Dogs have feelings too

Thing is, if you make the big scary dog go away, you haven't done the kid any favors as far as learning to deal with life without deus ex machina intervening. You've also planted the seeds of how to get rid of something/someone they don't like . . . kids are quick to pick up that kind of lesson and run with it. Those kinds of lessons are part of the basis or our increasing mindset that it's always someone else's fault/responsibility, never our own.

Why not teach the child a valuable lesson about how their actions have consequences? Not to mention lessons about respecting others.

Sorry..........saying a two year old DESERVED to be bitten is about as CRAZY as saying a puppy needs hitting for having accidents in the house! How is one different from the other?

Both need to be TAUGHT the proper ways to do things..........BY......YEP, the adult human in charge.

And I am right there with Sparks........If one of my dogs bit one of my kids they would HAVE to move out. Not necessarily destroyed, but they would need to GO. I teach my children, the same as I was taught.......but accidents can happen anytime. I would place them in a home with no children depending on the situation that took place.

But I will not live with a dog that I can not trust around kids.........there are kids in and out of here all the time and I won't live on the edge of my seat waiting for something to happen.

I didn't say it was the childs fault, just that he deserved to get bitten for what he did. I am an extreemly analytical person who looks at things as in action and reaction.
No emotion here what so ever. Child hurt dog, dog retaliated.

A couple of stories along these lines...

When I was young, maybe 2-3 yrs old, I proceeded to crawl underneath the kitchen table to take a bone away from our dog. I got the bone and a bite on the nose for good measure. Got a couple of stitches for my trouble...Both parents were in the room, both yelled NO when they saw what I was doing, but I didn't listen (Per usual lol). I learned that day to never do that again. My parents kept the dog, nothing else happened and I learned an important lesson.

Years later, different dog. Our neighbors behind us, their older child was climbing the back yard fence with cookies in his hand. The dog snatched the cookie through the chain link and minorly hurt the kids finger in doing so. Dog was sent to pound for euthanasia. The ONLY reason I can think of for this scenario being different enough to warrent death was the fact that it was somebody else's child that was injured and their parents would have created a stink. But, the pound refused to destroy our dog as she was too nicely behaved to do that to, so my aunt adopted her and she lived out her days with never another incident.

Now, a dog that viciously attacked my daughter 15 years ago for bending down to pick up a ball they had been playing fetch with for 30 min previous with no trouble whatsoever was allowed to stay home for it's quarantine and was never offered nor ordered for destruction.

Yet, since 2005, my own dogs, who have never done anything themselves, are illegal and considered "dangerous".

Almost 40 years of having dealings with dogs and years learning about them for a career, and I have yet to see what would be considered an advancement of education or common sense when it comes to the issue of canines and their owners, let alone any good common sense legislation to deal with these issues.

The mother in the OP should have taken the time to stop the child and improve the situation, but if you look at the pic, the child seems fine with the dog and probably did learn that actions have consequences. Let's hope that the mother learned something as well!

I was lucky to have grown up with a dog that was patient but firm in his warnings. I did get snarled and snapped at when I was a few years old, for ignoring my parents AND the dog's warnings to stop being a pest. Did it scare me? Yup. But I learned not to be a pest to dogs, and to stop doing something if it made them growl or stiffen up.

I grew up with dogs. Unattended. Large dogs with big teeth and two of them guard dogs with very nasty tempers. I wasn't ever bitten, because I learned to respect their feelings just as they respected mine.

Give kids some credit, they CAN be kind to animals but because people are so paranoid that the animal will hurt their kid, they often punish animals for displaying any kind of warnings at all. I have a friend who will yell at and remove her dog from a room if he growls at her son, who often pulls on his tail or sits on him. The dog is sociable and doesn't like to be separated from the family, so he's stopped growling. I just know that one day, the dog is going to snap at that kid without any warning at all. And he'll be put down for being "aggressive".

hannah will most definitely be taught not to hurt the dogs. But my big concern is if a dog will snap the instant it feels pain... what if the pain is accidental? I don't want my dog to EVER think it is OK to bite Hannah. What if she is learning to walk and steps on their tail by accident? or falls and lands on their paw? Does she deserve a bite for that? Will it teach her a lesson? I doubt it... she is learning to walk and she doesn't have the control to learn that lesson. That is my issue. She won't ever be allowed to pester the dogs by pulling on their tails or anything like that.

Biting is just not acceptable to me. And there are PLENTY of dogs out there that live with kids that DON'T respect them and yet they have never bitten them. It's just not acceptable IMO. I do not think it is acceptable for a child to torture an animal and I would never tolerate it. She can learn from a swat on the butt rather than a bite to the face.