The picture is of two year Noah Cottie who yesterday was bitten by the dog in the background, a 50kg mastiff-staffordshire cross. What’s ‘odd’ is that Noah’s mother said the bites were Noah’s fault for pulling the dogs ears and that she wasn’t going to get rid of the dog. When questioned she said she’d told the boy to stop but he hadn’t listened.
Simply *telling* a two year old to stop teasing a dog of that size and background was clearly not sufficient? More positive action was obviously required and that simple fact should itself have been obvious from the outset!
In terms of general parenting… hard to comment. I wouldn’t give that sort of dog house room when I had kids to begin with. but if the kids came after the dog at the very least I’d make sure it was securely tied somewhere to make sure it wasn’t able to get near the child.
Having said that, we have a cattle dog and got her just before our eldest was born. Cattle dogs are known to be ‘snappy’ but we never took any special precautions over them being alone together.
Either way two year old Noah could well have to live his life with some nasty scars because of ‘his’ inability to comprehend that a 50 kilo cross breed wasn’t a suitable playmate.
Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23128818-2,00.html
The Eclectic Interweb 