A story like this one has "pending legislation" written all over it: Postpone Family Dog Until Kids Are School-Age: Experts:
[Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay Reporter] Kids and dogs may seem like a perfect match, but a new study finds the family pooch is best introduced after children reach the age of 5.
The reason is simple: Toddlers are much more likely than older children to unknowingly aggravate dogs, who may then react as dogs do -- by biting.
"Our study showed that the number of attacks on children decreases with age and is highest at 1 year of age," said Dr. Johannes Schalamon, a co-author of the study and a physician in the department of pediatric surgery at the Medical University of Graz in Austria.
And here's the kicker:
"Therefore I would recommend to supervise younger children more closely when they are in contact with a dog and postpone the purchase of a dog until children are of school age," Schalamon said.Now that an "expert" has weighed in, there is almost no chance that this recommendation will not be used to justify the establishment (somewhere close, sometime soon) of a legal age of dog ownership. I am so certain of this, I hesitated to blog on it for fear of helping spread a bad idea.
My question is: Do you need an expert (or a law!) to make sure you "supervise children closely when they are in contact with a dog"?
Supervising your children is also known as parenting. I do it every day. There are dogs in our neighborhood, some of them at roam and some of them big enough even to give me pause. I have no faith in the good nature of strange dogs. I step between them and my kids whenever they come trotting over.
And yet, getting bitten by a dog is part of growing up. It is thoroughly the common experience. I remember several bites of my own, one of them a dandy leaving four neat holes at the four corners of my face. My own dog (sleeping at the time) bit my own child last year when she gave him a hug. I can only guess how many times I've told my kids, directly and even forcefully: "Do not touch a sleeping dog." Do not chase a dog. Do not run from a dog. Be the boss of the dog. Dogs love you, and they will still bite you.
Every kid with a loving parent hears the same, but evidently it takes a nip or two to drive the message home.
To do more than sensibly acknowledge the possibility of a biting dog is to misunderstand the dog completely. No useful, good and powerful thing I know comes without some potential to do harm. Aren't the very traits that make a thing good or useful or powerful generally the same ones that can make them dangerous? Surely this is true of a dog.
It's been five months since our old Meng died. Even Briana, who bears his fading mark on her cheek, misses him and wants another one. I know I do. So we're getting a new whippet this weekend, a pretty black female, six months old and slightly shy. Chances are she'll bite everyone in my family at least once in her lifetime. We're going to risk it.
5 comments:
but Matthew, we also know that there are too many bad, negligent parents out there to count, and if they're too stupid/negligent/otherwise uncaring to teach their kids the proper bahavior around dogs (and we know that that rarely would stop them from owning one, and even a particularly large and dangerous one), shouldn't we try to come up with some way to protect the kids? If we always take the stance that protecting children falls under parenting and parenting only, it's like we're saying to the (millions of) kids with unfit parents, "well, that's some though s***, sonny"....shouldn't protecting children be a collective effort?
Within the last year two children have been killed by dogs in nearby communities. (We used to get one fatal or near fatal mauling a year in Portland when I was an animal control officer there.) One child was killed on the reservation by a dog at large -- there are a LOT of dogs at large in any rez town. Some are mellow, others are not.
The other child was quite recent. The family with the child (4 year old boy) was temporarily staying with related dog owners (the mother's sister) who kept kenneled rottweilers. The boy went out into the yard without the mother checking to see that the dogs were secured. They weren't and the next thing was "strange sounds" -- the boy dying.
Laws won't make any difference. There are laws against drunk driving and they don't stop people from doing it. I think dogs killing children has been a human reality for hundreds of thousands of years. Tragic, often preventable, sometimes not. These weren't even irresponsible parents -- just one small blunder.
Education can help.
Prairie Mary
Hi Larissa,
This is a difficult issue, and I can only speak from my own few years' experience as a parent: But this hinges on whether you believe it's right (or even possible) to raise other people's children.
Of course there are circumstances when it's essential to intervene on behalf of any nearby child. If you can prevent an injury or death, you must. Everyone would agree on that, and I think any parent would welcome the help of a stranger if needed.
But looking past the lending of emergency aid to someone else's kid, we immediately step in deep water.
If you are trying to prevent harm with some restriction, might you also be preventing some good? Does the the risk of a child's being bitten by the family dog outweigh the benefit to that child child (and that family) of owning the dog?
How can you quantify the benefit of owning a dog? There's the problem, or rather just one problem.
The issues are multitude, and as soon as you have your own kid you will begin to see them. You will know intimately the work and worry involved in raising a child, and the very intense and personal rewards of the same. You will want it all for yourself: the risk and the reward. You will know absolutely that no one knows your kid better than you do, and no one could love her more.
Imagine your reaction to some faceless, legislator (perhaps in a another state, or in no state---DC!) inacting measures in generalized, hypothetical aid to your very specific and real-world kid. It makes my face flush to think about it.
Wars are fought over this, or they should be! It is a basic freedom.
Raising a kid is the most frieghtening, terrible, rewarding and important thing any person can do. And no one can do it for you.
I agree with Prairie Mary that education can help. And I would go farther to say that governments should provide more and better education than they do. Beyond that, it's awfully dicey.
Hi Matt. I have friends who kept a big German Shepher dog for all of his 13 years. He was trained as a seeing eye dog; in fact, best trained dog I have ever known. She vowed that if he ever bit anyone she'd put him down. He never bit anyone. I think it's possible for a dog to not bite, but these are probably raised by people who are specifically aiming for that goal (service dogs etc). You are totally correct that a kid has to be taught that you cannot harass the dog! We only just got our first family dog, and our kids are 11 & 9. They're so great with him. Very helpful. I didn't wait this long for them to be older though. I waited because I didn't think I could deal with the responsibility of a house dog and a (shudder) town dog. I'm glad I waited but I also see the kids and dog together and wish they'd had him sooner. Our cat was a great teacher though. He only scratched a kid once. It didn't leave permanent damage and she really deserved to get scratched. Bottom line: not everybody should have kids or dogs. But anybody can. We can't legislate stupidity! We can take care of our own.
I agree with Larissa, but let's take it a little further. I think all perspective parents should have to go through the same permitting process that we falconers have had to deal with, hell just use the same regs and replace "raptor" with "child" and "falconer" with "parent".
Paul
(2 kids, 2 hawks, 6 dogs)
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