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Child Attacked By Family Dog - Sydney


Alyosha
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http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8455598/sydney-toddler-mauled-by-family-dog

Same story, One of my customers said to me this morning did I hear about the toddler that was attacked by the family dog, he said it was a Dobermann? Wonder if its the same story.

Wish they woudln't throw that word "mauling" around, when it says the child was bitten on the face with deep non life threatening lacerations, sounds like a sudden snap from a big dog. *sigh* why was a child left with their face so close to a dog unsupervised?

Why does this stupid stuff keep happening? :( Poor Child and RIP Doggy.

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http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8455598/sydney-toddler-mauled-by-family-dog

Same story, One of my customers said to me this morning did I hear about the toddler that was attacked by the family dog, he said it was a Dobermann? Wonder if its the same story.

Wish they woudln't throw that word "mauling" around, when it says the child was bitten on the face with deep non life threatening lacerations, sounds like a sudden snap from a big dog. *sigh* why was a child left with their face so close to a dog unsupervised?

Why does this stupid stuff keep happening? :( Poor Child and RIP Doggy.

I agree that it sounds like just 1 snap rather than an "attack" as such, but we don't know if they dog and child were unsupervised.

It happens because toddlers are erratic and things can happen very quickly whether someone is watching or not. I always supervise my 2yr old playing with our dog and she has been given a few warnings when she's gotten too rough for Gypsy to tolerate, and they are very quickly separated. I do the best I can to teach my daughter how to interact properly with the dog, but she is 2 years old and doesn't have the understanding that an older child would.

There are no details about the incident reported in any of the articles so there is no way to know what the circumstances are.

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Who is to say they weren't supervised? Attacked happen in micro seconds. Personally I think the supervision message has lulled people into a false sense of security

Thats exactly it Megan, you can supervise till the cows come home but if you dont know what warning behaviours to look for there's not much you can do to prevent a disaster - and even then accidents still happen.

A dog can be totally fine, have the best training in the world and very tolerant 95% of the time, but just like us there will be some times when they are just not in the mood to tolerate being grabbed at, hugged or played with by a toddler because they are rough and full on and unfortunately at this age there's only so much you can do to explain or show them how to play with the dog.

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Generally speaking I should have said poor supervision rather than assuming unsupervised totally, toddlers shouldn't be allowed really to get their faces right up close to a dogs, as much as a playful lick on the face might be cute, one wrong move or accidental step or movement thats misunderstood by the dog as a possible threat can end in a split second snap, that damages a child for life and ends in the death of a family pet. :( And it doesn't have to be a big dog or complete lack of supervision, more like ignorance really, I've seen a small child (whos parents told her to stop patting Brutus cos he was a "Big dog" and told her to "Go pat the little dog instead" the small toy poodle sitting on my aunts lap, at face height to the child, and this is a really possesive little dog, fortunatly my aunt had time to gently put her hand around the poodles mouth as the child got up from patting my dog and was right in the poodles space in a second because her parents assumed the smaller dog was safer than the big dobermann lying on the ground.

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Who is to say they weren't supervised? Attacked happen in micro seconds. Personally I think the supervision message has lulled people into a false sense of security

Thats exactly it Megan, you can supervise till the cows come home but if you dont know what warning behaviours to look for there's not much you can do to prevent a disaster - and even then accidents still happen.

I wholly agree with this. I don't know the circumstances of this case, and I'm not saying that accidents will never happen even to a responsible owner - but people who think they know what they are doing can be equally at risk as somebody clueless. If somebody is supervising dog and child, but it's reactive... still a recipe for disaster.

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Thats exactly it Megan, you can supervise till the cows come home but if you dont know what warning behaviours to look for there's not much you can do to prevent a disaster - and even then accidents still happen.

We need also to remember that there are some dogs that do NOT give any warning behaviours.

I have seen it happen at very close quarters ... each time it was a dog and a small child, and there were NO warning behaviours.

I am not going to name breeds, but they were small and medium breeds.

Very loyal to owners etc, owners in shock when it happened.

No prior warning signals were given by the dogs.

Jealousy is often suspected, particularly if the dog is usually the centre of the owners world. When small visitors get that attention, trouble might not be far away, but please don't always think that the dog will give warnings.

That simply does not always happen.

Souff

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The other thing to remember is that 100% supervision is very difficult.

When our kids were in the babies/toddler/preschool age group our dog was an outside dog because that was the only way we could do 100% supervision. And depending on what we were doing outside, sometimes the dog was put in a separate area if we couldn't be watching and supervising the whole time.

But it is very difficult and even the most careful owner/parent can be caught out.

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