Hello
I have a beautiful Ridgeback called Pride. We live in Bristol and have a problem!
Pride has now gone for three children on separate occasions.
The worst one was today when she bit my best friends little boy.
I myself have two kids but they are 11 and 12 and the three she has taken an aversion to have all been under 6 and all of them blond!
I can also say that all three were only stroking her and had not hurt her in any way.
Pride is now just over one years old and is the light of my life but my husband has a six year old daughter and I have a six year old niece. There are obviously concerns for their safety. Have you come accross this before?
I would be grateful for any help you could give me
Many thanks
Sally Robinson

Leigh Note:Moved to Behaviour :-)

if you visit the -general -board i think it was ,theres two on there you should read, ones- my puppy bit my daughter, and im not sure what the other was called but it involved westies,
a dog of your size is capable of doing a lot of damage to a child, i wouldnt keep a dog that disliked kids to the extent that it would attack them ,im sorry but it wouldnt be rehomed either ,as then its an accident waiting to happen, i love my dogs but children come before them everytime and they deserve the right to be safe,

I am afraid I would not have this dog after the first time he went for a child .dizzy is right when she says every child has the right to be safe. This dog has bitten and the thing is you know he has .imagine what kind of trouble you might find yourself in if he does it again. I am truly sorry but you have a decision to make here . It is a sad thing when a dog turns vicious but it happens and must be dealt with

I agree to an extent with the above 2 replies but!!

In at least one of the other cases mentioned, the dog was eventually found to have been suffering from a painful ear abscess which in my book would have been surely a big part, if not all, of the problem.

We have no idea as to why this Ridgeback is doing this, yes he may indeed be a serious danger to children, but we on this board have no idea what is the REAL situation. The reasons for aggression range from very painful physical problems such as undiagnosed hip dysplasia to genetics to bad training/socialisation etc etc etc. I know of a case recently where a Rottie attacked but he had severe hip problemsand his owners didn't want to know.

As i suggested, perhaps this dog is a real danger but let's not write him off unless we know all the details and are vets or behaviourists or whatever. The short answer is, we here on this board don't know the answers to this one, supposing the dog is in severe pain? Perhaps he has not been used to small blond children and may attack and yes, may be unsafe/deadly.

IMHO i would suggest the most constructive advice is to see a vet for a THOROUGH examination - blood, everything, and then see a good behaviourist recommended by a vet. Then if the dog is deemed to be healthy but still a danger the end will be obvious.

Guest, you obviously love Pride very much - I wish you all the best with the difficult time you have ahead of you.

No matter what the reason this dog had for biting the children he still bit them. I have had unwell dogs from time to time the same as anyone had im sure. My experiences of them was they looked for loads of sympathy from adults and children alike, they were sick not vicious ,they dident have a bad bone in them .I too am so sorry for Sally it is a shame .but it will be a greater shame if some little child is badly hurt

Welcome to the forum Sally.

The first thing that occurred to me when I read your post was that personally I would have stopped ANY child from stroking her totally, no matter what their ages, until I had decided what to do about this problem. Personally, I don't see that you have any choice.

Your dog has bitten three vulnerable human beings.

You have been very lucky on two counts 1) that the dog has only 'warned' so far and not done any serious damage 2) that none of the parents of the bitten children have contacted the Police (Dangerous Dogs Act).

By all means consider Lindsay's suggestion, get your vet to check her over and pay for a behaviourist. But maybe you should consider how you are going to keep children safe in the mean time,whilst other avenues are explored?

I am sure that Pride is a beautiful dog, and I don't envy the position that you find yourself in, but Children MUST come first :-)

Leigh

in the case of the dog with the painful ear,he must of had it from very young, unless ive picked it up wrong he'd always shown a dislike of children,-surely his ear would of still been painfull if an adult touched it, im sorry but my opinion in both cases isn't changed, why if the ridgeback might be in pain is this making it bite children ,-blonde ones at that, if it was in pain why not grump at its elder family too, if a dog is genuinley in pain it wouldnt be too happy with anyone touching the sore spot,-time will tell on these, i hope im in the wrong, for the kids sakes, has anyone heard how the cocker is behaving now that he no longer has a sore ear,?

If I remember rightly, the cocker had possibly had the ear abscess for a long time as it ad been undiagnosed. We don't, IMHO, know enough to say that it was, or that it wasn't the problem. Well over 50% of serious aggression problems are due to pain in some form or other, and a lot depends on thedog. A nice dog in severe pain may still be grumpy or bite. It's not an excuse but it is a reason. At the end of the say, dogs do bite, growl etc; its what they do to communicate. None of my dogs have ever growled/bitten at me, but I did shut our lab X's tail in the car door on ce and she grabbed my hand - not to bite but she could have done. i wouldnt have blamed her either!!! Ouch!

To be honest my feeling about Pride is that she is nervous of small blond kids and maybe wasn't socialised to small kids. Being a big dog with an active defence mechanism, she bites to show her feelings. I don't think in this case it is pain as the bite is so selective, but it is IMHO wrong to attempt to diagnose on what little we know, and to basically say the dog should be put to sleep when a vet should always be the first stop, for examination, just in case :).

It is also possible that the dog may be helped, and if so then how tragic to end a life. Dogs who are scared of kids have come round and been made safe, it's not impossible..... I agree with Leigh's remarks about making kids safe too, keep Pride well away for the moment until this has been gone into further.

Just my thoughts,perhaps there could be other factors too such as time of day, place, etc etc etc . I'll keep fingers crossed.

LIndsay

Many people do not realise that dogs give off a lot of signals before they bite - avoidance, body stiffening, head and/or tail going down (or back). The first thing that many people see is the growl or bite when a dog has been trying to say that it does not like something or someone for a while?

Christine

Yes, good point; often the dog has been saying for a while that something is wrong, and has ben getting more and more het up, but as you say Christine the first thing many people do see is the growl or the bite. People not beingable toread the body stiffening, is a classic example. If only we could see things as dogs see them, now that would be interesting.

Lindsay

I borrowed a couple of videos on agressive dogs a while ago, I think by Ian Dunbar, which were very informative - shows just what people are missing before the dogs actually bite.

Christine

I think I have seen those too, Christine. As you say, very informative. So interestiing to watch the aggressive dogs on a video too, to be able to rewind and watch out for all the bits we would normally miss seeing :)

Lindsay

im fairly new to computers so can you please tell me what IMHO stands for, it leaves a lot of us guessing what is meant

In My Humble/Honest Opinion. Acronyms ;-) edited

There I was thinking the H stood for HUMBLE :)-

In all the IT circles I am in - the H does stand for Humble

I tend to use it as "Humble" :)

LIndsay

Toby, my Cocker had his ear treated just before Christmas. Since then (in fact since he bit my daughter earlier in December) we have had no problems with him. My daughter has only been permitted near him under very direct supervision from an adult and all seems to be fine.

The problem now is that I don't feel that I can trust him since he bit her.

We are still in a wait-and-see situation. If we have any more problems with him I will not be able to keep him.

Helen

is toby ever pleased to see your daughter, -without her eating at the time,is there any interaction on his behalf towards your daughter or is he always well out the way of her,i just wondered if it was certain things he reacted to or wether hed just as soon never go near her at all

He will often try to play with her and is happy when she comes into the room - so yes, I think it is just certain things that he reacts to.