To as you to teach your child how to act around dogs?

[ToBeOrNotToBee]

I'm gobsmacked, truly, still around an hour or so after this event.
Dog and I have had a busy day travelling and exploring the countryside.
On our way home, coming off train 3 of 3 on the return leg, having been out for 12 hours, I walk to the lift (which is around a corner and obscured by a stairwell) at the end of the platform with dog to heel besides me.
We're waiting with a few others when this 5-6 year old child appears around the corner, running towards us, hands outstretched, literally beelining for the dog. I see what's about to happen and immediately put the dog behind my legs and put my hand out telling the child a stern 'No'.
The child then tries to go behind to reach my dog, who is cowering between my legs. I have no choice but to grab hold of the child's coat and physically stop them, letting go when the child stops trying to reach my dog.
After a moment or two, the Dad appears and then screams at me for touching his child. As he's midscream, the lift appears and I go into it with a few others and doors close as everyone else looks awkwardly at their feet.
The doors close, we go on our merry wall.
But I couldn't stop this feeling that the child will one day do that to the wrong dog and end up a dog bite statistic.
Say for example, I wasn't as switched on, and my dog as placid as he is, or in pain that day, and the child did poke him painfully causing him to snap and bite. Child would have been hurt, my dog potentially put down, and I get a conviction for having a Dangerous Dog Out of Control.
It's something I've noticed over recent years, people treating strange dogs as public property and not animals with sharp teeth and their own minds.
So please, teach your children not to run whilst on busy train platforms (or any train platform), to not approach unknown dogs, and if someone says no, to respect it.

Is that too much to ask???

Some kids have crap parents who don't teach them anything. Some kids have hidden disabilities and cannot learn simple life lessons. And some dog owners muddy the message by letting their dogs run up to people uninvited. Which is why the onus is on dog owners should expect the unexpected.

Assuming you got those figures from the BMJ paper online, dog bites are recorded as 18.7 per 1000. So, on a low population figure of 60m, that would make well over a million dog bites annually - and the online figure of the UK population is 67m.

I suspect that this is a severe under-reporting of the prevalence of dog bites. But I’ll go with the - already shocking - published figures.

However many are bites to owners (or their children)…muzzle your dog.

No, the office of national statistics. It is the actual number of admissions, not a percentage.

I agree that there will be occurrences of bites that didn't result in hospital admissions, however if it were that much of a problem, it would already be being discussed more broadly than a few disgruntled mumsnetters on a couple of threads here and there. You are very much entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine, so we will have to agree to differ. My dog will remain unmuzzled.

Oh dear - there is the dog obsession writ large. You would see a child hurt and have no pity? Really?

…until the law changes. Which it inevitably will.

Anyway, what is the problem with muzzling dogs? Given the deaths and misery caused to people, including children, by dogs, why would any dog owner object?

You have one of the most one-track-minds I have ever encountered.

Someone has suggested that children should be taught canine communication in school. I honestly do not think that pupils should have to receive lessons to pander to others' choices in life. The onus is fair and square on the dog owners.

I really don’t. But why don’t you tell me why your dog(s) shouldn’t be muzzled.

What is wrong with people these days? Of course you are NOT being unreasonable, that parent should have known better than to let his child run up to a dog like that, or any animal!!
Would he, on the other hand, have been so calm if an unknown dog had run up to his child for hugs, I think not!
Children should be taught that you ask the person with the dog if they are friendly, can they stroke/pet them?
If someone I didn't know was to run up to me, I'd be on the defense!!

The onus is on parents to teach their children how to behave around a dog, just like we teach them to deal with any other potential danger, like strangers. I've had many children run toward my dog, hands waving in the dog's face, absolutely desperate to make contact with the dog, and I have also had to step forward and say no it's not OK to touch my dog. It's only common sense to teach all children to "stand like a tree," arms down at their sides if a dog approaches, and not to ever run at at dog or stick a hand in front of its teeth or otherwise startle it. Yet the dog hate on Mumsnet continues!!

Children are a choice in life also.

The onus is on both parties. Dog owners should be responsible with their dogs.eg. Don’t let them jump up etc. However, parents should also be responsible and not allow their children to pat, stroke etc strange dogs. They’re not toys.

Eh... no.

A dog can knock someone over, scratch them, muzzle-punch (exactly as it sounds, unmuzzled dogs can do this too where they go as if to bite but don't open the mouth. Muzzled dogs often do it attempting to bite), which if the dog has a metal wire muzzle on, can do some damage.

A big dog wearing a muzzle could still do a small child some significant harm.

Big, secure muzzles limit a dogs ability to give out and read body language, so if all dogs were muzzled you'd see an increase in dog to dog aggression (important as many dog attacks resulting in human injury started as dog to dog).

It makes it harder to meet a dogs needs - play, training, all harder if your dog can't use their mouth.

So increases in aggression and decreases in training/socialisation... generally not a great idea for society.

On a personal level, if my dog is on a lead and muzzled and a child comes barrelling over to hit/kick/sit on/grab my dog, your child is still at risk because I am going to grab/stop/do whatever is necessary to protect my now completely vulnerable and defenseless dog and it might well result in your child having an unpleasant experience.

And I'll say it again, because you don't seem to have quite understood. A dog can be seized and put down without ever even touching another human being - all that's required for that to happen is for somebody to feel threatened, which can be as simple as the dog growling.

For a simple scenario where this happens regularly to dog owners (thankfully not to its complete conclusion): child runs up to dog and starts grabbing at it despite being told not to by the owner. Dog growls purely to communicate that it's not happy and the child needs to stop - which is exactly what a dog is supposed to do, warn extensively before getting physical. Child gets scared - which it should do, because it's misbehaving - and then the parent calls the police. Dog seized, owner prosecuted for having a dangerous dog, dog put down.

No injury to humans, just an inattentive parent and a child that got scared as a direct result of ignoring instructions from both the dog and its owner. The child indirectly killed the dog with its poor behaviour.

Growling is not aggression; it's direct communication. In fact, in a lot of circumstances, a dog being punished for growling is responsible for bite incidents because its owners have effectively trained it not to use any of its available communication strategies (stepping away, growling, baring teeth) that would normally be a step on the warning escalation ladder, so it has no other option than to snap or bite in order to remove the threat. Discouraging those behaviours is utter stupidity.

Cashewgirl, why walk around with 'a potential danger' in the first place, that's a lifestyle choice

Ntmdino, a large growling dog is scary

It's supposed to be! Do you expect the dog to hold a finger up and say, "Excuse me, young sir, would you mind not pulling my ear please? It's getting rather painful, and I don't think it's fair"?

I mean, I guess you could try to explain the finer points of the DDA to it, but it probably won't get you as far as telling a kid not to grab dogs they don't know.

Um, it’s not dog hate. It’s a reasonable belief that everyone should be able to go about life without having to put up with dogs - just like not having to put up with any other public nuisance.

The OP asked about an uncontrolled child. Some posters, me included, think it’s a bad thing not to supervise a child and not be in a position to intervene if necessary.

But any dog that reacts to a child, whatever the child does, is responsible - or strictly speaking the dog’s owner is responsible.

If you don’t want that responsibility, don’t have a dog. Or at least muzzle it so it can do no real harm.

Ntmdino, so why walk around with something that scares people?

@sigmama We get it, you don't think dogs should exist. Move along please.

@WhileMyDishwasherGentlyWeeps We get it, you don't like dogs either. Move along please.

Cashew, oh no I love dogs, just not big scary looking ones, do you often give orders to strangers?

Jesus....seriously?

None of my dogs ever scare people unless those people are posing a direct threat to the dog.

Do you really think a dog should just calmly put up with kids yanking on their ears or tails, causing them pain, and ignoring all instructions to stop? You're wilfully ignoring that part.

That is an easy one to answer. Theoretically, and dog can be taught to wear a muzzle if done correctly, and it shouldn't be uncomfortable for the dog. However, this relies on the owner knowing what to do, and doing it correctly. This is where it all goes wrong for me. If we take the view that a responsible owner would train their dog such that it wouldn't need a muzzle as it would be under control and of low risk (I agree that there is never zero risk, but it can be minimal), then we are really targeting irresponsible owners, of which there have been an increasing number in recent years.

What you then get is irresponsible owners not knowing how to train a dog to wear a muzzle which can, in turn, create a distressed dog which is more likely to be reactive. Before you say "yes, but it would be muzzled", there is much more risk that it would escape in a distressed state and potentially bite an innocent passer by, so the result would likely be the opposite of the intended result. At very least, the owners would be at higher risk of being bitten, which affects the statistics negatively as well.

I think your objective of a risk free society is admirable, I too would like to live in one, however it is unfeasible. Everything has risk, we just need to manage it to an acceptable level. Otherwise we wouldn't drive, fly, go parachuting, basically anything that involves leaving the house.

I don't think the law will change as it isn't a big enough issue, despite being very distressing and unfortunate for people who have been affected.

Ntmfino, I've been growled at by big scary looking dogs with no provocation, I'm just curious why people want to own a breed that people feel threatened by

The owner did everything they could to prevent a child potentially endangering themself and yet the response is to blame the owner. Those saying it is the dog or owner's fault clearly see no scenario where it's the idiot humans' fault so why bother expecting a considered reply?