http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/762063.stm

There was also an attack on a baby in Liverpool yesterday
[link http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_objectid=14103227&method=full&siteid=50061&headline=boy-savaged-by-pet-dog-name_page.html] link [/link]

the problems with highlighting attacks such as these can lead to catch 22 situations .....
Obviously you want people to do a proper research into the breed before they choose to home a particular breed but you also create an epidemic with the media highlighting every single dog attack and end up with the Staffy attacks hysteria that go around every so often :(

We have had the same hysteria in the past re Rottweilers and GSDs. I think both of these incidents highlight the need to be vigilant with regard to leaving children and dogs alone.

Seem to remember an incident when a Husky was reported in the paper to have savaged a child playing with others in the home. When it went to court it turned out the children had been throwing chocolates around the room above the dogs head and when it jumped to catch one it caught a child hand - some savage attack :(

Then of course there was the London incident when a 4 year old child was allegedly attacked by 2 GSD guard dogs in their compound on an indutrial estate that had a twelve foot high fence around it & the dogs allegedly dragged the child in under the fence(which was cemented into the ground)

The child has superficial grazes on it's arms & legs

The dogs were shot dead by the police who used two full clips of rifle bullets to kill the dogs

Later it transpired the child had never been in the compound at all & had been injured in a fight over a stolen bike & blamed the dogs to prevent getting into trouble. He knew about the dogs as his father worked near the factory

The owner of the dogs had only been away from his factory for 20 minutes & came back to find his dogs dead & the place full of coppers. He got £10 for the dogs as compensation from the police & the guard dog act was brought in shortly afterwards

There was a G.S.D. who had a post-mortem following euthanasia for biting a child and it had a ball point pen in it's ear.  Another dog, cannot remember the breed, was found to have staples from a staple gun all along it's back after it had been killed for biting.  :(

There are indeed lots of incidents where children provoke attacks, and also where small incidents are sensationalised. However there are some genuine terrible attacks  It is well documented that dogs see small children as equals, and as such will try and dominate them if their place in the pack is not clear.
These are young children, and it is wrong of us to blame a youngster for provoking a dog.Of course we can teach children the correct way to deal with a dog, and i would scold a child for teasing a dog....but children are not adults, and we should not consider kids this young as responsible for their actions, nor in any way imply that they somehow deserved to get bitten. Kids are kids, we should not leave them unsupervised with dogs.  These incidents are the fault  of the adults involved, not the kids or the dogs. I NEVER leave my dogs alone with kids although they have only ever been totally trustworthy.
When will adult dog owners get the message? Young kids and dogs should be supervised, for the sake of the child AND the dog.....

I take a somewhat different point of view in that I  would never leave my dogs with any child as I do not trust any children with my dogs. Even the cavaliers have suffered at the hands of the "innocents"like ear pulling, poking & prodding & that's when they have been supervised.

I even had a young child aged nine knife one of my GSDs with a stanley knife & no the child was no innocent deprived child from a bad home, but an out & out evil child, who later attacked an elderly lady with a similar weapon & is currently in a secure children's home. The parents are very caring & her other siblings(oh yes it was a girl)were quite normal. There is no illness etc the child is just evil. She was very very lucky my GSD was a fully trained Schutzhund dog totally under control & so was stopped from doing anything to her, otherwise he would have been the evil GSD who attacked a blonde blue eyed pretty innocent girl for no reason. Of course at nine she could not be held responsible for her actions & the police could do nothing

Sorry - sometimes it IS the kids fault - there can be deliberate acts of cruelty towards animals by children - I once had a 7 year old in my class who stood on a chair  at home and jumped deliberately onto his sleeping puppy causing such terrible damage that the poor thing has to be PTS - don't tell me he did'nt know what he was doing was wrong.

You've only got to stand and watch the average playground to see the deliberate 'bullying' and cruelty towards smaller, weaker playmates - animals and children should NEVER be left unsupervised together.

I agree, much as we like to think children won't hurt animals, sometimes they can and will :(  My heart sinks when i hear about Moonmaiden's epxerience with the stanley knife girl and Grondemon's with the child jumping on the puppy :(

I agree their are children who dont treat animals with the respect they deserve but the parents or another adult should always supervise.

The baby who was attacked in the Liverpool incident is now apparently stable in hospital but the sentence in the paper that reads
<<<his mother heard his screams and dragged the dog off>>>. So if she heard him screaming are we to assume she wasnt there with them both ?

A spokesman for Merseyside police said: "As the dog is a family pet we will assist them to liase with the RSPCA to help them decide what to do with the family dog" ?!

Like I wrote I don't trust children with any of my dogs(who are all 100% temp wise)

The only time a child is allowed to have contorl of my dogs is if they are one of our junior handlers from our dog club, not even a known junior handler from another club as I have seen some nice ion the ring nasty outside juniors(including one who used to stand on her cavaliers paws to make it move & was very rough outside the ring with her dogs)

We have a lovely junior handler who is in remission from cancer who takes one of my cavaliers(he is too small to handle his family boxer puppies)He is such a gentle little boy, who at school is bullied because he has lost his hair & had lots of time off school. His tormenters are children younger to himself ! He is standing up to them tho' & has gone through the bully meets victim in controlled circumstances, but the younger children have continued to try to bully him. He did his GC with my dog & passed & took it to school, as the testing club was a GSD club the brats that bully him now believe he has a GSD & have backed off, needless to say they have not been enlightened

i remember when i was studying at uni and there was some evidence in a paper to suggest that children who commit deliberate acts of cruelty on animals often go on to do the same or worse to people.I would never leave any of my dogs alone with any child, i love them too much to risk them being tormented.Any person who leaves their child alone with any dog should be prosecuted for negligence if anything untoward happens, as children need training just as much if not more than dogs. 

I was very pleased to find that my daughter, aged 4 (5 next month), and her class have been doing a very interesting project in school this term.  They have been doing 'Care of pets'.  My daughter was top of her class for the project as we were fortunate enough to have the pups then so Louise was able to tell her class how she looked after them and how they grew.  She also took in photo's every week to show how they grow.

They also dealt a lot with how to handle puppies, feed them, play with them and then how to deal with older dogs.  It was very interesting what they taught her and I hope they keep doing this sort of project as I really think that it would help children understand about dogs more and how they react to certain situations and how our body language can affect a dogs attitude.

That poor mastiff, they only had him 6 weeks I believe I read. I blame the parents for leaving a 7 year old alone with a dog, especially one they only knew for 6 weeks. How do they know if the child did anything or the dog just attacked very, sad just sad :(

My children I do leave unattended with mine soon to be 9 and 12 but they have been around animals all their life (left alone if I run to the store and they want to stay home). If we are not home the only free roaming one is Tiva our boston. My son has 2 ferrets in his room that he looks after and my daughter has 2 rats and a guinea pig in hers, the hamster is in the hallway cause when the ferrets were running they wouldn't leave him alone, better safe then sorry.

I would never leave my children alone with all 5 dogs running, more worried about the dogs playing too rough and I would much rather have an adult around. My children are very good with their animals which my hubby and I taught from a very early age or they wouldn't have any in their rooms.

hi there, this has just made me think back just a couple of weeks ago about a story in my local paper the heading being (rottweiler stabbed to death in garage) the story read that the owner of a 2yr old rottie took his rescue rott to the garage to chastice it after it had biten a house visitor on the face how he came to have a knife handy in the garage i will never know, but further on in the story it came to light that the dog had previously biten his young son at an earlier date, there are numereous questions that could be drawn from this, like how did a rescue rottie with this sort of temp get homed there, again this was from the rspca it said, i think people can be so irrwsponsible when it comes to choosing a breed, it if it where the rspca they havent done their homework properly.you have to feel sorry for the dog, i do anyway, if was rehomed in the right environment it wouldn,t of happened.