Dog attacks boy

[GhoulsAreLoud]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/8386023.stm

Sorry, this is a disturbing story. As a parent and dog owner is absolutely chills me.

I wonder what more can be done to prevent these kind of incidents?

wannbe - I don't think thats what is meant at all by the notion that dogs can 'turn'. What that phrasing means to me is that we need to understand that a dog has the potential to cause a young child harm and this cannot be predicted. Therefore it is foolhardy to ever say you 'know' your Rover wouldn't hurt the kids because you don't, you can't know at all. That's very different from saying all dogs are killers in waiting - that's obviously not true.

What I don't understand is how this could have been prevented. If there needs to be DNA testing to determine the type of dog means that it wasn't immediately obvious, so not sure what the police were supposed to have done?

Ilovemydog - surely they would have identified a potential issue if they had visited the house, and ordered DNA tests then - perhaps ensuring that the children were safe until those results were known ? I think it's a fair assumption to make that any pit bull type charactersitics are obvious to even the untrained eye ?

My ILs have two wild, ill-behaved dogs.

They are booking a lodge that will take dogs next time they come over because they believe that because I don't care for dogs, I'm going to 'pass this on' to my kids.

And apparently it's really important for all kids to love ill-behaved animals that jump on them and lick them.

FFS.

I pointed out to FIL that my father thinks the only good cat is a dead cat.

And we have 2 cats and would have even more if we could. I love cats!

"I think it's a fair assumption to make that any pit bull type charactersitics are obvious to even the untrained eye ?"

I can't tell the difference between a staffy and a pitbull, I bet most people can't.

I was at a Christmas event in the village at the weekend. Big crowds, lots of kids, noise, live Christmas music etc..
There was a family group there with a Rottweiler - on a lead. A little girl ran up towards the dog to greet it. It turned and snarled at her. The owner jerked it back on its lead and a potential "incident" was averted.

So, at risk of the Rotty lovers leaping on me, I would say it was inappropriate and downright irresponsible to take any dog (let alone a Rottweiler)to such an event with lots of noise and fuss, where children would be crowding round at muzzle height. That little girl could very easily have been caught by the dog's teeth.

Sassy - there was a collection of photographs (it may have been on mnet come to think of it) of lots of different breeds of dogs doing the rounds. The object was to identify the dangerous breeds amongst the dogs.

I could barely recognise any.

IMhumbleO it isn't obvious at all ...

That was very badly phrased. I meant the collection of photographs was doing the rounds

Wannabe - I don't think my comment was hysterical at all.

I'm not saying that every family pet is going to maul the children but I stand by my comment that all dogs can turn without previous warning.

In the case I used as an example the children (including a baby) will put chocolate in their mouth and ask for the dog to retrieve it with his mouth. If you think that is not asking for trouble then you are as stupid as they are. Even if the dog didn't turn in an agressive manner it is quite feasible that the dog could accidently bite them.

Dh works for an insurance company and some of the photos that he sees of children with facial injuries caused by dogs are shocking. Thankfully it is only on rare occasions that children are killed but children are injured by dogs every day, usually because of the stupidity of the adults. The comments on the claim form usually state "Oh but he never showed any form of aggression before".

Plonker - I remember seeing something similar - but on those pictures a number of dogs had characteristic pit bull features. Any of which could easily be DNA tested. The key thing though is that whatever dogs were at that house obviously gave cause for concern to someone. SOMEONE recognised characteristics that may have indicated a dangerous dog and was concerned enough to report it to the police. For whatever reasons, those concerns were not acted on perhaps with absolutely horrific consequences.

Well allowing a dog to take food out of your mouth is the ultimate stupid act I agree.

But there is still a vast difference between a child who gets bitten in such circumstances and a dog that turns and launches itself at an unsuspecting person without provokation, and in most cases where people are bitten by dogs there is either some provokation or the dog is known to be agressive.

Generally loving family dogs do not turn without warning. Yes any dog has the potential to bite in the right circumstances, but in most cases something provokes that to happen.

It never ceases to amaze me the people that say "oh fluffles is so adorable with my children, they climb on his back/sit on his ears/pull his tail/pull themselves up on his fur and he just lets them do it." And yet if fluffles growled or turned and bit one of the children one day it would be fluffles that got taken to the vet and put down when actually the children should have been taught to respect him and that dogs are not toys and that if you hurt them they might just respond in the only way they know how ie to snap/bite.

So rather than demonising all family dogs we need to look at what can be done to stop these known agressive breeds from harming children. Because every time a child is killed it is either an illegal dog or someone's guard dog.

I don't know what the answer is, perhaps licencing, perhaps classification of certain breeds and regulations preventing them from being in homes with children under eighteen, with hefty penalties for having an unlicenced dog (dog would display a licence on its collar).

It's not the dogs that are at fault - it is the owners.

I was listening to the Chief Constable of Merseyside discussing the case on the radio and he didn't seem to think that more legislation is needed.

The problem is the breed itself, and I can't tell the difference between Staffies and some Pit Bulls. There has also been so much cross breeding.

In recent instances when a dog attacked/killed a child, both have been inside the home, child and dog in close proximity and being looked after by someone who is not the parent, nor owner of the dog, but a family member.

It's really difficult to legislate inside the family home, and am not sure that it would work anyway.

But poor poor boy. None of this was his fault

Wannabe, well said!

I work in rescue. I save dogs from pounds on an almost daily basis and work hands-on in my local independent dog rescue.

In all the years I have done so I have never seen a pit bull and I doubt if those I work with have either. We see hundreds of Staffies, 99% of whom are abandoned to the pound or thrown on the streets to be picked up by dog wardens and are so often PTS.

However, many of those which I have dealt with go on to be assessed by rescue and into checked family homes with great success, though many more are still waiting at the gates for similar loving owners.

We already have legislation on dogs - the rushed in, ill thought out Dangerous Dogs Act. This stupid law allows the Police to impound any "pit bull type dog" - i.e. anything that they think looks like a PBT. Case studies have shown that even non PBT have been taken from families and killed on the basis of a complaint that they "look like a Pit Bull". If you read the Deed Not Breed website you'll see what I mean.

The problem with PBTs here in the UK is that they are a banned breed unless under strict regulation so those found here are often bred to fight and are indeed a problem. However in Ireland they are legal (under specific regulations) as they are in some US states and the vast majority in these countries are super pets.

As soon as a tragedy like this occurs it is assumed that A. the dog is a PBT or SBT and B. These dogs are dangerous.

As a rescue worker, former SBT x owner and current large breed owner (one of which is a GSD), I am convinced that generally neither is the case.

My message is simple - a dog's behaviour is the result of its environment and it is the DEED, not the breed, which should be blamed.

The dog that killed Ellie Lawrenson was a pit bull terrier. The man who kept it (illegally) received '8 weeks' in jail. How is that a deterrant for anyone ?

Sassy, the BBC reported that the dog was a PB type, as assessed by an expert in the Dangerous Dogs Act in the Met. It doesn't say that the dog was a PBT, that the opinion was upheld by DNA evidence, which is the only sure test, or for that matter that the Met expert was one in dogs, but only that he was one in the law on the DDA. This is an example of my issue with the "give a dog a bad name and hang him" ideology.

However, I agree with you that the punishment was in no way whatsoever a deterrent to anyone and imho it should have been far greater. The child was punished for the owner's irresponsibility, as was the dog and both paid the ultimate price. The goddamned owner got let off with a risible punishment which helps no-one.

Who the hell cares about the DNA or the exact breed? Are people really thinking "this bloody great drooling animal with jaws powerful enough rip a child to pieces is NOT technically a pitbull so that means its ok to let it in the cot with the baby"?

The DHA may matter to legal definitions for a later court case, but you can tell if a dog has the physical ability to harm a child just by looking at it.

onagar at the time of course it doesn't matter what breed it is. But when it comes to prosicuting the owner it matters because if it is a banned breed then this needs to be established in order that the owner be successfully prosicuted.

You cannot simply say "that dog looks like it could hurt a child therefore it should be banned." Many people keep staffies/rotties/german shepherds and other powerful breeds as family pets without any incident what so ever.

And in almost all of these instances it was a matter of the child being in the wrong place at the wrong time rather than the dog being given unsupervised access to the child iyswim. eg the baby that was killed by the two rotties who were kept as guard dogs at the pub/Ellie Lawrence/the baby killed by her grandmother's staffy/jack russell who she kept as deterrents to intruders and the list goes on. In none of these cases is it said that "this was the beloved family pet and the child was playing happily around and suddenly the dog killed it," it's almost always at someone else's house, and sadly quite often in the dead of night when tentions would run high in a dog that was trained to be on alert/guard.

Just as we can a human onagar. One look at my ex-H or some of my good friends, and you'd know that they have the physical capacity to harm an adult, much less a child. That doesn't mean that you could tell by looking at them that my ex-H was a man who has committed crimes of DV or that my best pal is a big, strong, but incredibly gentle and law-abiding man.

Of course its not ok to let a dog into a cot with a baby, and I don't think anyone here has suggested it is. What I am saying is that branding the dog in the Ellie Lawrenson case a PBT (which he was not), or by killing any dog on the grounds of what he appears to look like is wrong and opening the floodgates for the "The dog looks like a PBT, therefore he is dangerous, therefore kill him" mentality. I pick up the pieces of ths attitude in my work in rescue and face the heartache of seeing innocent, perfectly harmless dogs die because of such bad publicity and scare stories. It would take reams to explain what I do and what I see, suffice to say that to brand a dog as bad because of what he looks like is akin to me to thinking all Jamaicans as car thieves and all Chinese as rapists.

As the owner of a GSD and the mother of an eighteen week old baby, I thoroughly agree with Valhalla about it being the deed not the breed,ALL dogs are capable of attacking without warning and it is up to owners/parents to excercise simple common sense.
As much as I adore my dog,she will never be left alone with DD because she is after all an animal and therefore unpredictable.

A very biased GSD owner past and present couldn't agree more SuperfluosBuns.

GSDs are another much maligned breed - there are stereotypes which are plain daft and dangerous, such as Sheps are dangerous and Labs are great family dogs and so on.

There's an irony with my 2 dogs. One of mine was beaten and abused for the first 2 years of his life by an alcoholic man he is unpredictable with some men and with drunks and very protective of me. The other is very big, even for his breed, and as soft as butter, wanting only to play and please.

The gentle, playful, soppy wimp is an enormous GSD... and my stroppy old sod is a Lab x.

is this the pictures that you saw doing the rounds?

I'm not sure that's the exact one -but it does have a selection of dogs which are often mistaken for PBT's on it (as well as a PBT)

actually Vallhala - BBC stated it was a PBT not PBT type.

Ah, sorry "Always", my mistake.

I still stand by what I said though - that in the UK PBT are vvery often dangerous as they are bred badly, by the wrong people, for just one thing, but that does not make the breed as a whole bad as my friends in Ireland and the US will testify. It also doesn't justify a blanket ban or the killing of harmless dogs, regardless of their breed imho.

I've just done a straw poll amongst friends also involved in rescue - only one came forward to say they had actually met what they believe were PBT crosses (3 of them) and in all cases they were very human friendly, in one the dog was potentially dog aggressive.

Going by what US and Irish friends and contacts who own and/or work with them, I'd be happy to own one as a pet although normally bull breeds wouldn't be first in my list of my preferred dogs.

no need to apologise - I was just browsing threads on MN while I finished doing stuff on on of my FB farms and decided that finding out what breed it actually was would be a good time filler

Oh beggar, sorry for the typos - incredibly tired!

I've waffled on enough and will go to bed and leave you all in peace. I hope though I've explained clearly enough, despite the babbling on, why I think that the deed not breed, should be punished.