Kids & Dogs Blog

Canada - Dog saves newborn from hypothermia

This amazing story happened last year, but I just heard about it today. On February 3, 2007, a pekingese named Peeka alerted her family to a newborn baby left on their porch in -20 degree weather!

The six-year-old dog was insistently barking and scratching at the door and couldn't be distracted.

The baby was only hours old and suffered no long-term effects from the exposure (she was probably only out for 15 minutes), but that might not have been the case if Peeka hadn't alerted her family. With the temperatures so low, the baby could easily have died before she was found.

Peeka was elected into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame. Good dog.

Paws to Read Program

Today I was wearing a t-shirt given to me by the Paws to Read program in Loudoun County. The shirt has three cute cartoon dogs on the front with "Sit," "Stay," and "Read" written under them. (The back lists the Paws to Read program info.)

A man came over to me in the grocery store and asked what the shirt meant, and we had a great conversation about literacy and how dogs can help kids feel more comfortable reading out loud. (And my 13-year-old only rolled his eyes once at the humiliation of his mother talking about dogs--again!--to a stranger in a store.)

It seems that kids love reading to dogs, who are trained to lie down beside them. The dogs provide both companionship and a nonjudgmental audience. I'm happy to see similar programs being started all across the country.

Here's an article in which Donna Guerrero tells how a read-to-dogs program helped her son, Zachary, become a better reader. Go, Zachary.

UK - 9-year-old bitten at birthday party

Dogs define "normal" as what they see regularly. That's one of the biggest kid-and-dog challenges: kids will do things that no adult would consider, so it can be hard for people to completely socialize their dog to kids' behavior.

One additional challenge that society seems to forget with great regularity is that dogs don't see all people the same. Family members and close friends can do things that, if a stranger were to do, the dog might find alarming.

Those two factors played a role in a recent dog bite. Nine-year-old Zoe Stenton climbed over a garden gate to join a birthday party thrown for a 6-year-old neighbor. The family's akita/German shepherd mix had been playing with the other guests in the yard, but then he jumped up and bit Zoe on the face.

Obviously the parents thought that their dog was comfortable with kids--and probably 99% of the time, he was. But in a high-arousal environment, the dog became reactive toward a child climbing over a gate.

How "normal" is it to climb over a gate? I can't think of the last time I did it, but I'm sure the girl didn't think twice. In fact, she may even have been climbing over so as not to let the dog loose.

The good news is that her injuries sound relatively minor. They're described only as lacerations, and there's no mention of stitches or surgery.

COMMON RISK FACTORS SCORECARD: 2 (to 4) of 7

YES - Bite victim between 5 and 9 years old (the age group at highest risk)
UNKNOWN - Bite victim was familiar with the biting dog
NO - Bite victim was male (boys are bitten nearly twice as often as girls)
YES - Facial wound
NO - Multiple bites
UNKNOWN - Dog kept chained or penned outside
NO - Multiple dogs involved

Canada - A "good" bite?

As every parent knows, kids are going to get hurt sometimes. Yesterday one of my boys was hit in the face with a basketball. OW!

In this story, a four-year-old girl fell over her 11-year-old rottweiler and was bitten on the face. She was treated for "minor cuts" and released.

Of course we never want our dogs to bite, but here's a situation where things went wrong (a child innocently fell on a geriatric dog) and the resulting bite was very minor. Good dog.

I hope the parents will be able to use management and supervision to prevent any future incidents, but overall, I think we should consider this a "good" bite.

COMMON RISK FACTORS SCORECARD: 2 of 7

NO - Bite victim between 5 and 9 years old (the age group at highest risk)
YES - Bite victim was familiar with the biting dog
NO - Bite victim was male (boys are bitten nearly twice as often as girls)
YES - Facial wound
NO - Multiple bites
NO - Dog kept chained or penned outside
NO - Multiple dogs involved

Blog - 2 boys bitten within half an hour

When I tell people that boys between 5 and 9 are at the highest risk for dog bites, I'm often asked why. As the mother of three sons, I have to suppress the desire to be flippant and answer, "Because they act like boys."

I believe that there are three primary reasons 5-to-9-year-old boys are bitten more than any other category of people:

1. Because they act like boys. (Okay, it's flippant, but there is some truth to this. Boys tend to be louder, faster, and more rambunctious than adults or girls.)
2. Because the boys (and adults) don't know how to recognize the difference between tolerance and enjoyment--and so they push the limits without even knowing they are doing so.
3. Because they aren't as carefully supervised as younger children. Most parents will let kids this age go in/out and up/down without following their every move.

But this blog post is particularly interesting because two boys were bitten by each other's dog within half an hour!

Incident #1 - Two boys are playing in Boy #2's yard with Boy #2's dog. "The dog owner calls, apologizes profusely, explains...she doesn't know what happened, she didn't see anything. Her son and Rhyse were playing outside, then Rhyse was gone. I accept her apology, I do not think her dog attacked my son, I think it seemed more of an excited bite than an aggressive one. We talk, we're fine."

Notes: No adult supervision, minor injury (on the boy's side), Boy #1 was familiar with the dog (but didn't live with the dog), no medical attention needed.

Incident #2 (30 minutes later) - Boy #2 bitten by Boy #1's dog. So the boys are now playing at Boy #1's house. "In the case with our dog, they were trying to catch her (she had gotten out). So they were cornering her, Chas, Rhyse and this other child, trying to get ahold of her, to bring her back inside. She's ok with my boys doing this, she knows them. But I think she got scared when the other boy closed in on her, they were all yelling and I think she felt threatened."

Notes: No adult supervision, minor injury (on boy's lip), Boy #2 was familiar with the dog (but, just as before, the dog bit the friend, not the child she knew best and was most comfortable with), no medical attention needed.

The most telling line in the blog is this: "We knew our guys were playing too aggressively."

Sometimes there's a "boys will be boys" philosophy at play when parents don't intervene in kid-and-dog interactions.

One of my pet peeves (not included in this blog post) is parents who tell me, "My dog is great. She'll let my kids do anything to her. They can pull on her ears or tail, and she just lets them." That makes me crazy-crazy-crazy! WHY? Why do you allow that to happen?

I say over and over that good dogs and good kids will have miscommunications every day (perhaps I should now say every 30 minutes). We really need to teach adults and children how to interact with dogs in the best ways and how to know what a situation is deteriorating.

The good news in this case (and in the vast majority of dog bite incidents) is that the bites didn't cause any serious injuries.

But better news would be that these families had learned something valuable from these bites. I didn't get that vibe from this post. Instead I got the feeling that both moms were agreeing that "these things happen" and "dog bites are unpredictable/unavoidable." Not true. Both of these bites could have been prevented.

COMMON RISK FACTORS SCORECARD: 4 (to 5) of 7

YES - Bite victim between 5 and 9 years old (the age group at highest risk)
YES - Bite victim was familiar with the biting dog
YES - Bite victim was male (boys are bitten nearly twice as often as girls)
YES (2nd boy), NO (1st boy) - Facial wound
NO - Multiple bites
UNCLEAR - Dog kept chained or penned outside
NO (while two dogs bit, these were two separate incidents) - Multiple dogs involved

Upsetting conversation with a client

I had an upsetting conversation with a client last week, and I just can't quite shake it.

My Relaxing Rowdy Rovers class is designed for dogs who are reactive around other dogs (barking, lunging, etc.). We work hard to first help the dogs feel safe and calm and then teach them to behave more appropriately around other dogs.

I am firmly convinced that most aggression is fear based, and I see that regularly in my class. The dogs putting on the tough-guy display are actually saying, "Please stay away. You kinda freak me out."

Because of this, we do not use any physical corrections or employ any scary methods to try to suppress the dogs' behavior. We want to address the emotional component first, and then the behavioral one.

Okay, that's a lot of background for the story. Last week, as I encouraged the male owner of an adolescent German shepherd to use a happier, more upbeat voice when he called his dog because the dog seemed stressed, he told me, "Ah, he's probably still afraid of me from last night."

Last night? What, pray tell, happened last night? 'Turns out that the dog chewed on a wall, so the owner chased his dog all over the house, dragged him by the collar back to the wall, yelled at him, and "made him look at it for about 10 minutes."

Wow, how to ruin a relationship in four easy steps. But what was most upsetting to me was that the guy had no regrets. He said things like, "I don't care if my dog loves me, but he has to respect me."

Maybe I'm greedy, but I want BOTH love and respect from my dogs (and my family members too).

Dogs are a different species. They don't have the same behaviors, expectations, or language that we have, and yet somehow we expect them to "know" what we're telling them. Unfortunately many people find that "punishment is reinforcing to the punisher"--that is, it feels good to us when we punish a dog's (or person's) transgression. It doesn't necessarily communicate anything of value to the dog, but merely convinces him that we can be really scary and should be watched carefully.

And yet, this client seemed to still be riding on a high from showing his dog who was boss. He was pleased with the result.

And you know what's really troubling? This was the dog's second time chewing the wall. So the tirade the owner delivered the first time didn't actually teach the dog not to chew the wall, merely not to chew the wall while the man was in the room. Second time, bigger punishment. What will happen on the third time? I'm afraid to find out.

I worry that this perfectly nice dog, who already has some dog-to-dog anxiety issues, may develop some people aggression as well. And then, well, I guess we'll really have to show him who's boss. Escalating the intensity of punishment over and over until the ultimate loser is the dog, whose relationship with his people will deteriorate to the point of no return.

It breaks my heart.

Canada - Two-year-old bitten by family dog

This story is about a 2-year-old girl bitten by one of the family dogs. Actually this is the most common kind of dog bite--a dog biting a person from the same household--yet these stories rarely make the news. People bitten by unfamiliar dogs make the news, but the most common bites rarely do.

Mom was in the bathroom when her two-year-old daughter jumped on one of their sleeping dogs. (The story doesn't tell us how they know that the child jumped on the dog if no adult was in the room. No other children are mentioned as being present.)

The little girl needed 16 stitches to her right ear and cheek. The animal bylaw services manager investigating the bite said, "'We'll be talking to the parents and investigating like we would any dog bite.' Last year, bylaw officers investigated 134 reports of dog bites. 'In a city of a million people with over 105,000 dogs, that's not too many'," he said. Yep, .013 percent is pretty good.

One thing really bothered me about this article: "The woman said the two dogs are rarely in the house and come indoors only to sleep." Dogs that don't spend much time with kids are usually more uncomfortable with them. Keeping a dog on your property, but not in your house actually increases the risk of a bite. It's better to have not to have a dog at all if you are only going to allow them in to sleep at night.

COMMON RISK FACTORS SCORECARD: 2 (to 5) of 7

NO - Bite victim between 5 and 9 years old (the age group at highest risk)
YES - Bite victim was familiar with the biting dog
NO - Bite victim was male (boys are bitten nearly twice as often as girls)
YES - Facial wound
UNCLEAR - Multiple bites
MOST OF THE TIME, BUT NOT AT THE TIME OF THE BITE - Dog kept chained or penned outside
ONE DOG INVOLVED, TWO DOGS WERE PRESENT - Multiple dogs involved

UK - An "attack" without injuries

The words we use to describe things are important. According to Janis Bradley's book, Dogs Bite, but Balloons and Slippers are More Dangerous, only 1.6 percent of dog bites seen in the ER require the patient to be admitted to the hospital, not just treated and released. (Keep in mind, that percentage refers to the incidents in which the person felt the need to go to the ER. In actually, the vast majority of bites require no medical attention at all.)

So it is troubling to me to read articles that say dogs "attacked" or "mauled" a person if the actual result isn't nearly so dire.

This story reports that a 2-year-old girl was "attacked" by a dog tied up outside a store.  I'm not a fan of tying dogs outside stores, though I know it's common in the UK. But if I see a dog tied up outside, I try to give the dog wide berth so as not to make it uncomfortable.

The story doesn't say how a toddler happened to be within range of an unknown dog or who was supposed to be supervising her. But it does say this about her injury: "the bite did not break the skin and only caused bruising." That doesn't sound like an attack to me.

The vast majority of dog bites are preventable. We don't have enough info to say for sure whether this one was, but on the surface, it certainly sounds preventable. The dog bears some responsibility for this incident, but it sounds like all the human adults fell down on the job too.

COMMON RISK FACTORS SCORECARD: 1 (to 3) of 7

NO - Bite victim between 5 and 9 years old (the age group at highest risk)
NO - Bite victim was familiar with the biting dog
NO - Bite victim was male (boys are bitten nearly twice as often as girls)
UNCLEAR - Facial wound
UNCLEAR - Multiple bites
YES - Dog kept chained or penned outside
NO - Multiple dogs involved

OH - Dad charged when 2-year-old is bitten

A 2-year-old Ohio girl was bitten on the face by her family's pit bull. The article doesn't give any of the circumstances surrounding the bite, but does say that the girl's cheek was punctured all the way through.

But the most surprising part of the story is that last year this dog had bitten part of a man's nose off. Yes, you read that right. The girl's father allowed her to interact with a dog that had previously bitten part of an adult's nose off. He has been charged with child endangerment.

COMMON RISK FACTORS SCORECARD: 2 (to 4) of 7

NO - Bite victim between 5 and 9 years old (the age group at highest risk)
YES - Bite victim was familiar with the biting dog
NO - Bite victim was male (boys are bitten nearly twice as often as girls)
YES - Facial wound
UNCLEAR - Multiple bites
UNCLEAR - Dog kept chained or penned outside
NO - Multiple dogs involved

Ask Dog Lady: Boy spots abuse, and he’s not just whistling Dixie

Found this link with a heart-breaking advice letter from an 11-year-old who is concerned about how his mother's boyfriend abuses a dog.

It's a very sad letter, but it's wonderful that this boy has such a big heart. :-(