AIBU to be upset after a dog jumped at our baby?

[KellyK2026]

Okay, so myself, DH and baby were at a country park the other week. Baby was getting hungry so we sat ourselves down on a park bench and got some food out. A woman was walking with her family and dog and the dog must’ve smelt the food as it suddenly
comes bounding over and is jumping at baby (who is on DH knee) to get the food. We don’t know this dog and don’t know what it's capable of. I scream at the owner that we have a baby and to get her dog under control. At this point, she’s pretty far away and is taking her time to come over. My DH then kicks the dog to get it off them as it just will not stop. The woman wasn’t particularly apologetic and seemed shocked. Did we overreact?

Having a dog jumping all over you can feel pretty aggressive? If you aren't used to dogs how do you know when the line is crossed?

But you and your husband weren’t defending yourselves. You were defending your sandwiches.

Learn the law, especially if you have a dog. Read the dangerous dog act 1991. A dog doesn’t have to bite or injure for an owner to be criminally liable. If a person feels threatened by a dog, the dog can be reported, taken from the owner or even destroyed. That’s the law. If a dog jumps up at someone and they feel threatened, they can use reasonable force. That’s what dog owners need to understand. It doesn’t matter whether your dog has bitten someone, if a person feels threatened enough they can use force.

Is your reading comprehension ok? I’ve repeatedly said what happened. I’ve never even mentioned sandwiches and you’re making up a narrative that suits you. The dog didn’t come over for a sniff of our food. It was jumping up at our baby.

”Doggo” types are here .. the ones who think we should feel blest and honoured that the Fur-baby ran over to you. Should have given it your lunch, and your first born

I had something similar happen several years ago. Someone's off lead dog came up and licked my youngest on the face, he was about 3, so not a baby. I obviously saw the dog approaching, but we are not dog people and it was not on my radar that it was going to come and lick one of us and I just didn't react until it was too late. I think given your baby is fine, you need to let it go, especially if it's been weeks since it happened.

😂😂😂

I think you’ve both completely missed the point of my post. I literally said the owner is 100% in the wrong, is an absolute idiot, and that DH's primal instinct to protect his kid was totally valid. Feeling sorry for a dog that got kicked purely because its human is useless is NOT the same as "defending the owner". I am explicitly blaming the owner. Jumping from "a dad kicked a dog away from a sandwich" to "it's perfectly legal to end up with a dead dog" is a wild escalation. Nobody is saying DH didn't have the right to protect his baby, I just said it's a sad situation for the animal.

You said that the dog came over because it could smell the food!!

You can tell who are the bad dog owners on here. So aggrieved that you would dare criticise a dog owner for not having their dog on a lead that they victim blame and try to make the situation out to be your own fault. You were defending yourselves and your baby against an unknown threat, which wouldn't have been necessary if the owner had control of her dog.

I spent a lot of time in parks with my child when they were small. Off lead dogs would regularly bound over to try to eat our picnic, taking the food out of my child's hand, knocking them over, making them cry, and many owners wouldn't even do anything until I shouted to control their dog and they then got moody because I threaten to report them (I was often in children spaces where dogs were required to be on leads). One of them starting swearing and going mental because her dog was munching on, and then swallowed, a large chocolate bar including wrapper and screamed that I would need to pay the vet bill because I shouldn't have food in a park. 😆

From then on, any owner that didn't even offer the courtesy of an apology, I would tell them that their dog had eaten my child's chocolate. Some didn't care but I hope that some had a nice bill from the vet check up and would think twice about not keeping their dog under control.

Tell me about it! it’s the same people commenting over and over. If it makes them
feel better to think a harmless puppy came over to peacefully sniff our food then god bless them, honestly.

The dog didn’t come over for a sniff of our food

My reading comprehension is grand. You said;

“Okay, so myself, DH and baby were at a country park the other week. Baby was getting hungry so we sat ourselves down on a park bench and got some food out. A woman was walking with her family and dog and the dog must’ve smelt the food as it suddenly comes bounding over and is jumping at baby (who is on DH knee) to get the food.”

And:

”Also, neither one of us is very confident around dogs and, with food being involved and it trying to get at it, we didn’t know if it would nip the baby”

Completely fair comment and you are totally right! I really didn't mean to imply OP and her DH should have known expert dog handling techniques in a split second of panic. As I said in my original post, the instinct to just lash out and protect your baby when a strange animal is in their face is totally understandable. The blame is squarely on the careless owner for forcing a non-dog family into that terrifying position in the first place.

victim blame

What are you on about 😂

The OP and her husband were victims of fuck all.

Aw thank you for your comment!

And I know. I really don’t know how you can defend the owner’s behaviour unless you’re a bad dog owner yourself. Plenty of dog owners have commented lamenting her behaviour. You can tell who the responsible owners are just by their comments.

A judge is going to use some common sense though! If i say that I feel threatened by a dog who is 5 meters away and has no interest in me - the law is not going to be on my side!
If you had a judge who said that kicking the dog was disproportionate (would probably depend on the strength of the kick and other people's views on whether the dog was threatening) then you would be in trouble.

I think it is fundamental to look up dog behaviour and understand what can make them react even more excitably. And what doesn’t.

I think it is both true that dogs should be kept under control and not allowed to approach people or other animals where inappropriate AND that people should take the time to learn about canine body language and what is helpful in that kind of situation.

No it shouldn't have happened and the dog owner was completely in the wrong. No it was not helpful to scream or get overexcited or to lash out at the dog.

Yes, the dog was jumping up and down at our baby and actually made contact with our baby several times. It wasn’t peacefully sniffing out sandwiches.

You're not willing to listen are you?! Almost everyone has said that the dog should not have come over. However your response (or your husbands) was still disproportionate.

And when the dog is repeating jumping up and making contact with a baby, as was the case here, no competent judge would find against someone who kicked the dog away.

You’ve decided yourself it was a boot to the dog. I didn’t say anything about the force used. But keep winding yourself up.

Exactly. And appears not to want to learn how to handle it better should there be another time.

Not all of us doggy people are bonkers, promise 😬

The dog wasn’t five metres away though, was it? It was jumping up and down at an infant and putting its paws on them, not responding to recall, not responding to our commands, and not responding to blocks. So don’t be a fool.