petermoore

So if a dog isn't on a lead its fair game?

I appreciate most of the comments posted here. I believe I erred in my original post by asking advice regarding who is at fault. It was a mistake to create the debate that has happened here. I have learned from this incident and I am pleased to let those who are concerned know that my greyhound seems to be recovering. She has 2 large gashes and 10 puncture wounds that required stitching and temporary drains. She still seems to be in enourmous pain and finds it impossible to walk up steps, I will take her back to the vet tomorrow. I know who the owner of the other dog is, a friend of a friend, and from all reports they are reasonable people my intention at this stage is to contact them toward the end of the week and discuss what happened.

My dog lived in racing kennels until she was almost 4, in the time we have had her it obvious that she is still learning how to be a dog. She mimics what other dogs do,if a dog barks at her she barks back, I am particularly concerned how the attack will affect her... With regard to this forum I am unsure how some have reached the conclusion that my dog was out of control. The dog that attacked her had acted aggressively toward my dog prior to the attack, the owner almost needed to sit on it to restrain it. As I stated in my post I acknowledge that I have contributed to the situation, my dog did not run toward the large aggressive dog, she ran in its general vicinity and when the aggressor dog barked my dog responded by also barking, this resulted in the large bull terrier type dog becoming uncontrollable, even if the lead had not broken I'm not sure the owner would have been able to prevent the attack. My dog being off its leashed resulted in it being exposed to danger and I need to take responsibility for that, but additionally after witnessing what the aggressor dog did can I ethically ignore it?

I have rescued greyhound, she's 6yo and we've had her for almost 3years now. She has a wonderful nature with people, but is often a little unnsure how to act around other dogs. She seems to have learnt from our neighbour's dogs to bark at dogs as they walk past our place, and she does ocassionally take on an aggressive pose to other dogs, but its all show and she has never attempted to bite or chase another dog or cat. Like all greyhounds she loves to run, we had her at our local beach (in a regional area so it wasn't busy) and she was happily swimming with us until she got spooked by a large wave and took off for a run. She does this occassionally and usually involves a short sprint at top pace in a rough circle back to us. On this ocassion she came across a large pit bull looking dog ( I will call it a pit bull but I am not certain) the pit bull was on a leash but was extremly aggressive toward our dog. Our dog doesn't realise the danger she is in and barks back at the pit bull, the pit bull is on a leash so the situation looks under control, that is until the pit bull breaks its leash grabs our dog and starts trying to kill it. I am not exaggerating the blood and gapping wounds on our dog were horrific, the vet said that a smaller dog would almost certainly have been killed by the attack. I acknowledge that we contributed to the situation by not having our dog on a leash, but the pit also wasn't adequately restrained, my question is how do I have this dog declared dangerous and am I entitled to ask the owner of the pit bull to pay the vet bill? We are in Qld.