I agree that too many people treat their dogs like “kids” and forget about their animal instincts and just assume they can mix with kids without any problems. I think so many dogs are just set up to fail by their owners, and sometimes, like this, to a horrible outcome.

In the same vein, mixing older children (especially toddlers/preschoolers) with infants can also be catastrophic–they don’t know how much harm they can cause and sometimes are jealous of the infant who is probably receiving a lot of attention. Lots and lots of supervision required in that situation.

Spaniels are mighty silly dogs. Characters, but silly.

I do remember my parents taking me aside in the street one day when i was 5 & telling me to never pat an unknown dog, because I wouldn’t know how it would react to a stranger. Since all my friends & extended family had dogs, I just thought every dog was my instant friend.

There have been some pretty horrendous dog maulings in the last year here in NZ. Last year a Staffy-cross jumped a gate, went into a local park & attacked a 2 year old. The owners understood about the dog being put down, but said it had never shown aggressive tendencies before, and had played well with children for many years. Plus their property was well fenced, so they felt OK about leaving it alone in the yard all day. Yes, it was well fenced (~2m high in most places), but the crucial bit was the lower gate the dog got over (~1.2m). A dad in the park had to jump on the dog & pry the jaws open to get the girl loose. The girl & her 2 siblings were in the park alone, because Grandma had said “Yes, we’ll go to the park. Wait until I get my coat & bag”, and the oldest had taken this to mean “Go on ahead & I’ll meet you there when I’m ready”. So Grandma is frantically looking for the kids, goes to the park to see if they went on ahead without her & finds her granddaughter in an ambulance. Talk about a bad day.

Or there’s my dad’s dog (put down when I was 4): friends are visiting with their kids, youngest 2. Adults hear a low growling coming from under the dining table, look down to find dog backing into a corner & toddler crawling forward with 2 fingers pointing straight at dog’s eyes. Now, we’re pretty sure Ruth was a lucky girl to be trying that with a dog with the temprement & training to warn before attacking, but that incident’s always been at the forefront of my mind when thinking of kids and the unpredictability of pets.

I’m sorry, but you really don’t see any problem with your dog sending someone to the emergency room? Especially someone you’re planning to marry? Talk about sentimentalizing your animal too much …

Full disclosure: I’ve never been bitten by a dog, but I was bitten by my brother’s cat. That was in part my own fault, though — he did give me a warning bite (hard, but didn’t break the skin) and I reacted badly, so I got a worse bite. Infection-wise, a cat bite is actually worse than a dog bite, so I was on a triple antibiotic for a few weeks. Ugh.

Is there any way to tell whether a dog is an object guarder like that before you adopt it? Or is this a trait that remains dormant for years and suddenly shows up out of the blue?

It is possible, but it’s not an exact science. A person trained in dog behavior can identify the indicators of object guarding, and I know that there are shelters in which someone so trained is on the staff to help screen dogs for this.

Object guarding is a learned behavior, so dogs that engage in it have likely displayed indications of object guarding for a long time, but as zuzu suggests, it’s easy to miss these because the indicators often look like other behaviors. For example, some dogs who guard objects play a form of “keep away” at an early age, in which they’ll bring an object to you, then run away and hide it, then bring it back to repeat the cycle. This looks like the dog is playing a game, and so the behavior gets reinforced, but when the dog reaches adulthood, this is very dangerous. So aggressive behavior that appears to come out of nowhere has actually been hinted at for sometime, but the elements of the scenario that lead the dog to attack haven’t combined until that incident in which the dog shows his or her aggression.

Object guarding can be extinguished through operant conditioning, but it takes a lot of effort and should be done by/in consultation with an expert in dog training. Some dogs do have to be euthanized regardless; I certainly wouldn’t blame someone for doing so once the dog has bitten someone, though it’s sad because the dog is only doing what it has learned to do.

Not ever having owned a dog, I feel like kind of a goob asking this, but: Is there any way to tell whether a dog is an object guarder like that before you adopt it? Or is this a trait that remains dormant for years and suddenly shows up out of the blue?

Luckily no one (our dog, his dog, my bf who was holding the leash) was hurt. But it could have been a much different story.

Which is exactly what the owners of the dog who bit Junebug last year did when they tried to blame her for the attack and get out of paying me for the vet bill. They so wanted to believe not that their dog was aggressive (even though they knew full well that he had Serious Issues with other dogs) but that Junebug had somehow provoked the attack by seeking attention from one of that dog’s owners that they were actually yelling at *me* for not controlling Junebug. I consider it a victory that I got even half the cost of the $300 vet bill out of them.

And I find it really amazing the lengths people will go to to excuse actual aggression and biting in a dog, without ever actually doing anything about the behavior. Maybe it’s just because I know what a closeup view of the inside of a dog’s mouth looks like (and could have lost an eye in that attack), but I will not put up with that shit, ever.