"It could be a child next"

Is it me, or has this line/notion taken hold more strongly in society lately?

Why do so many people believe this fallacy?

How do all the trainers and professional on here counter this when someone says it to them?
What advice do you give them?

There have been a fair few well publicised attacks on children which have knocked everything out of proportion.

However IMO once someone stops trusting the dog it is well nigh impossible to sort the situation out.

The other thing to consider is that maybe the child will at some point get bitten/scratched/nudged/knocked or otherwise 'damaged' by the dog. This IMO is normal in dog/child interactions. IHowever it will not be seen as normal by some owners.

When Tassle was born I had no worries or hang ups about the two dogs we had, the collie adored her, the lab not so much! Before she was 8 we had two large dogs as well as those two, one was people aggressive. It never crossed my mind that either would attack her. Yes she got nipped sometimes when she ran (the collie), knocked over by the others and otherwise damaged. The worst was a scratch from the cat when she annoyed him once. When she was 8 she had a rescue wsd, it slept with her and shared her life and ran round with her and her friends.

Maybe I was irresponsible, I don't think so. A couple of her friends were kept apart from the dogs, the rest were brought up with animals in more or less the same way.

Sorry----gone OT a bit but in the end it comes down to trust and if it has gone then I think the dog is better off elsewhere and reassuring the people that it won't ever happen could well be the wrong thing to do because their idea of a disaster and yours might be very different!

rune

My Dad calls it scaremongering.

I suppose if you tell an owner of a potentially dangerous dog this, it could kick them up the rear and get them motivated into getting their dog trained, but then you get those who think "A kennel will sort him out" and send the dog to rescue.

Sadie play fights with Louie and is very vocal and looks vicious when she's doing it, my OH's Grandma, when she sees this always says "It'll be a child next if you don't stop that" - Urm no it won't she lives with 4 and two are ages 5 and 2 and she's fantastic with them. She only plays like this with Louie. But of course she's older and I have to respect my elders - so I just nod and say yes - I'll have to stop it before Sadie mistakes a brown furry hooligan who rolls in god knows what, for a small pastey white and blonde child who she's helped bring up for the past 2 and 5 years, who she's also helped learn to walk.

I don't get it..personally. Unless a dog has bitten a child or shown signs of wanting to or lack of tolerance towards children - you can't really say it could be a child next - well you can't.

Benjie has come around loads - he used to hate everything. He now lets the above 5 year old lead him around the house by the collar - something I get a warning growl for - no warning or anything for her - he is totally relaxed with most children - he doesn't like the random ones that run up to him in the park.

But again, if you know your dog may have the ability to attack a child - then you take precautions right? Benjie is always on a lead when we visit a park where there can be children around (It's his usual walk as there is a big field next to the fenced off park area and we do one big circle walk) - we always tell the children - "you can't stroke this one - sorry" yet you get the persistent ones - who just have to stroke the dog regardless of you telling them they can't. - But I suppose children's manners are a different can of worms.

I'm not a trainer or a professional (Just realised that's who you were addressing) but I have trained my own dogs - I know my own dogs, I know the body language of them when they aren't particularly happy; Sadie slinks behind me, Louie raises a front paw and holds it there when he is unsure and Benjie's ear's go back. I think the important thing of training - is the bond and trust between handler and dog AND the realisation that all dogs have limits and are all capable of turning - Sadie could still turn on the children she lives with - which is why there is always someone supervising.

I think that answers it all?

This thinking really does irritate me. The thinking that a DA dog will turn on a child is ridiculous.

I think alot of your average pet owners do believe that aggression is aggression and that the dog cannot differentiate between people/children and other dogs. That, aswell as the media stories of child attacks makes some owners uncomfortable, especially if its their breed of dog, they start to doubt their dog and that in turn leads to a lack of trust.

A few weeks ago i had an incident where i was walking with my 3yr old son, the dogs were offlead and sadie got into a little squabble (handbags at dawn kind of thing) with another dog. I apologised (even tho the other dog started it) and headed home.
A few days later i had a visit from the police..turns out the man had followed me home to see where i lived and reported me for having a dangerous dog and he "was concerned for the childs safety" he thought my son was at risk because my dog had shown aggression. Makes me laugh even more that my son is autistic and sadie is his support dog!

Im not sure how to change peoples thinking on this, with so much media hype around dog attacks, its hard to make people understand.

Benjie although he was got for my OH - has become Mark's support dog - not officially but he's helped him speak a lot more, he tells Benjie all sorts of things and shows him his new toys and repeats whole movie scripts to Benjie - before he wouldn't even say his name to anyone. Yet his history with DA is horrendous. I completely see where you're coming from.

I thought this too before I had dogs and educated myself.

If you have no experience or knowledge of dogs and you see a dog being aggressive (or actually even play fighting) with another dog it looks really scary. Why wouldn't you assume that?

Obviously the only answer is education, you can't expect the general, non-dog-owning, public to know that dog aggressive dogs can be great with humans.

Meanwhile with the high-profile coverage of dog attacks and 'status' dogs it's not surprising that this assumption is becoming more widespread, the press are not exactly doing anything to contradict it.

Not being a trainer or professional I can't answer the last bit.

J.

I don't think it helps when so many hospitals and casualty depts write dog bite on forms without listening to what is being said - Mollie lovely friendly dog when she was 16 weeks old jumped up at my old mum, because my mum was on anticoagulants the resulting small scratch bled quite dramatically so we went to A&E. They wrote it down as a dog bite and a week later we had dog warden at our door. He luckily could see and understand when we explained to him she was a puppy doing normal puppy things not some devil dog attacking elderly people.

But it always made me wonder how many dog bites are really proper bites and not just accidents or scratches. Also what age the dogs are that are being accused.

There's a bloke who walks where I do sometimes, with an aggressive gsd that he recently rescued, and he's been told by the dog warden to keep it muzzled, which he does, but he doesn't stop it charging up to other dogs showing aggression, then it frantically tries to get its muzzle off It happened to me twice, and when I rang the dog warden about him, he told me I was about the 100th person who had complained about this dog, so he would consider doing something about it.

I emphasized to the dog warden that if I had been a parent with a buggy with a dog tied to it,. this dog would have had the lot over, and that was my main concern, because people with buggies walk in this wildlife sanctuary (it's owned by the national trust). That was all about a year ago now.

I heard the other day, that the dog had been pts because he had taken it down the beach, didn't bother with the muzzle and it bit a child!!!!

The bloke in your story sounds very much like an acquaintance of my mother's. He's had rescued GSDs all his life & to be fair he's managed to give a sort of decent life to several GSDs that would probably not have any other chance other than pts or a life in kennels. His last dog was dog aggressive (sometimes, which he found very confusing!) & caused a lot of problems for other dog walkers on the National Trust land that he walked on. It resulted in him having to pay the hefty vet fees for another dog attacked by his dog, & a trip to court where he was ordered to ensure the dog was muzzled at all times when out.

Unfortunately the court order failed to say that he also had to have the dog on lead & under control as well ~ so the dog wore a leather muzzle of the basket type & the owner was so proud of the fact that his dog had learned how to separate the strands of the muzzle so she could also carry a tennis ball. The result was that using a muzzle of this type, with a dog that very quickly learned how to overcome the constraints of the muzzle, meant that the muzzle was completely ineffective!

Then came the fateful day when he opened his door to take the dog out. The dog was off lead & would normally just run to his car on the driveway. On this day his neighbour & her little girl were also just leaving & walking down the shared driveway ~ the dog leapt at the child & bit her on the face & knocked her over. Luckily for the child, the bite was fairly superficial & didn't leave too much of a physical scar ~ although what emotional effect this will have on the child remains to be seen. And luckily for the dog, the neighbour was extremely understanding & did not want the dog reported or pts. She just wanted it kept under control.

The dog's owner didn't realise how close he'd come to having to have the dog pts until my mother told him (quite brutally ~ she's not one to mince her words) that if he didn't keep the dog on lead & under control at all times, she would report him to anyone who would listen. She also told him to stop shouting & screaming at the dog, that it perfectly possible to communicate with a dog in a whisper, & that if she heard about anymore incidents, she would report him to the DT (where he got the dog from) & ask them to take the dog back as he was clearly an irresponsible owner with an out of control dog that he didn't know how to handle! I was very proud of my mother when I heard that day She also demonstrated how easy it was to train this dog using small pieces of cheese & a quiet voice, & trained the dog to sit & stay while she laid out several pieces of cheese & then told the dog to "go get them"! It worked a treat & I remember seeing him proudly demonstrate this at the DT open day a while later, as if he'd thought of it all himself.

I think that any dog has the pottential to hurt a child, or anybody come to that...wether they do or not depends enormously on the training the dog has received.

Of course if a child makes a high pitched noise or something the dog isnt used to its more likely to happen.

Personally it does annoy me how people can say 'it'll be a child next' when they witness a dog bark, grown or lunge at another dog... IMO dog aggression is a million miles away from people/child aggression.

Having said that, I dont think I would trust my dogs with children, especially Flint as he is very focused on me and new things worry him alot. Simba on the other hand would be very 'in your face' about greeting a child, and thats the reason I wouldnt be comfortable allowing him around kids.
BUT- I think this is because I dont have children, so my dogs have not had the oppertunity to become accustomed to children...which is another thing to take into consideration I guese