Goddammit Lady, if you watched your kid, she wouldn't get bitten.

The BBQ Pit
81

We told the cops what happened when they came for the report on the bite, but nothing happened.

They like it. My Chow and Chow-chow Australian Shepherd Dog mix love to look out the window by the front door! The Chow has torn the crap out of the sill.

We have a eight-foot wooden fence. We can’t have a peep-hole because if anyone stuck their hand through it the Chow would take it off. He loves people, but that would be an intrusion and he’d defend our property.

Another dog bite - my Mother In Law came home after work one weekday with a bunch of groceries after stopping at the store. The twelve-year-old, who had behavioral difficulties, from accross the street came over when she saw Mom and asked if she could play with the dogs. Mom said, no, not right now because I’m unloading groceries, maybe later. When she went back from a second load, the child opened and ran through the front door screaming and chased Mom’s eight-year-old mostly-blind Schipperke and caught him. Her bit her in the face, requiring several stitches.

Mom put him down, her decision, and it nearly broke her heart.

The twelve-year-old was always home alone without supervision. My husband had caught her several times sticking her hand through another neighbor’s chain link fence and throwing rocks at a their bitch who had pups. He tried to explain to her how unacceptable this behavior was and talked to her uncle and mother about it. But it didn’t help Mom.

82

I don’t know the OP, location isn’t specifically mentioned in the OP. She may talk incessently about her location elsewhere, but I only know her through this thread. But, guessing from the “tigers lost” statement, I’m guessing Michigan. (one of the rare sports teams I know the location of, and only 'cause I’m from Michigan and was forced to watch the Tigers in the World Series while in school one year-talk about ancient history).

but I did look up MI law and found this:

the person in question was not ‘lawfully on (the)private property’, or at least the part that got bitten wasn’t.

83

I think it actually keeps the dogs from barking so much - something ELSE that annoys neighbors.

In our neighborhood there’s only one yard that has a solid, high fence with a dog in it. All of the other dogs have chain-link fences.

When we walk the dog, the other dogs with chain link fences will either ignore us or give a little bark and see that we’re moving along and then stop barking. The poor old boy who can’t see out of his fence will just bark and bark until he is PRETTY sure we’re gone - while his neighbor dog that can see us just stares.

If a dog can SEE what he’s barking at, or see what made the noise he hears, it seems like he is a little less hung up about it and is able to get over the “threat” quicker.

Regarding the OP…what if he/she put a “Beware of Dog” sign on the fence where the hole is? Does that help if this happens again the the future and someone sues?

84

Even in a rental, there’s nothing to prevent that child’s from simply putting a lock high enough on the door that the child couldn’t reach it or couldn’t open it if she could. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that a 7-year-old mentally impaired child wandering around outside is in all sorts of danger, and in this case she got off lightly, it seems to me. I truly do not understand how parents can have so little regard for their children that they can’t impose even minimal standards of restraint on their behavior for their own safety. And if I were you, light strand, and found the child in my house again, I’d be calling the authorities immediately. She could get in a lot worse trouble than getting nipped by a dog, out roaming the streets unattended.

85

We have a BWOD sign, but stuff like this makes me nervous - should I padlock my gate?

My husband has plans to protect the dogs in case of a break-in - in Oregon, your dog can be put down for an attack even when they’re protecting you from someone in your house robbing you or worse. Hubby will shoot the injured burglar so there are no traces of dog bite wounds. It’s just wrong that you have to worry about protecting your animals in situations when you have them to protect you in those specific situations.

86

I just wonder what the mother is doing all day long while her child is roaming the neighborhood. She’s certainly not parenting. If she needs a break, let the kid watch TV or a video or something, but keep the front door locked.

When my 7 year old (who is not special needs) wants to go out, I go out with him. He wants to go to the park, we walk to the park together. He wants to play out front, I sit in the front room doing whatever where I can see him or I sit in the yard and read or something. If he goes out of my line of sight for long, I call to him. If he doesn’t answer, or come back to where I can see him, I go after him.

If I’m doing something where I can’t go with him outside, then he doesn’t go (unless another parent is out keeping an eye on the kids). Am I over protective and paranoid? Maybe, but my kid has never walked into someone house w/o permission or been bit by someone’s fenced dog. If my child was special needs I’d keep an even closer eye on him.

Sure, maybe the house doesn’t get swept or the dishes done or maybe I miss a TV show because I went outside with him, but who cares, I’d rather know where my child was and what he was doing than let him wander by himself and face who knows what.

87

Well, I have a large backyard and up until my son was five I and a good section fenced off for his protection but I let my 8 and 6 year old play in the back yard without supervising them. They know to stay in the yard, they know what the borders are and they know that if they mess up they won’t be able to play in the backyard without supervision.
I think a 7 year old Special Needs child is different, her parents should have the backyard fenced off. She is apparently a danger to herself and if she is wandering into others houses, she is a danger to others.

Jim

88

As the parent of a child with Down Syndrome who seems to believe that animals the world over exist for her to hug, I think that Light Strand was in no way irresponsible or in the wrong at all.

That said:

No. If she wanted to put up a fence to keep her kid in the yard, fine. And to extrapolate all the way from “retarded child” to “little or no job” is pretty damned forward of you, doncha think? And if the house is a rental, too damned bad. This mother needs to stay on top of where her daughter (who has wandered into the OP’s house, ferchrissakes) is.

Now, please tell me that I’m being intolerant of people with mental disabilities.

And this:

Is the biggest load of crap that I’ve had the honor of seeing of late. Not everyone gets along with their neighbors. Sometimes one’s neighbors are total assholes. Y’know, the kind of assholes that let their daughter with Down Syndrome roam the fucking neighborhood where said daughter gets bitten by dogs that are kept in the pet owner’s yard.

MacTech’s got it right. This little girl’s parents need to actually get off their asses and provide some, well, parenting.

89

I’m in Texas (from MI-Tigers played the Rangers). My fence is on the back of the house, not the front. We have alleys. So to explain the dumb-ass system that is the alley: Just imagine if a one lane road ran behind your house parallel with the street in front, and between your backyard, and the back yard of the person who lives behind you. The garage faces the alley, and the driveway runs through the backyard. So basically I get a huge, unusable front yard, and tiny unusable backyard. Everyone has privacy fences so that anyone driving down the alley can’t look into your living room. There is no sidewalk on that side. The sidewalk is in the front. So basically, our fence is only accessible to people walking down the alley, who are generally just the neighbors. And thieves don’t forget the thieves.

Because of the lovely alley system, houses and garages are routinely broken into. Since the back of the house and the garage is accessible only by alley, it’s quite hidden for those who would like to break in with some kind of privacy.

We have the hole for a couple of reasons: The dogs like them, because dogs are nosey by nature. They keep the dogs calmer for the exact reason Zipper JJ has pointed out. It keeps the thieves away when they actually see what kind of dogs they are dealing with, and at one point someone hid in our driveway after breaking out window of the neighbor’s truck window and stealing his stereo at the exact site of the current hole- I know this because I found his shirt there the next day, and we would prefer the thieves to hide elsewhere.

We had chicken wire on the hole in the previous fence, but Marty (the Karelian Bear Dog) ate it. It was just something for him to gnaw on when he got bored, that’s why we didn’t put it on this one. We also figured since we’d moved the hole so far from the driveway, that it would be ok.

Bandit (the Border Collie- the presumed biter) is not a nippy dog. By the site of the bite we are guessing she reached in to pet them, and when Bandit started to back away she grabbed him, perhaps thinking he had a collar on (we don’t keep them collared when locked in the yard) at that point she would have either gotten his ear or his scruff, enough to make him lash out. This is not a bite on the hand. It’s not a bite that comes from petting. It is on the inner forearm just below the elbow. That is only a bite that comes from grabbing.

I have no intention of calling CFS unless I see her in a really dangerous situation. I am not going to play a tit-for-tat game with the neighbors. I don’t know how far she wanders, but I do know that the biggest problem is that her mother thinks that the neighborhood is a community babysitter, her family are recent Eastern European immigrants, and “that’s the way it is at home” -not said about this in particular, but many, many other things.

It’s not that I have never spoken to them. We are simply neighborly. I think they’re a bit weird, and they probably think the same of me. So we have always spoken to their kids (they have a beautiful daughter of about 13, as well), and I get along with them as far a wave here, and a “good morning,- how’s the weather” there, but we don’t plan dinner parties together.

I still haven’t heard anything from Animal Control, the police, or an attorney. I haven’t see the little girl since last week, and no one in the family has been in contact with us since Monday morning. I can’t imagine why they waited 24 hours before they told me.

90

My grandfather had a german shepard that was a retired military dog. She was trained within an inch of her life (according to my mother you could dangle a raw steak in front of her face and she she wouldn’t so much as blink until told she could), but one of her duties was to protect my grandmother (who was in a wheelchair & fairly imobile at that) when she was home alone, as they lived in some “interesting” places while Grandad was in the service. And if the dog wanted to, she could kill you.

When they moved back to the states, my grandfather errected an 8 foot wood fence around the yard, padlocked the gate, then built a dog run w/an 8 foot chain link fence within the yard that was accessable only from inside the house. He had to put barbed wire on the top because the neighbor’s kid climbed a ladder over the exterior fence, and was scaling the run fence in pursuit of a ball when Grandad caught him.

And this was a boy who’d been specifically told to never, ever bother the dog. Kids can be so damn stupid.

91

Texas dogbites

more and relevant info

seems that it’s not as cut and dried as some folks here seem to think. (above quote from here

I am not a lawyer, not pretending to be. if the cite that I’m referenced is accurate, depending on the laws in your jurisdiction, you may well be liable for damages. especially if the dog has bitten before. (don’t recall if that’s true). anyhow, just posting what I found, 'cause.

um

I"ve got no dog in this fight.

:smiley:

d & r

92

forgot to add: the bolding and italics in above quote are emphasis from me, not the author of the cite.

93

Thanks for the info wring. The dog hasn’t bitten before, so it looks like he falls under the ‘one bite for free’ rule, so I’m not liable. All the same; I really don’t give two hoots about the money. I just want my dog to be safe, and the neighbor kid to be ok, both physically, and mentally.

GLWasteful, thanks for your input. It’s important to me that you think I’m not being unreasonable.

94

Am I the only one who noticed this? Are you seriously suggesting that you and your husband would shoot a human being to protect your dog? I certainly don’t agree with any laws that put animals at risk of being put down for attacking burglars, but this seems a little drastic, dontcha think?

95

If it’s in circumstance where you’d have shot the person anyway (such as a home invasion burglary) I don’t think it’s too objectionable.

96

I don’t want my dogs to bite ever. I don’t care if someone is skinning them alive. Frankly, I don’t trust my training or my dogs’ walnut sized brains to give them the judgement to determine what’s a legitimate threat or just a vet poking them with a shot, a guest or repairman coming into my house, a kid playing too rough, etc. So I socialize my dogs extensively, and I also make sure to acquire dogs I know won’t be aggressive.

All that said, there’s no way to guarantee a dog will never, ever bite–as much as I’d like to think so. I can socialize and train the heck out of them, but a dog’s instincts will kick in at times. You can only do what you can do and try to avoid any potentially dangerous situations.

So I don’t think the OP did anything wrong. For crying out loud, she has a large fence with one tiny hole. At some point, you have to say that the kid went above and beyond what is reasonable and something bad happened. Yeah, I’d think my dogs wouldn’t bite in that situation, but there’s no guarantee. I do the best I can as I think the OP did.

97

Nope. I like pets, and don’t think people shouldn’t have them.

First pets and items aren’t the same thing at all and don’t present the same dangers. Your chemicals aren’t going to jump all by themselves on a passer-by, and your tools won’t look all cuddly just before changing they mind and attacking a child. You have to do more to be harmed by a powertool (taking it, plugging it in) than by a dog that might just attack you if you wander on its turf or even just happen to cross its path.
Second, yeah, it might be your responsability, even with unanimated objects. “Attractive nuisances” have been mentionned previously, and I think pets fall into this category. Kids wants to play with pets, to pet them, even to play nasty ticks on them. I could also mention traps as a related example. These are banned (you can be sentenced if a trap harm a burglar in your house) because they’re indiscrimitating. They will wound or kill a kid or a firefighter entering your property as easily as a burglar. Same with a dog. If a dog bites a burglar, or a tresspasing kid, it will also bites, say, an EMS team member trying to save your ass. So, there might not be much difference betwen a pet and some categories of items. from the point of view of your responsability.
I mentionned above I’ve been brought up in the countryside, and both us kids and a number of dogs were wandering outside of fenced backyards without direct supervision. Even a dog roaming freely isn’t generally dangerous (at least as long as the dog doesn’t have agressive tendancies). But if something happens, it’s still the dog owner’s responsability. Human environment is intended for humans, should be geared towards humans, and pets should be let in it only as long as they dont become a nuisance, let alone a danger.

98

Hum… Don’t think so. This thread isn’t a GQ thread where the OP asks where he stands from a legal point of view. It was a rant and we’re entitled to state our opinions.

99

Also, this issue doesn’t need to become a legal one. Actually, it shouldn’t. Nobody was seriously harmed, and nobody lost anything, apparently. Too many people in this thread have mentionned calling the cops over, considering lawsuits, etc… for my taste.

100

So, you’d have a man killed rather than a dog? And you’re making comments about what’s wrong or right???

Someone asked whether I disliked pets. What I dislike is this kind of mindset amongst some pet owners, putting their pet’s comfort above human safety and their pet’s safety above human life.

Actually, it’s not just “dislike”. It’s “completely, utterly despise”.