Dogs'n'stuff

STUFF : NATIONAL NEWS - STORY : 4 year old bitten in latest dog attack

Latest dog attack... sounds like there's an epidemic. Or a swarm, like those recent earthquakes. Do you think there are more dog attacks then there used to be? Or are they getting hysterically talked up by the media?

And how would microchipping have stopped these two attacks? (Not that I'm against microchipping, they'd be useful if your dog went missing & got picked up someplace.)

Not that I'm leaping to blame anyone for this, I mean, the circumstances aren't explained, but why is a four year old within range of a dog anyway? What sort of dog was it? What was the kid doing? How well were the kid & dog being supervised?

I don't know about parents, but all this is making dog owners nervous, there's a lot of ill-founded animosity out there towards dogs & dog owners.

That said, I & some dog walking cronies, found ourselves in an indefensible position a few weeks ago. We let our dogs chase balls & each other on the same patch of field as some picnicking parents & toddlers. The dogs went nowhere near the kids (who were 50 yards away from the parents, playing among trees), but we were roundly chastised by one of the mums...

OK, we should have asked if they minded, and we should have apologised... but you know that feeling when you're in the wrong, with no mitigating circumstances and you just want to give the finger & say "Fuck you!". Fortunately, we did neither.

Just then, one of the toddlers (unsupervised & 50 metres away from any adults near a steep drop behind some trees) had a nasty fall... man, did I feel an indignant lecture coming on...

It was almost with some disappointment the next day, that I found they'd cleaned up their picnic & had not thrown disposable nappies into the bush (not unknown).

UPDATE:

Oh and in case anyone's thinking I'm one-eyed about this, remember the dog Toot, who killed a cat in someone's backyard a few years ago? Toot received a death sentence, but was spirited away to hiding & hasn't been seen since?

Well I wrote a letter to the local newspaper at the time wondering what would have happened if the unsupervised Toot had come across a toddler, and not a sleeping cat. I thought he should have been put down.