Wow!!!, please pass our healing thoughts to your husband Kaz and thanks for your post. :)
I was envisaging a cover up, a reason the handler gave for why the dog bit an innocent person......my thoughts is the handler dropped the leash and the let the dog go in an apprehension command......the dog then would nail anyone who appeared.......it may have also been the first time the handler was able to release the dog so in a bit of cowboy style "yee harrr' get him boy, the dog's ramped for a bite....sees Kaz's husband and dog thinks "we are on, that's my target" and the dog will take the bite like any other training scenario it's done 100 times before with a decoy and hidden sleeve......hence the "arm bite".
Geez, that's bad handling of the dog from sheer incompetence on the handler's part in the circumstances.....the handler would know damn well the dog will bite anyone in that scenario from training alone and I would say in the truth of the matter, the handler has made several breaches of handling protocol that the department needs to be accountable for. The handler MUST be able to abort an apprehension, and to do this, the handler MUST have sight of the dog, in fact the handler should have pulled the dog back in against the leash to heighten drive to hunt, not let him run free ahead and out of sight.....just stupid stuff and I am saddened by the ordeal Kaz's poor husband had to endure
Having said that.....the dog may not have bitten a child simply because the dog works to training scenarios where kids are not used a decoys, so a little person is not something the dog has ever been trained to target for a bite, but may bite a child depending on the dog and the drive, still a very dangerous scenario as seen from the injury Kaz's husband received, the dog bites with exceptional force causing severe injury to unprotected limbs. The biting force felt even through a sleeve is more than anyone would imagine, the jaws of a GSD presents incredible clamping force when trained to bite and grip with maximum strength.
