What would you do?

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GinaB

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Situation is an old yorkie terrier (think about 12/13 year old) and an 11 year old child. I should also add, the kind of child that if you tell her not to do something, does it anyway and has always been brought up to respect dogs.

Child is told, under no circumstances put your face anywhere near dog as he does not like space being invaded (questionable how good his sight is) and don't touch his froggie as no-one is allowed it apart from him.

Child is told this twice.

Child then leans down to get froggie off dog , dog snaps (more a warning, don't think it meant to connect) and catches child on the lip.

What would you do with the dog and child? Who gets in trouble? Should dog be euthanised? etc
 
OK
1. Froggie gets it - there is NOTHING in my house I am 'not allowed' to touch, this is asking for trouble IMO. Anything Henry has shown the slightest sign of being possesive over has always been swiftly removed!

2. Child is in deep sh!t for ignoring what I say, and takes this as a learning curve about why you listen and why you don't get into strange dogs' faces

3. Yorkie is in deep sh!t for snapping and has some intensive retraining about the concept of 'give' and is reminded that their place is bottom of the pile, back of the queue

4. Child and dog do not meet again

That's what I'd do.

Anything more serious than that - yes, I'd have to have the dog euthanised.
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For me, this would be dog on their last chance I'm afraid
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I hate bl00dy snappy little dogs
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Sorry if this offends anyone but I really really do hate spoilt, yappy, snappy little dogs!
 
Toys do not belong to the dog, they belong to me and I take them away when I feel like it.

Child has had a tough lesson, not much more needs to be said to him or her.

The dog is old, the dog is small.

If it was my dog I would certainly consider it. However my dogs do not get the chance to be in close, unsupervised, off-lead contact with children and certainly not where toys are involved.
A toughie.
 
I should also mention, dog has never been used to children and has only ever lived with adults. I believe he will give the froggie up to an adult that he trusts. He does seem to have trust issues.
 
Is this a hypothetical or real situation?

This was entirely the child's fault, and unfortunately this sort of thing happens and too often ends with the poor dog being rehomed or destroyed.

Firstly, I wouldn't start by giving the dog a good telling off - the dog was protecting a resource he felt was valuable, and if you come in and tell him off and start snatching the toy off of him, you've now given him an even stronger reason to need to guard that toy. It has nothing to do with dominace or his place in the pack (and this pack theory stuff has been proven to be fatally flawed http://www.kathysdao.com/articles/Forget_About_Being_Alpha_in_Your_Pack.html) and is simply a natural instinct to protect what he feels is valuable. I'd start by teaching him a trade game - he swaps froggie for food or another toy he likes - so that he learns it's good to give things up and there's no need to guard them.

Secondly, I would in future put the dog in a different, quiet room away from the child. You don't say whether this is a visiting child or one who lives with the dog? If only a visitor, always move the dog to another room where he won't be bothered (and at his age, with possibly failing eyesight, doesn't he deserve to be left in peace?!). If the child lives with you, just make sure you never leave them alone togther.

One of my elderly collies snaps at your ankles if you try to step over here while she's asleep - it isn't aggression, it's an instinctive reaction, something hits against her in her sleep (and she does sleep increadibly deeply these days so has no idea what's going on around her!), it could be a predator, so she automatically snaps!

There's a good article here on resource guarding: http://ahimsadogtraining.com/blog/resource-guarding/
 
1. Froggie gets it - there is NOTHING in my house I am 'not allowed' to touch, this is asking for trouble IMO. Anything Henry has shown the slightest sign of being possesive over has always been swiftly removed!


Totally agree with Hanandhen above statement.........my dogs own nothing, it belongs to me and when I want it back I take it, I don't like the "it's his, don't touch it", the toy should have been taken away before the child came, the owner obs knew this could be a scenario.

Im not a child liker....but I think it very OTT to say, it was the childs fault
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more so, if it was a younger child........the ADULT is to blame.

I would have put dog in another room out of the childs way, and froggi would be removed if he was showing aggression when froggie was touched
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A strange situation then, I do agree adults are at fault, if the dog's temperament was unknown, then it should have been kept away while child visited.
Also agree with dad - it is exactly what my dad would have said!
 
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Oh and child was a visitor.

The child's fathers reaction was 'she was told not to annoy/upset dog, she did it, her own fault.'

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Tend to agree.
 
I still thinking adults to blame.......esp if they knew child never listens to what she is told.......the situation could easily have been a larger breed that could have removed her lip all together, not sure they would say "it was her fault then" the dog would prob be pts in that sceanrio........I don't have kids, but I thought they naturally did nowt they where told
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hence why the adult needs to be vigilant.
 
Ok, so I didn't mean it was the child's fault only, I meant if you're looking to blame the child OR the dog, then the child had been told, and the dog was just reacting instinctively! Yes, I agree, the supervising adults are always to blame when a child gets bitten (but wasn't sure if the original post-er was the owner of the dog and didn't want to cause too much offence!)

And I do agree that all my dog's toys belong to me, but I teach him it's ok for me to take them by exchanging it for something else - if you keep marching in and just stealing the toys off the dog, you're going to create a resource guarding problem because all of a sudden you've given the dog a reason to need to guard things from you.

And I hope the idea of euthanasia in this instance wasn't really an option as that would seem slightly OTT to me. It wasn't a real aggression issue, just a dog and a small child put in a bad situation together IMHO.
 
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And I do agree that all my dog's toys belong to me, but I teach him it's ok for me to take them by exchanging it for something else - if you keep marching in and just stealing the toys off the dog, you're going to create a resource guarding problem because all of a sudden you've given the dog a reason to need to guard things from you.

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Really? That's never the way I have been taught to do things - when playtime is over, I take the toy/ball/whatever and my dog knows that it is over and he has to go back to his run/bed whatever, no messing.
He is allowed to win it most of the time, and if he gives it back to me on command without a fuss, he gets a pat and verbal praise, if not, I go into his mouth and get it from him and it is removed.
The more he holds it (without being told he can) the less fun he has because it isn't being thrown, therefore he cannot chase and win it.
None of my dogs have ever tried to guard items because they know it isn't theirs to guard, it is mine and I am being good enough to throw it for them for them to chase and win.

I was speaking to a police dog trainer on the subject of bitework training just yesterday about this issue and he was reiterating the same.

I suppose it is different in that my dogs never have prolonged access to items like this, we go out, we play a game, I take the toy away, we stop playing.
 
This happened to me when I was nine, almost exact same circumstances!

Dog got a hiding and so did I. Neither of us did it again and I now have nine dogs so it didn't put me off them!
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I would have been horrified if my aunt had put Toby down as it was my fault; she was horrified because Toby had never ever looked cross eyed at anything before then. My Dad told her not to take it out on the dog as it was my fault, I had been told. Toby and I were mates for years after that and we both knew the boundaries.
 


[/ QUOTE ] "Really? That's never the way I have been taught to do things - when playtime is over, I take the toy/ball/whatever and my dog knows that it is over and he has to go back to his run/bed whatever, no messing.
He is allowed to win it most of the time, and if he gives it back to me on command without a fuss, he gets a pat and verbal praise, if not, I go into his mouth and get it from him and it is removed.
The more he holds it (without being told he can) the less fun he has because it isn't being thrown, therefore he cannot chase and win it.
None of my dogs have ever tried to guard items because they know it isn't theirs to guard, it is mine and I am being good enough to throw it for them for them to chase and win."


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And that's all fine if your dog understands that the toys are yours and that to play the game he has to give it back (this is what my collie does), and the rules are clear from the start (no snatching, give when asked, enough when I say so). What I was trying to get at is that if you have a dog that is ALREADY guarding an item, say a bone or toy, and is growling at you, the worst thing you can do is go marching in and take it off of him as you've just proven to him that he was right to guard it from you, and this is when a lot of people get bitten. This is where you would want an exchange game.
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If you get the rules right from the start (as you've done), there isn't a problem. But in the case of the dog and his froggie, there's obviously already an issue there, and at the moment he feels the need to protect that toy, and what he needs to learn is that it's good to give it up.
 
For me the kid got what she deserved having been told specifically what not to do. Dog would need some work to train him that he is only 'borrowing' froggie though! I was bitten on the face when I was 9 years old but by a neigbours dog who leapt at me when I was sitting in a chair eating an ice cream. That dog was destroyed as it had also bitten before.
 
i agree with the fact nothing belongs to the dog so anything like that should be removed, however i would not punish the dog too much as the child should have done as they were told but also the parent should have kept the child away if they were not listening, if its trust issues with the dog keep naughty children well away coz it may not be just a nip next time
 
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Im not a child liker....

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Think you and I may have been separated at birth!

Totally agree, not dogs fault as it's the owners responsibilty to train this behaviour out, the dog should have been moved out of harms way if the child is known to do the opposite of what she's been told and NO the dog should not be euthanised for doing what he's been allowed to do for 12 years+.
 
The adult's fault in my opinion, for allowing the dog to become dangerous, for relying on a child to be responsible and for not separating the two in the first place given the problems with both dog and child.
 
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