2 Dog Attacks On Children Over Night

[k9angel]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/national/watch/27973635/

I just saw this on the news.

A little girl aged 4 recieved horrific head injuries by the family's pet dog in Melbourne over night and a 6 yr old Sydney boy was attacked by his Grandmothers dog in Sydney over night. The grandmother was also bitten in the attack.

A link to the Melbourne attack

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/girl-loses-scalp-in-family-dog-attack-20120125-1qg1r.html

A four-year-old girl is in a serious condition in hospital after her scalp was torn off in a dog attack in Melbourne’s south-east last night.

Paramedics said the child suffered ‘‘horrific’’ head injuries in the attack at a property in Ryan Road, Pakenham about 7.30pm.

The dog, which is believed to be a family pet, has been seized by council rangers.

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Paramedics said the girl was inside the home when one of the family dogs began mauling her. The breed of the dog is not known.

Paramedics arrived to find the child being cared for by her mother, who had wrapped a towel around her daughter’s head.

Advanced life support paramedic Mike Jevons said they immediately cleaned and dressed the wounds to stop her bleeding and gave her pain relief.

‘‘The four year-old suffered horrific head injuries,’’ Mr Jevons said.

‘‘We administered pain relief through a nasal inhaler before intensive care paramedics put a drip in her arm and gave her stronger pain relief which made her more comfortable.’’

She was flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital in a serious condition.

The Cardinia Shire declined to comment on whether it is investigating the attack.

And a link to the Sydney attack

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/boy-6-and-grandmother-attacked-by-dog/story-e6frf7jx-1226253000435

A SIX-YEAR-OLD boy and his grandmother are in hospital after they were attacked by a dog in western Sydney.

The woman's staffordshire bull terrier turned on her grandson while he was playing in her Oxley Park front yard about 5.20pm (AEDT) yesterday, police said.

He suffered wounds to his face, arms and stomach and was taken to Westmead Hospital in a stable condition.

The dog also attacked the woman as she tried to rescue the boy.

She was taken to Nepean Hospital with lacerations on her forearm.

Penrith City Council workers have seized the dog for assessment.

The incident comes after a four-year-old girl suffered horrific head injuries when she was attacked by a dog in southeast Melbourne yesterday.

Edited January 24, 2012 by k9angel

[HollyMilo]

Poor little kids

[Bug]

Terrible incident. The Herald Sun has a thumbnail image of a dog with bared teeth - not the usual pitbull image -this time they have used a German Shepherd Dog.

I guess the legislation introduced by this State Government to reduce pitbull attacks means this offending dog could not be a pitbull:)

The media can choose whatever image they want to illustrate a 'dangerous dog' story. Before we had pitbulls the media chose to target GSD. The type/breed of dog in this case has not yet been released to the media.

[experiencedfun]

from what I have read on my fb site the dog in Melb was not a pit bull or a GSD

[Tapua]

Dreadfull for the kids and their families

[WExtremeG]

They say that the dog that attacked the girl in Melbourne was a Rhodesian Ridgeback cross.

[Paganman]

They say that the dog that attacked the girl in Melbourne was a Rhodesian Ridgeback cross.

Yeah and I heard on the ABC the dog belonged to a family friend who was staying at the house for a few days

[WeimMe]

So so sad

[Aziah]

Terrible but what triggered it? Where the kids supervised (and I don't mean Mum and Dad could see them from a distance).

The ltitle boy had to be rescued by his grandmother - why wasn't she close by?

Preventable?...possibly/probably.

[lovemesideways]

Obviously the new legislation is making such a difference............

[megan_]

Terrible but what triggered it? Where the kids supervised (and I don't mean Mum and Dad could see them from a distance).

The ltitle boy had to be rescued by his grandmother - why wasn't she close by?

Preventable?...possibly/probably.

WE don't know the details and we can't speculate. She could have been 1m away from him and still needed to rescue him? Dog attacks happen in nano seconds.

I think the supervision mantra has lulled people into a false sense of security - some dogs should never be left alone with children. I grew up with dogs that played with us unsupervised and we never got bitten - they had the right temperament to be playing with kids.

[Aziah]

Terrible but what triggered it? Where the kids supervised (and I don't mean Mum and Dad could see them from a distance).

The ltitle boy had to be rescued by his grandmother - why wasn't she close by?

Preventable?...possibly/probably.

WE don't know the details and we can't speculate. She could have been 1m away from him and still needed to rescue him? Dog attacks happen in nano seconds.

I think the supervision mantra has lulled people into a false sense of security - some dogs should never be left alone with children. I grew up with dogs that played with us unsupervised and we never got bitten - they had the right temperament to be playing with kids.

No WE don't :laugh:

It's common sense not to leave your young childen unsupervised (period!) whether they be on their own or with animals...you don't do it regardless of how you grew up.

[megan_]

oops, meant to say that some dogs should never be left with children - supervised or not.

[Kirty]

I heard it was a RR x PUPPY!

[juice]

The black dog being poled looked like a mutt, poor mum as she ran into the ambulance, so upsetting to see her

The ban is working then, not.

[anniek]

Heard at lunchtime that the dogs is a RR x 6months old - belongs to a family friend. Dog secured in back yard while child playing in the front yard. Thought that the dog had jumped the fence, then at the end of the news they said or another child in the family may have left the back gate open and let the dog through to the front yard.

[HugUrPup]

I can't understand how a 6 month old puppy could be so aggressive and cause so much damage.

That poor child

[SpotTheDog]

I can't understand how a 6 month old puppy could be so aggressive and cause so much damage.

That poor child

It wouldn't surprise me if the pup wasn't really six months old, but still.

Some dogs have extremely 'strong personalities' from a young age - high prey drive, strong resource guarding, very highly strung animals. If the dog was never socialised with children, it just wouldn't recognise a child as a 'person', just as another living thing smaller than it that's annoying it and needs to be warned off.

This is total speculation of course, but if the dog grabbed the girl by a ponytail and shook hard, the way a dog like that could regardless of its age, he could have managed to scalp her. It wouldn't have had to be a sustained attack where he was gnawing on her for ages.

As for 'where were the parents' - more and more in the news I see dog attacks on children and I hear speculation by dog-supporters that portrays children as tiny experimenting nazi canine-torturers, guaranteed to deliberately try to injure or harm a dog for their own entertainment, and the dog is portrayed as an innocent that was merely trying to defend itself. This, to me, does dogs just as much of a disservice as breed sterotyping.

Dogs don't 'get' children. The legal speaker at the Melbourne anti-BSL rally last year even touched on it in his speech. To a dog, a child looks, acts and sounds completely different to an adult human. I totally agree with megan - dog attacks happen in nanoseconds. Other than completely separating your dog and your child, it's unrealistic to think that just because you're standing four feet away and watching, your child won't end up on the receiving end of a set of teeth. You need to be a good reader of canine body language - and most owners aren't.

I saw a video at a friend's house recently - she was going through a list of old Christmas vids and things and found an old video taken a few years previously. At the time, she had a 2 year old son and her two brothers were lodging with her. She left her son in the care of the brothers (young men in their early 20s) and went to the supermarket. While she was out, the boys took a video of their nephew. The family dog entered the living room. The dog is a 40+ kg irish wolfhound cross mastiff, a speyed bitch, about three years old at the time of the video. While they film, and one of them is holding and patting the dog, the little boy knots his fists in her fur (he's not tugging, just exploring what she feels like), looks into her mouth and then tries to lift one of her back feet off the ground. The boys are watching as closely as any adult would - they're reassuring the dog, patting her, and it's all a sweet scene of discovery.

As an inexperienced but keen student of canine body language, I was open-mouthed at the video and began to talk my friend through it. Her dog was licking her lips and turning her head away from the child. She tried to walk away a couple of times, but of course one of the brothers had her by the collar, thinking he was protecting the child and not realising he was actually stressing the dog out. She was lifting her front feet and turning away. She wouldn't make eye contact and was blinking slowly and licking her lips and nose a lot. She yawned frequently. Her ears were back and slick against her head.

The dog was extremely stressed out by the entire exchange - she didn't want to be touched or poked by the child and when he went to lift her foot she tried to dance away from him (and was finally let go and she cleared off out of there - more because the chap with her collar couldn't hold her 40kg+ frame when she decided she'd had enough).

To the young men, she looked like a patient and long-suffering dog, putting up with a child - they didn't understand her repeated signals that she was unhappy and wanted to go. The only signals they would have recognised would have been bared teeth or growling, neither of which she did - but then if she had gone straight from that prolonged signalling to a snap or bite, they would have been astonished and it may have been one of those 'attacks with no warning'. Plus if someone asked them 'why was the child unsupervised', the answer was that he wasn't unsupervised - the people supervising him just didn't understand what they were watching.

[Blonde_Phoenix]

I can't understand how a 6 month old puppy could be so aggressive and cause so much damage.

That poor child

My pup would have had at least 10kgs on the average 6 year old at 6 months old (plenty of damage potential).

So sad for everyone involved

[HugUrPup]

I can't understand how a 6 month old puppy could be so aggressive and cause so much damage.

That poor child

It wouldn't surprise me if the pup wasn't really six months old, but still.

Some dogs have extremely 'strong personalities' from a young age - high prey drive, strong resource guarding, very highly strung animals. If the dog was never socialised with children, it just wouldn't recognise a child as a 'person', just as another living thing smaller than it that's annoying it and needs to be warned off.

This is total speculation of course, but if the dog grabbed the girl by a ponytail and shook hard, the way a dog like that could regardless of its age, he could have managed to scalp her. It wouldn't have had to be a sustained attack where he was gnawing on her for ages.

As for 'where were the parents' - more and more in the news I see dog attacks on children and I hear speculation by dog-supporters that portrays children as tiny experimenting nazi canine-torturers, guaranteed to deliberately try to injure or harm a dog for their own entertainment, and the dog is portrayed as an innocent that was merely trying to defend itself. This, to me, does dogs just as much of a disservice as breed sterotyping.

Dogs don't 'get' children. The legal speaker at the Melbourne anti-BSL rally last year even touched on it in his speech. To a dog, a child looks, acts and sounds completely different to an adult human. I totally agree with megan - dog attacks happen in nanoseconds. Other than completely separating your dog and your child, it's unrealistic to think that just because you're standing four feet away and watching, your child won't end up on the receiving end of a set of teeth. You need to be a good reader of canine body language - and most owners aren't.

I saw a video at a friend's house recently - she was going through a list of old Christmas vids and things and found an old video taken a few years previously. At the time, she had a 2 year old son and her two brothers were lodging with her. She left her son in the care of the brothers (young men in their early 20s) and went to the supermarket. While she was out, the boys took a video of their nephew. The family dog entered the living room. The dog is a 40+ kg irish wolfhound cross mastiff, a speyed bitch, about three years old at the time of the video. While they film, and one of them is holding and patting the dog, the little boy knots his fists in her fur (he's not tugging, just exploring what she feels like), looks into her mouth and then tries to lift one of her back feet off the ground. The boys are watching as closely as any adult would - they're reassuring the dog, patting her, and it's all a sweet scene of discovery.

As an inexperienced but keen student of canine body language, I was open-mouthed at the video and began to talk my friend through it. Her dog was licking her lips and turning her head away from the child. She tried to walk away a couple of times, but of course one of the brothers had her by the collar, thinking he was protecting the child and not realising he was actually stressing the dog out. She was lifting her front feet and turning away. She wouldn't make eye contact and was blinking slowly and licking her lips and nose a lot. She yawned frequently. Her ears were back and slick against her head.

The dog was extremely stressed out by the entire exchange - she didn't want to be touched or poked by the child and when he went to lift her foot she tried to dance away from him (and was finally let go and she cleared off out of there - more because the chap with her collar couldn't hold her 40kg+ frame when she decided she'd had enough).

To the young men, she looked like a patient and long-suffering dog, putting up with a child - they didn't understand her repeated signals that she was unhappy and wanted to go. The only signals they would have recognised would have been bared teeth or growling, neither of which she did - but then if she had gone straight from that prolonged signalling to a snap or bite, they would have been astonished and it may have been one of those 'attacks with no warning'. Plus if someone asked them 'why was the child unsupervised', the answer was that he wasn't unsupervised - the people supervising him just didn't understand what they were watching.

There have been attacks on children within 2 feet of the parents.. these things happen very fast.