Great Dane now on the attack - please can we do something? *Distressing content warning*

I had a very soppy and gentle looking Golden retriever and honestly, some people try to treat her like a walking teddy bear.

She was very gentile, but she was also a very strong, big, powerful dog from a working line. I had countless parents tell their small children to “hug” her. I always stoped them. You just never know what can happen.

But people just see a big, fluffy lump and don’t consider that their small child running up to it and grabbing it probably isn’t the best thing to encourage.

When I was a child I was nipped by my gran's dog. German shepherd/ border collie cross. What had I done to her , absolutely nothing but I had just hit my little sister.

She was obviously protective of the "baby" who was about 2 at the time . She was a very loving dog and this was the only time she did this. It didn't stop me hitting my sister though.
I hate to think what she'd have done if she wasn't normally do good natured.

What's ridiculous is thinking all injuries are physical. That's a seriously traumatic event for that child to have gone through. And no, those are not scratches.

@OrlandointheWilderness Children sometimes wander. Every parent I know has lost sight of their child at some point. Or the child can be right beside you but you are looking at something else, especially if you are in a shop. Or the child may have actively neglectful parents. None of these children are more acceptable to be bitten than others. Pet dogs are unnecessary luxury items and owners have one hundred percent responsibility to ensure they do not bite or threaten or intimidate anyone else. Their choice to have a dog, their responsibility. Its not a joint responsibility with the rest of society. It really isn't. The owner needs to make sure their dog will not or cannot attack if feeling annoyed by a child. Its a bloody sad state of affairs that this is an argument which needs to be made rather than just one assumed and normalised in our society.

There are loads of things we don't need as a society which are in some way bad for us. Fashion, holidays, food and drink, entertainment, cars, technology. The list is endless.

And dogs - generally - are not a danger to us all.

Instead we have people donating left right and centre to being dogs over from Romania
Wtf is going on with this?? All these massive disease ridden mutts hobbling around our streets. Our animal charities are overflowing with unwanted dogs and yet people are spending money importing feral dogs from third world countries. Jesus wept 😱

It’s like guns. We should ban these dogs because they are dangerous.
People who disagree are a bit like the gun lobby saying most gun owners are ok, use guns for protection, so we should overlook how every so often a disgruntled person opens fire on schoolchildren / co-workers / family / random members of the public.

Is this true? Why would people want to fly over dogs from Romania? If this is true then honestly wtf is wrong with people!

food and drink, cars, technology
@Nordicrain are you really trying to argue that we don't need food drink cars or technology?
Do you want to live in the stone age?
how do you propose we survive without food or drink?

You want to ban dogs from pet shops?
Or, you want to ban dogs?

Both are unreasonable. You want to tell that kid that he's got to give up their family dog?

Because it is easier to adopt a dog from abroad.

There are very strict rules with rehoming a dog from a charity regarding working hours, children’s ages etc that so many people who could offer a good home don’t meet the criteria for.

Did anyone else read the title of this as if there was a Great Dane going round attacking people at random - like someone on a rampage? ‘on the attack’ just doesn’t sound like what it is

This ALL OF THIS in SPADES 👌🏼

People are just stupid about dogs 🤷
Remember Johnson's wife making sure that dogs were rescued ahead of humans out of Afghanistan

Well we need food and (non-alcoholic) drink to meet our biological nutrional need. The rest is just for pleasure, and doing us significant damage as a society. Obesity and lifestyle related illness cause far creater harm than dogs.

Well I've just got back from walking my dog off the lead and no muzzle obviously. I've seen not one other person or dog on the whole walk. I choose to walk where the dog can sniff and explore as do many others around here because early morning and evenings are busier but there are never problems as we all recognise each other and the dogs and leash if necessary. Why should all dogs be kept on a lead and muzzled as a reaction to a seemingly tiny minority of irresponsible owners whose dogs largely injure people in and around their own premises? Most responsible dog owners here exercise their dogs on the trails and avoid the parks and pavements so the dogs can run free. Parents and children tend to use the parks largely absent of dogs.

Another dog apologist trying to minimize the fact that a small child was attacked by a dog and suffered large and significant facial lacerations

Honestly I get so so sick of these threads with the doggy people saying “teach your child not to touch dogs”, as if that’s the root of the problem.

No, the problem is that society has taken a wild animal and attempted to domesticate it. In some cases this has worked, but in many others it hasn’t, and we now have a country full of semi wild animals roaming around who may or may not bite someone at any (totally unpredictable) moment.

When DS1 was a tiny baby in a pram , we were walking through a car park outside a supermarket, a huge dog ran over and licked his face from chin to scalp. Covered in dog slobber. “He’s just being friendly” calls the owner. My innocent baby has been licked by something that has probably just licked its own scrotum. And of course if it had been in a bad mood it could have taken my baby’s face off. What education should I have given my tiny baby I wonder?

Then a few years later DS2, age 6, was mauled in a park by a dog which ran over to him, totally unprovoked. Blood, flesh hanging off, big chunk of his arm removed, stitches, permanent scar. No owner in sight. What education should my 6 year old have had to prevent this I wonder?

Stop telling me to educate my kids to mitigate the risk to them from your pointless unnecessary wild animal. If a dog owner thinks there is the remotest possibility that their dog may attack someone, whatever the provocation or lack of provocation, they should be the ones mitigating the risk by staying at home.

Firstly I think you should have compulsory dog licence along with chips and the owners would be fully responsible for making sure dogs are under control . Yes unfortunately it would price some people out of dog ownership but the costs could pay for extra dog wardens . There should be certain areas where dogs are not allowed off the lead . Plenty of dog walking parks about now where you can give off lead exercise .

also for the person who said they don’t want lessons on dog behaviour , dogs are not going to disappear all together so it is a good idea for children not to approach dogs at all tbh .

I live in a village with lots of dogs and am fed up of the off lead ones riling up mine who don’t go off lead .

Bloody hell! The first post is basically saying “Nah! Not too bad”. Unbelievable! And they say mn is full of dog haters

Do you normally catastrophise so much?

I have a friend who is a 'dog person' (and very much only a dog person, not much of a human person), she is also a profesional dog walker/behaviourist.

Her argument is along the lines of yours, that it is up to humans to be able to interpret dogs body language. If say, you are out in the street/park, her opinion is that you should be able to read the 'mood' of the dog and act accordingly, even if you arent interacting with it and it's just in your vicinity. I very much disagree with that. We shouldn't need to learn the body language of dogs to prevent us from getting attacked. The onus is 100% on the owners not to allow their dogs to attack, regardless of if Joe Bloggs on the street is educated in canine behaviour and body language. I do however agree with you in that it is up to us as adults not to let children approach or stroke strange dogs.

Letting a dog run free on the trails means that walkers runners and cyclists have to navigate around it and are at risk of being chased by it tripped over or knocked off their bike.
Wherever dogs are running free they they dominate the space and ruin it for everyone else.
Dog people are ruining the outdoors for everyone else.