To have four large dogs in the home with my family?

[fallingdownasteepsteadyslope]

We have 5 children. Wasn't particularly planned as we have two sets of twins. Our oldest two are 9, the middle child is 7 and the youngest two are 4. We have four large dogs (three are what we consider giant breed).
Our 7yr old has made friends with a new girl in the class. We invited her over for a playdate but new girl's mother is refusing to let her come due to our 'big beastly dogs'. She's seen all of them as we take them on dog walks. She then said I was irresponsible to 'have so many dogs and so many children because one of the children will get bit eventually'. It set me off thinking, if you saw me in the street, would you think I was ridiculously irresponsible and 'a inadequate mother'? BTW, this mother has four dogs of her own, three cockerpoos and a cav.

I would disgrace my dd mightily if she was invited to your house by coming in myself just to meet the dogs! I love big dogs we have a German shepherd, a lab wolfhound x and a gsd/lab wolfhound x (yes you can guess how that came about) and unfortunately DH also has a westie from his late mothers days and it's a wee bollocks

Can I come to your house JUST for the dogs?

The woman needs to get a grip. Nothing wrong with children and dogs. If dogs are trained and your children are trained to respect animals then there is absolutely no issue!!

I have an OES! Lush dog!

People can be stupid. This woman obviously is. I'd send some message back along the lines of "well trained dogs don't bite people but I guess you might get that with designer cross breeds".

If I had met you and your dogs prior to the invitation and was comfortable with you all , then yes I would let DC come to yours on a playdate .

I find it odd that people keep saying 'can I come to your house to see the dogs?' 'your house sounds great fun with all the dogs!' 'dogs dogs dogs.!' If people love them so much, go volunteer in a dog's home! Good grief. We get it, you like dogs, but gushing over dogs and trying to make out they are all so perfect and would never hurt a hair on a child's head is too much. Some people are letting the fact they like dogs cloud their judgement. And the more they speak, the more I KNOW I would never allow a young child of mine at their house with their dogs.

Dogs ARE unpredictable, and they could attack one day, and there is sod-all you could do if that happened, especially if it's FOUR dogs! And all the garble about how many HUMANS hurt people per year and so on, is bollocks. That's got sod-all to do with it; we are talking about dogs, not humans FFS! And the insistence that a big dog will not do as much harm as a small one is very worrying. Do me a favour!

Probably cause there is more chance of a human hurting a child than a dog under supervision

It's not helpful to compare numbers of injuries to children caused by dogs with those caused by humans without knowing:

How many dogs live in the UK
How many humans live in the UK
How the dog and the child came to be in the same space
How the human and the child came to be in the same space

In the situation we're talking about here - a child visiting another child's home - I'd hazard a guess and say that child is more at risk from the dogs than from any humans. Which really, really isn't to say that a child visiting op is at risk - rather just that it's a bit pointless to argue that humans are more dangerous than dogs in this particular situation.

Or put it another way, statistically how much more or less at risk of injury or death is a child visiting a home with x number of dogs vs a home with no dogs.

Yes but computer in the op's case, it's a girl going from one house full of dogs to another, so the statistics you mention don't matter

Old Deerhound

Im more of a crazy cat lady but omg you have a dulux dog and a st bernard.....i would love to wrap my arms around them and cuddle them....does the st bernard slobber? Does he like cats....does he want to come and live with me?

It's not helpful to compare numbers of injuries to children caused by dogs with those caused by humans without knowing:

How many dogs live in the UK
How many humans live in the UK
How the dog and the child came to be in the same space
How the human and the child came to be in the same space

In the situation we're talking about here - a child visiting another child's home - I'd hazard a guess and say that child is more at risk from the dogs than from any humans. Which really, really isn't to say that a child visiting op is at risk - rather just that it's a bit pointless to argue that humans are more dangerous than dogs in this particular situation

Well google is your friend here.

64.1million humans

Approx 5million dogs.

Still not 52 x more humans than dogs.

Therefore humans are still more likely to kill.

This is very true, Dress

Statistically I believe children are most at risk from their parents/parents' partners. So in that case the child would be safer at the op's than in their own home, if we're only going to assess risk using figures.

It just seems daft to me when some people insist on mentioning that humans kill more people than dogs do. It's a fact of course, but it isn't always relevant.

And those death figures are just for children, not adults killing other adults, car accidents, drownings, accidents in the home etc.

It just seems daft to me when some people insist on mentioning that humans kill more people than dogs do. It's a fact of course, but it isn't always relevevent

It's very relevant when they are being described frequently as 'killers' on threads.

It isn't true.

Fair enough, Reactive

We still need to compare how these killings happened, and should also add serious injuries to the figures.

How many children are seriously injured or killed visiting friends' houses where there are no dogs?

How many children are seriously injured or killed visiting friends' houses where there are dogs?

You would need to add serous injuries to both sets of stats then.

I might do it when I get time, I haven't at the moment.

I do know that the number of deaths are so small that there is no classification within ONS though.

The trouble is that the red tops headline it precisely because it's so unusual (and shady often due to the dog being cruelly treated in events leading up to it).

This fuels the hysteria about it.

My 7 year old son isn't keen on dogs until he has got to know them and they are friendly. 4 of them in a strange house would be overwhelming for most small children I think but presumably you have somewhere to shut or crate them at need anyway.

*sadly

I think not letting your child near big dogs can lead them to having an irrational phobia as they get older.

I would definitely let my kids go to your house, they need to learn how to act around dogs, the same as they need to learn to cross the road etc

There were 6,700 + hospital admissions for dog bites in 2014 according to the NHS:
httpwww.nhs.uk/news/2014/04April/Pages/Dog-bite-hospitalisations-highest-in-deprived-areas.aspx

Presumably most people are not ok with their child losing a finger or having facial scaring requiring years of reconstructive surgery, as long as the danger of actual death is low

Those are obviously only the attacks reported - most people try to avoid going to hospital when their own dog or that of a close family member or friend has bitten them due to the risk the owner will be "in trouble" or the dog removed... and of course many attacks are painful and unpleasant and have lasting effects but don't require hospital admission.

Comparing human on human attacks to dog on human is odd imo - the comparison should be human on human to dog on dog - and there are countless dog on dog attacks in public daily (which people put themselves at risk splitting up).

Responsible dog owners are fine, some dogs are lovely, but people trying to argue that it's vanishingly rare a child will be bitten by a dog are simply delusional.

Nobody has to get used to being in a confined space (ie indoors) with any dog - it is not in any way comparable to crossing the road because it is an easy situation to avoid.

People get irate about all sorts of vanishingly tiny perceived risks and are very sanctimonious about taking risks which never or rarely result in fatalities in the UK, yet so many have this enormous blind spot about dogs and make a point of pride about clamouring to put their children in the way of unknown dogs - it's baffling.

The size of the dogs isn't particularly relevant I agree - labradors are one of the dogs most likely to be the biter responsible for personal injury claims I read somewhere, and they have a wonderful reputation, it's just that there are so very many of them... Any dog can bite though, no matter how fluffy or beautiful or loved...

I must admit I think the OP's dogs and family sound somewhat fantastical far too unique to have posted about in so much detail given there are apparently only 600 Otterhounds in the UK a family with one of those, combined with the fairly unusual other dogs and the two sets of twins under 10 would be very, very, very recognisable indeed...

Meow and dress. Lovely pictures!
I'm missing the point of this thread aren't I?!

TBH, I would probably come to your house with my 7y old DD for a playdate with your dogs as I love dogs. Well behaved big dogs are better than a vicious and unpredictable little mutt.

my mum has 4 large dogs and 5 children still living at home (although hers are all teenagers now) she's had at least 3 or 4 large dogs at a time since I was a baby, sometimes more than that, none of us have ever been bitten by her dogs, although i have a scar on on my face from a yorkshire terrier (who was my aunts only dog by the way and pure evil, I suspect it came from years of having stupid bows put in its fur.) I would like to meet the dogs before letting DD(8) round but assuming they are well trained dogs and you aren't all squashed into a flat the size of a postage stamp i'd be fine.

Some parents just really don't trust bigger dogs though, don't take it personally, I run a rainbow unit and I had a parent not let her daughter come to a meeting once because we had a guide dog coming in and she was worried it might get scared and start biting children, even though the parent had a really badly trained little dog.