garden and then into your sister's. You'd also nprobably need to sink a foot of concrete gravel board into the ground to prevent the dogs digging under the fence.

The Telegraph are saying it was an American Bulldog.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/01/girl-four-dies-reports-dog-attack-milton-keynes/

@MiniTheMinx I agree it would have less impact on the children at highest risk. But that is why the cot death parallel makes sense. children from.low income households we're always at highest risk of overlaying as it used to be known because these were the homes where smoking in pregnancy carried on even after the association with low birth weight was well established, where bed sharing was common often due to lack of space and where public health info about safe sleep wasn't shared. It was a massive campaign to change assumptions about safe sleep that lead to the dramatic reduction in deaths in the 90.

If you did the same with dogs well off kids at risk from bites from untrained cockapoos would benefit first, probably from increased supervision to prevent bites and hopefully families being a bit more thoughtful when getting a pet because of the burden of supervision involved. There are already well informed parents in every I come bracket (I don't want to stigmatise low income households). The last to benefit would be lower income children with uninformed parents. that is true for every public health intervention. It doesn't mean you don't do it. It takes a while to change norms but the norms have to shift so keeping a dog with young children is seen as the huge responsibility it is.

Breed plays a part in this and dogs as status symbols are a miserable thing. But we need to have a clearer message - owners of dogs that hurt or scare people are shit owners. No one excuses paedophiles or anyone who hurts children deliberately. No one should excuse dog owners who do not take responsibility for keeping children safe. I work in forensic MH trust me, none of the people who keep dogs as status symbols really want to be seen as equivalent to paedophiles, but if their dogs maul kids faces then in my book they are.

That is a bit rich considering what you were suggesting someone do to a dog in your now deleted (breaking guidelines) comment.

All these candles lit and communities spending the day together does nothing to negate what keeps children safe from dog attacks on these deprived estates . Like it or not the evidence is there that it's not middle class people this happens to . Children keep dying and they don't learn from it . Angry .

I think everyone’s angry because nothing is being done about it. I’m also angry at the lack of mental health assistance in the U.K.

Angry about a lot of things actually.

Fuck austerity. It’s done a bloody number on everything. Every single service is decimated. That’s why nothing has changed.

hattie maybe so but today is not the day for snobbery, anger, judgement and speculation. After a bit of time and distance and proven facts, maybe. But today should be for mourning that a gorgeous little girl is dead and that a young mother's life won't be worth living.

That poor poor little girl had an absolutely horrific death. Candles and vigils and flowers and balloons- really? What use is that to her now? Bit of time and distance to a point where she’s just another name on a list and the people who were responsible or complicit can pretend it was just a tragic accident?

Frankly there needs to be anger and judgement and to wave that away as snobbery will mean we’ll see this happen again and again and again. There are already two posters on this thread alone recounting similar situations where small children are living in homes with dogs who could kill them. I don’t think they are all bad people who don’t care about their children but we really need to get to a point where socially it is completely unacceptable to have dogs who a human wouldn’t be able to restrain in a home with children.

This kind of attack happens too often, it’s the small and weak who generally suffer and nothing is done. Parents and carers who expose their children to the risk of this happening should be prosecuted, and far more needs to be done about the unregulated breeding and selling of dogs.

It's always been acceptable in the UK. When I was a kid, a few dogs were still let out to do as they pleased all day. Go back another generation or two, and most dogs were out and about without their owners.

@QueenoftheAngles I couldn't agree more. What good are platitudes and sentimentality?

Good idea about the 50 quid incentive on people who think there is a dangerous situation.
The house next to us was in the market and one couple turned up pregangnat with one of theses huge Pitbull style dogs slathering in the car.
My immediate thought was how to secure the fences with impenetrable defence's. No unsupervised play for the children.

Thankfully they didn't buy it but it concerned me.

It sounds like the " family pet"as much as the " step dad " / step mum ' when actually it's the 7th random boyfriend of someone who then killed a child.
Family pet my arse.

The police ordered neighbors out of their home. They said this dog will attack again if it gets out

I have worked in many peoples homes in deprived and affluent areas. I have been in homes where dog breeding with bully’s is happening behind flimsy child gates and in homes with multiple dobermans, Stafford or Alsatians as well as big rarer breeds. You can’t say that restrictions should only apply in council or housing association houses. The only place I was attacked by three dogs was a very middle class home where the women laughed and found it funny. You can’t imagine how stupid people are about dogs unless you have experienced it first hand.

Let's get this straight . Having money doesn't mean people are middle class , working class done good but the same values / ethics etc . Show me stats on deaths of middle class victims of dog attacks .

Having an XL bully, that the grandparent consideres to be a mortal threat to her grandson, humanely put down at the vets makes me a psychopath? Okay.

Yet another dog nutter that places the lives of dogs above the safety of children.

My sympathy for the parents in these situations has swiftly run out.

Parents who put their child in harms way deliberately through sheer stupidity shouldn’t just be let off with a ‘oh but imagine how THEY are feeling’.

Why? It’s the poor baby who has been ripped to bits I cry over. We don’t put the parents feelings over the righteous anger that this was completely preventable for any other situation.

A parent who drinks, drives and kills their own child in an accident.

A parent who doesn’t bother to put their child in a car set/seatbelt.

A parent who chooses to allow a known dangerous adult into the house with a child.

A parent whose child is killed because they left drugs on the side where they can reach.

Any owner/parent who gets a child (or anyone else) killed by predictably following the pattern that has got so many children killed SHOULD be prosecuted in my opinion.

And I’m sorry, but middle class people are NOT buying rehomed xl bully’s on mass from places like gumtree. Because I imagine in their circles it would be strongly disapproved of.

I’m working class, it’s seen as very much an acceptable thing to do around here judging by the amount of these dogs popping up as adults.

Well said. That grandparent’s posts have chilled my blood. The little boy should never visit his mother’s house while the dog (or the dopey boyfriend) are anywhere near.

The mother sounds too dim to have other than supervised access anyway.

Just what is wrong with people.