Agree 100% with this Mys. and I don't think the kids were to blame in this case at all, they were pretty good considering their ages. The parents on the other hand were not willing to put in the work that would have been needed to turn this dog around, and the mother in my opinion wanted the easy option. Her husband should have seen this and put in all the effort needed, but he carried on stroking the dog under the table when it got off the mat so that was never going to happen. They were more concerned at having to "keep getting up and down during dinner" to bother to enforce the training. Some people shouldn't have dogs.

I agree with you Moobli, I hope that they and other people do learn from this unfortunate outcome.

But I also hope that people realise although 'love' must be the biggest ingredient of dog ownership it must be combined with commitment, dedication, respect, understanding and responsibility...If we want to bring dogs into our lives we must be prepared to educate ourselves and for work, work and more work...People need to start realising they are not glorified cuddly toys.

(A generalised comment not intended directly for the family involved)

here here mischevious

AH but love clearly has many facets, I loved my teddy but clearly had no commitment to him, because I have no idea what became of him. So I don't disagree with you but think MYs has hit the nail squarely on the head with the next quote.


Thank you Mys, for finding the words that I was looking for and hitting the nail so totally on the head.

I think it was the best thing having the dog PTS.If you are not able to cope with the dog yourself you cant hand the problem over to someone else even if they do no the dogs backround for bitting.VS has been training dogs for many years and im sure she knew what was best.You could turn round and say the dog will never bite again, but its one big gamble.Your walking round with a time bomb unsure when it will go off.

Dogs are animals at the end of the day and ALL animals domesticated or not are unpredictable.

You cannot say for certain that putting this dog in a new home will "cure" the problem IMO thats just silly.

What would happen if the new owner with lots of experiance and no kids has friends or relatives with children? Is the dog to banished to the outside? or how about when out walking???

Children will ALWAYS run up to dogs at sometime or another and what would happen then?? I for one wouldnt want to be responsable for the dog biting someones child!!

As previously documented in another thread, I've been in that exact position, when my Great Dane bit a small child, really quite badly.

It's a horrendous situation to find yourself in as you feel bad from all sides. The child's family of course, other dog owners, and then you sit quizzing whether it was something you did that prompted the behaviour. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

In such situations, I do believe that the only safe alternative is to have the dog put to sleep. A trust that is so much needed for us to happily coexist has been broken.

However, I stress that in my case, had the child been somehow pushing the dog to bite, I may have acted differently, but she didn't. It was an out of the blue attack, where the dog really did go quite out of its way to initiate it.

Sorry but I thought it was disgusting what they did to this dog..one minute Victoria Stillwell is taking the family to see how good these dogs are with finding drugs etc and the next minute she's advising them to have the poor soul put down...totally waste of a nice dog...I hope this woman is removed from our TV screens because I for one will not be watching anymore of her awful programs...

Me too actually. But not because of anything she did per se. I was just unlucky enough to have seen her for the first time last week, with Jodi Marsh. I figured if that was the best she has to offer the tv screens then I'm better without it.

Just out of interest, what would you have advised the family to do in VS's position (assuming vet advice had also been taken)?