Dealing with Bamm and kids

Xandra

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I agree with Romy and RG, that I was never bitten by the family dog (or any dog for that matter) when I was a kid, despite me and my friends all having large, guardian breed dogs (boxer, GSD, rottweiler) that we would be alone with fairly young (can't exactly remember when). That said, I don't think it's out of place for a dog to lightly snap at someone who's being obnoxious, after giving warning (any other animal is allowed to "retaliate" within reason, why not a dog?).

But bites that occur within the normal scope of human activity, bites where a dog holds on, etc. aren't the same at all. And especially when that dog is tall enough to reach a kid's face (baby-toddler-small child). I know when Romey's tooth BANGED AGAINST MY LEG it left a huge bruise. And that wasn't even a bite! What would it look like if a medium sized dog grabbed a 4-year-old's face? if the dog didn't let go? I don't know if I'd "never forgive myself" but I'd feel pretty **** guilty if my kid was injured by something that I KNEW was a liability.
 

Dizzy

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I can add, I've also never been bitten by a dog... No family pets, no dogs on the street, no neighbours dogs and no dogs when I worked in a boarding kennels.

Our old family dog took an aversion to my sister however, and would herd her and nip at her. She also caught her face once and did leave a mark.

My mum tried to rehome her but was told she would be pts. So we kept her.

She wasn't unpredictable. She never snarled or tried to bite. She didn't aim her teeth at people randomly or eye ball them.

There's a huge difference here... I've read skittles past posts on bamm, and the tone is that she is concerned about his behaviour.

It doesn't sound like he nips in excitement or bit in a manic moment. She's concerned as he does this RANDOMLY.

Not everyone has the time or skills to work on it. If I had a biter, I don't think I'd feel comfortable trying to fix it..... I don't know, I hope I don't ever get in that situation!!
 

Taqroy

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Well... I guess I'm just that out of touch then. *shrug*
I don't think you're out of touch, I think its just a different viewpoint/mindset. We had a Chesapeake when I was growing up that bit my dad's boss (for reaching into the back of the truck) and my grandma (for trying to take her bowl of turkey). Both bites broke skin but putting her down was never mentioned. And in both cases the human was blamed, not the dog. I don't think it would have been much different if one of us kids had been bitten - as long as we provoked the bite anyway. Unprovoked biting and/or a mauling would be a different story.
 

AdrianneIsabel

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Well... I guess I'm just that out of touch then. *shrug*
Nope. Like I said I make a living working with dogs as such, they're no rarity. Many people do PTS but more work through it. Bites, or the use of the mouth by a dog, are far more common than those reported, especially with herding and working dogs ime. I have a lot of biting goldens and labs right now as well, it started as mouthing and now it's an inappropriate result of over stimulation. I have an Airedale that leaves huge welts and bruises because he redirects, seemingly without predictability.

Not everyone will work with a dog who's used their mouth in some form of expression be it a touch or a serious bite, some people put down or rehome puppies who mouth, but ime people who're willing to work outnumber the alternative cases as much as dog who do use their mouths outnumber those who will not. You're not out of touch.

The alternative of a completely unpredictable (attacking any gender, any age, the owner, other animals, any scenario with no seeming drive outside of spontaneous fear) is the rarity and where I presume most would PTS because that is likely a dog and who'd not be happy no matter the management due to living in a constant state of fear.
 

Dogdragoness

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I can add, I've also never been bitten by a dog... No family pets, no dogs on the street, no neighbours dogs and no dogs when I worked in a boarding kennels.

Our old family dog took an aversion to my sister however, and would herd her and nip at her. She also caught her face once and did leave a mark.

My mum tried to rehome her but was told she would be pts. So we kept her.

She wasn't unpredictable. She never snarled or tried to bite. She didn't aim her teeth at people randomly or eye ball them.

There's a huge difference here... I've read skittles past posts on bamm, and the tone is that she is concerned about his behaviour.

It doesn't sound like he nips in excitement or bit in a manic moment. She's concerned as he does this RANDOMLY.

Not everyone has the time or skills to work on it. If I had a biter, I don't think I'd feel comfortable trying to fix it..... I don't know, I hope I don't ever get in that situation!!
Dizzy, that sounds more like herding behavior then true aggression that dog was showing on your sister. I have seen herding dogs "single out" a person for some reason or another.

Also, all of us can sit here & say what we would or would not do, but when it is our own dog, of course the prospective always changes because we are closer to it.

While I have never been bitten, I was "warned" a few times by the family dogs to back off; thats how I learned not to approach a dog when its eating their food or chewing on a bone or toy, LOL kind of when your mom tells you not to touch the stove because its hot :p
 

milos_mommy

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I was never bitten by a dog growing up - and spent a good amount of time around them...but I was a very animal savvy child. None of my friends were ever bitten, either...but I do remember hearing adults say "if you don't leave the dog alone he's going to bite you".

A dog that bites after a warning, or a dog that nips (however hard) a child who is in it's face or touching it or cornering it, or who bites because someone tries to take something from it, through a fence, etc. is a whole different ballpark than a dog that jumps on and bites a child because it falls or screams or bites down and won't let go/repeats bites.

Some of those dogs can be managed in a knowledgable household, but they're never going to be a family pet the way the first category would be.
 
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Well... I guess I'm just that out of touch then. *shrug*
No, when I was a kid our dog would bite in certain circumstances. And we were pretty much told to leave the dog alone in those circumstances if we didn't want to get bitten. Granted, he was pretty predictable and in retrospect it was stuff like resource guarding that now as an adult with my own dogs I work on fixing.

I got a redirected bite from Pip once busting up a scuffle. I was stupid in the way I was intervening so it wasn't really a surprise. It turns out he has terrible bite inhibition, and fortunately I was wearing some heavy work gloves at the time so I was really just badly bruised. But I don't think he's an unpredictable ticking time bomb, either. I wouldn't pts or get rid of him over it.

For me personally, I would not feel an urgency to make a decision to preemptively PTS before a newborn infant comes home. Because the infant is not mobile and not capable of doing anything to the dog or of circumventing my management methods. I am an adult person and no matter how busy I am I am capable of management, especially if I set myself up for success like using spring-loaded hardware mounted baby gates. I wouldn't ever let a dog I was concerned about have direct access to an infant, but I wouldn't automatically PTS or rehome, either. I am very comfortable and confident in my management skills, though, having done it for a couple of years with my current dogs and for many, many years with a previous dog who was a very serious resource/food guarder with other pets in the home. It honestly just becomes automatic at a certain point.

What I would feel a sense of urgency about would be trying to look back and see, in retrospect, if there really were triggers and whether or not I could manage them, and I would enlist the help of a behaviorist to help me. I think a dog who really, truly bites completely randomly is very rare, but they do exist - and if I had one I need to know about it in order to proceed with making decisions from there.
 

Danefied

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I was never bitten by a dog growing up - and spent a good amount of time around them...but I was a very animal savvy child.
LOL... so was I. Plenty of dog savvy kids and adults get bitten.

Plus even though I was dog savvy, I was also a kid. One time a great dane bitch with puppies bit me, gently but firmly, telling me to leave the puppies alone. I knew perfectly well she didn't like me messing with the puppies but I just couldn't resist and I pushed too far and KNEW I was pushing too far.

IDK... I sometimes wonder if the prevalent attitude of no teeth on skin for any reason ever is not only unrealistic, but potentially counter productive?

Ian Dunbar writes about how dogs need to learn how to bite before they learn not to bite, and I see a lot of wisdom in this. Dogs need to have experience practicing controlling their jaws with humans. They need to know how delicat and fragile we are. Dogs can control their bite pressure in fractions of a second, but they won't learn to do this unless they get a chance to practice.

But that's kind of off topic to Bamm....
 

AdrianneIsabel

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LOL... so was I. Plenty of dog savvy kids and adults get bitten.

Plus even though I was dog savvy, I was also a kid. One time a great dane bitch with puppies bit me, gently but firmly, telling me to leave the puppies alone. I knew perfectly well she didn't like me messing with the puppies but I just couldn't resist and I pushed too far and KNEW I was pushing too far.

IDK... I sometimes wonder if the prevalent attitude of no teeth on skin for any reason ever is not only unrealistic, but potentially counter productive?

Ian Dunbar writes about how dogs need to learn how to bite before they learn not to bite, and I see a lot of wisdom in this. Dogs need to have experience practicing controlling their jaws with humans. They need to know how delicat and fragile we are. Dogs can control their bite pressure in fractions of a second, but they won't learn to do this unless they get a chance to practice.

But that's kind of off topic to Bamm....
Meh, dog savvy has nothing to do with bites and kids, it's a flaw in the logic.

I completely agree that his theory holds much on the subject. I will say I trust a properly trained bitesport and Bitework dog with its mouth more than the average pet being pressed.

There is a lot of value to not using suppression in foundations and instead training a dog what is appropriate in expressing themselves, I believe this assists in lessening these "unpredictable" cases which more often than not are not so much unpredictable but their signs have been suppressed and thus can be extreme hard to detect.

This shift in expectations and understanding can definitely help with management. It raises the bar for analyzing bites and detecting signs and tracking triggers.
 

Laurelin

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Honestly the idea of a dog biting- any kind of biting- being a reason to put a dog down is incomprehensible to me.

Yep if we got bitten we were told to stop harassing the dogs. I would never expect a dog to just put up with whatever the humans give it no matter what. Sometimes bites are warranted.

I've even seen this extrapolated to dogs needing to be put down for drawing blood on a human. Even if the 'bite' was the result of an over zealous puppy with sharp puppy teeth. Or a dog that missed the tug... It's ridiculous IMO.

Trey's over zealous motion reactivity ended up in a nip to my three year old sisters face once. I do remember my mom being unhappy about that one but the dog did stay. It wasn't aggression.
 

Flyinsbt

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I've been bitten plenty. When I was a kid, we had a little Poodle that bit everyone all the time. She had some serious issues. It was tolerated, because she was small and feeble and couldn't really do any harm. My family had previously owned a Dachsund that bit people, my sister still has a scar on her face from that dog. My parents took him to a shelter after the bite on my sister.

I think back then people did sometimes tolerate bites more easily than they do now, but they also were pretty willing to euthanize or get rid of dogs that did damage when they bit. There wasn't much effort made to "fix" dogs with temperament problems.

I do recall seeing a really serious bite as a child, and some of my opinions may be based on that. It was my Campfire Girls troop leader's Dachsund, and he took a substantial piece out of a 5-yr-old's face. The kid grabbed the dog from behind and startled it, which is obviously the cause, but it's also an example of why dogs need to be stable if they're to be around kids. Kids do unpredictable things. I don't recall what happened with that dog. I believe the child had to have plastic surgery.

My own current dogs do not bite aggressively. They do bite at my clothing sometimes when they're really excited, and have bruised me when accidentally catching flesh as well as cloth. I would not count that as the same thing. I sometimes settle Pirate down when he's doing that by shoving my hand into his mouth so he has to either chill out, or bite me. Since at that point he knows his teeth are on my flesh, he won't bite down.
 

stardogs

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The dog I had growing up was a nipper, and that was never an issue at my house. My parents just taught me not to run away from Oreo and took her to training classes.

On the other hand, a friend's yorkie mix decided I looked too much like a little girl he didn't like and decided to grab my leg when I walked into his house. He didn't draw blood, but he literally hung from my thigh for a minute or so and left a palm sized bruise. He was PTS a year or so later because he started biting others.

Maggie was reactive to human movement when we first got her. Her triggers were easy to ID so I worked on them and overcame them. She nipped my then bf's little brother a few years later and his mom just brushed it off as dogs being dogs.

There's no cut and dried "line in the sand" in most cases.
 

milos_mommy

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Meh, dog savvy has nothing to do with bites and kids, it's a flaw in the logic.
Nothing to do with it?!? So what about when an adult owner repeatedly reprimands a dog for growling, and the dog learns to just bite? When a child is bothering a growling dog, a supervising adult will intervene or an older child who knows about dogs will back off. If the dog bites without a warning because it's been in a home that knows nothing about dog behavior, that can be 100% attributed to the fact that the family isn't dog savvy.

What about the videos people post of their dogs being "so good" with children, as their toddler climbs all over the dog, and the dog is lip licking, going wall-eyed, stiff-tailed...but he's not growling, or he's "wagging his tail because he likes it"? A savvy dog owner would get the child (or dog) out of that situation. A non savvy dog owner's child is going to get bit in the face.

Or people who think it's "cute" to their their dog and child eat out of the same dish or something? Those dogs are going to be way more likely to bite, because they're learning their things aren't "theirs" unless they do something to protect them. A savvy dog owner is going to let their dog have a respectable amount of space when eating, and the dog is going to be less likely to become a resource guarding (and bite a child).

That's why we support dog bite education and awareness and people consulting experts or resources before trying to train their dog themselves with zero knowledge about it. Dogs are significantly more likely to bite (either right away, or eventually) if they're handled by someone who has no idea what they're doing. If dog-savvy had nothing to do with a dog biting a child or not, we wouldn't have dog bite prevention programs, and they wouldn't be so successful.


ETA: To Danefield (I missed your post the first time around) I don't mean to say no dog savvy people or children ever get bitten - but I guarantee someone who knows little about animal/dog behavior is far more likely to be.

Also, you might have been an extremely dog savvy child, but in the case of kids, their self-control and decision-making skills are not as strong as an adults - which is why even if you knew you're not supposed to bother a mother dog and her puppies, you did it anyway. No dog-savvy adult is going to leave a child unsupervised with a nursing mother dog, and if they WERE supervising, why didn't they stop you from touching her puppies??
 

AdrianneIsabel

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Kids in a general sense cannot be innately dog savvy, as you said you were and which prevented bites for you, it's not logical. They can be to an extent but my 2 year old nephew was not born knowing if he pulls on a dogs tail it may warn him and may bite.

If that were logical we could just start blaming bites on the kids themselves or better yet burns and breaks on the kids not being stove and door savvy, who needs child proofing?
 

milos_mommy

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Kids in a general sense cannot be innately dog savvy, as you said you were and which prevented bites for you, it's not logical. They can be to an extent but my 2 year old nephew was not born knowing if he pulls on a dogs tail it may warn him and may bite.

If that were logical we could just start blaming bites on the kids themselves or better yet burns and breaks on the kids not being stove and door savvy, who needs child proofing?
No, but kids can be taught from a young age to be dog-savvy, and more importantly, the parents can be dog-savvy. And anyone who's dog savvy isn't going to leave a 2 year old unsupervised around a dog (not to mention, anyone who's kid savvy isn't going to leave a 2 year old unsupervised, period.)...and anyone who's dog savvy isn't going to allow a 2 year old around a dog who will bite without warning for a tail pull. And if the dog DOES give a warning, they're going to remove the child or dog or prevent the child from repeatedly doing that.

Someone who ISN'T dog savvy might not be able to read those warning signs...if the dog postures as opposed to growling, or keeps moving away instead of growling, the person might have no idea the child is bothering the dog.

ETA: a 6 or 7 year old can learn basic dog body language. Some 6 or 7 year olds might have absolutely no idea what a growling dog means...they might think he's "talking" to them. A dog savvy 6 or 7 year old is one that is taught if a dog is growling at you, you move away from them or stop what you're doing. A dog savvy parent is one who manages and supervised the situation and can read OTHER warning signs (most adults know what a growling dog means). Some schools have dog bite prevention and animal safety lectures as early as pre-K or kindergarten. That doesn't mean it's the kid's fault if it gets bit, but it does mean teaching kids to be more dog-savvy helps prevent bites.
 

AdrianneIsabel

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No, but kids can be taught from a young age to be dog-savvy, and more importantly, the parents can be dog-savvy. And anyone who's dog savvy isn't going to leave a 2 year old unsupervised around a dog (not to mention, anyone who's kid savvy isn't going to leave a 2 year old unsupervised, period.)...and anyone who's dog savvy isn't going to allow a 2 year old around a dog who will bite without warning for a tail pull. And if the dog DOES give a warning, they're going to remove the child or dog or prevent the child from repeatedly doing that.

Someone who ISN'T dog savvy might not be able to read those warning signs...if the dog postures as opposed to growling, or keeps moving away instead of growling, the person might have no idea the child is bothering the dog.
Ah and the exciting part of dogs is you don't know their reaction until it happens. My dog might let me stomp on their tail but a stranger? I'm not sure.

You should know all too well with a kid on the way that things happen in uncorrectable seconds and supervision will not always prevent an issue.

Suppression creates a challenge for even the most educated dog fancier.

The point is, I suppose, it doesn't matter to me how dog savvy or not a child is, it's up to the adult to contain the situation. If things happen it's up to the adult to make the choices. To put it as "I was dog savvy as a kid so I was never bitten" puts too much pressure and blame on children who have been bitten, it's presuming they were less dog savvy.

I was almost bitten by a clients dog for walking in a room, unaware the dog was there in the wide open room. This isn't a savvy or not savvy issue, not a supervision issue, it just happened. The dog however had a stellar recall and enough space for a stop. A baby on the floor with a dog is not always that lucky and it's not always a reflection on the baby, toddler, child nor even the adult.

The first time your dog will ever blow a long down is bound to be in a trial, the first time your dog will ever blow an out is bound to be in a trial, the first time your dog will _____ is bound to be in a trial. Dogs aren't fool proof, they never will be, it's not fair to expect otherwise.

Just as preemptively labeling a dog as unpredictable is unfair putting too much faith in a dogs reactions can be dangerous. Trust your dogs, trust your management skills, and be aware that sometimes things happen. Sometimes there was nothing to be done and sometimes there was, learn from them and move on. The expectation for unpredictability is why supervision is so essential and supervision/management go so far beyond being present, it's a regular awareness of ears eyes tail, etc, it's the best we can do. Some dogs are more reliable than others but both extremes of those impervious to pressure and those so unpredictable that they'll attack anything without any triggers are far more rare than this conversation seems to have given way to.
 

~Jessie~

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Honestly the idea of a dog biting- any kind of biting- being a reason to put a dog down is incomprehensible to me.

Yep if we got bitten we were told to stop harassing the dogs. I would never expect a dog to just put up with whatever the humans give it no matter what. Sometimes bites are warranted.

I've even seen this extrapolated to dogs needing to be put down for drawing blood on a human. Even if the 'bite' was the result of an over zealous puppy with sharp puppy teeth. Or a dog that missed the tug... It's ridiculous IMO.

Trey's over zealous motion reactivity ended up in a nip to my three year old sisters face once. I do remember my mom being unhappy about that one but the dog did stay. It wasn't aggression.
I completely agree.

I've never been bit by a family dog, but my parents would have done the same thing. I was raised to not harass the dogs, and that a growl means to back off.

I was bit by a dog when I was 3, and it was something I provoked. Our neighbor's golden retriever would always come and lay on our porch, and I would give him a hug. Another dog was on our porch next to him, and being 3 I thought it was "his friend." I gave him a hug and he bit me on my lip. There wasn't a warning growl and a hug shouldn't have caused a bite, but it happened and it definitely made me cautious with dogs I wasn't close with.

It's definitely up to the parents to watch the interactions between infants/toddlers and dogs. Babies pull everything- hair, necklaces, shirts, etc. A baby doesn't know that grabbing a dog can provoke a bite. Even a super solid dog can still bite, though, depending on the mood (if they're sick, sore, or tired, for instance).
 

Dogdragoness

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Honestly the idea of a dog biting- any kind of biting- being a reason to put a dog down is incomprehensible to me.

Yep if we got bitten we were told to stop harassing the dogs. I would never expect a dog to just put up with whatever the humans give it no matter what. Sometimes bites are warranted.

I've even seen this extrapolated to dogs needing to be put down for drawing blood on a human. Even if the 'bite' was the result of an over zealous puppy with sharp puppy teeth. Or a dog that missed the tug... It's ridiculous IMO.

Trey's over zealous motion reactivity ended up in a nip to my three year old sisters face once. I do remember my mom being unhappy about that one but the dog did stay. It wasn't aggression.
Yep I have been bitten both by overzealous puppies & by dogs missing a tug LOL. In fact all the bites I have recived from dogs were either from mouthy puppies or accidently during play.

Josefina is bad about grabbing really high up on the tug toy, which is why I am the only one allowed to play tug with her. because I am afraid of the remifications if she were to accidently get someone else, even though it would be an accident.
 

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Something I haven't talked about a lot is my Red dogs issues. She was a pit bull and she hated children. She would have bit a child in a heartbeat. She was guardy about the car and would not hesitate to growly at someone she felt was threatening.

I cried numerous times over her. Made 2 different appointments to put her down because people were pressuring me to do just that. Because...omg, she's a pit bull and they are never ever supposed to be aggressive. I never went through with it.

Because of training and management, she never bit someone. She did muzzle punch a little girl. But it was entirely my fault it happened. I failed her management and let her participate in a rousing game of tug with someone who decided to let the kid tug too. Not the right decision for her.

She lived till cancer took her from me way too soon. Because of training, she was safe in public and was taught to look to me for directions before using her mouth. My nephew was born and he was a bitty baby when I lost her but she never once growled or even looked at him funny, but there was no direct interactions between them.

Management can be done if you can commit to it. But it is a hard choice to make. Management is a life long thing with docs with issues.

I personally would try before I ever euthed. I'd die inside wondering what if.
 

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