Got a message at work tonight that my dog, a 14 year old GSD/Husky mix bit my 18 month old. No blood, but teeth marks. The trip to the vet in the morning is not going to be much fun.

(EDIT: title)

<Sigh> With all due respect to the OP, and admitting that I have no idea what actually happened, this is nevertheless a reminder that dogs and kids need to be supervised. Too many good dogs get put down for bad reasons.



There is a lot of good info out there. Just the tip of the iceberg:

http://www.dogingtonpost.com/quiz-do-your-kids-really-know-how-to-prevent-dog-bites/
http://www.dogingtonpost.com/keeping-dogs-and-kids-safe-together/

I would not be so quick to judge the dog, much less have it put down. Wouldn't a lifestyle change that keeps the dog and kids separated be OK?

Give the dog away to another family before you decide to put it down.

Is your dog up to date on its rabies vaccination?

Yes. There was no skin puncture.

So what did you do?

My child did not provoke the dog. He was put down this morning.

I didn't mean what did you do to provoke it, I just was wondering if you did put him down. A tough choice none the less but at his age it's probably better than finding a new home. Sorry for your loss

I appreciate it. It's not that I didn't care for my buddy, but there is no gray line when a child is involved.

that is a sad end...life of an animal is worthless to OP
kids do stuff to animals, animals respond...OP murders animal even after by owning post saying he wasn't a witness to animal bite
sad, Good Luck OP...life aint easy for people who only see black and white
and do us all a favor..
NEVER GET ANOTHER PET

You had the dog for 14 years and put the dog down for biting your child, and didn't even punch through the skin. You couldn't have dropped him off at a shelter? Or given him away? Or get the dog trained to never do things like that again?

I can understand if he chewed your child's fingers off, but for not even breaking skin

Nobody said you had to keep the dog, but you felt the need to put the dog down.

Good night sweet prince

Drop him off at a shelter so he gets to suffer too before they put him down? That's messed up.

OP made the right choice.

Yeah, at 14 the prospects couldn't have been good.  I'm glad I've never had to make that choice.  I've been snapped at and bit as a young hyper kid playing with older dogs but never anything remotely serious enough to something to be done to the dog.   Sad situation

I mean no disrespect to OP but if I get a call from my wife saying my dog bit one of my kids my first question would be what the fuck was my kid doing to my dog.

I don't know what actually happened but an instant death sentence for something easily remedied is fucked up.

I'm sorry but i feel some of you are out of line in scolding the owner. You weren't there; you dont know the situation, the child, or the dog.  The person whose decision it is to act on this action is the owner; the one who was there and saw what happened.  You're not going to "adjust" a 14 year old dogs behavior and in all reality dogs tend to get short in regards to their patience as they get older so a recurrence of this type of situation is highly likely.

All i can assume is that those of you who are telling the owner not to get another pet do not have children (well i dont either).  What happens next time when/if the dog does critically injure the child?  Are you going to simply scold the child?  Have some common sense and a little courtesy for the OP; it couldn't have been easy to lose his dog and to go through this.  Rather than berating him with negative comments; why not try to be sympathetic or just not chime in.

Sorry for your loss OP; i'm sure its been a rough 48 hours.

Cschelk2 DVM

Neither was the OP.



Either way a lose / lose situation. Sorry for your loss and hope your child is doing okay, OP.

Tough decision.  I wouldn't have posted about it though.

Dogs do get picked up by other families at shelters. You know that, right?

Those saying I wasn't there are correct. Are you suggesting my wife's word isn't good enough to explain that my child was bitten? I have a photo of the bite, which I took 14 hours after it happened. A simple "nip" doesn't retain bruising/marking after that long.

And "train" a 14 year old dog to tolerate a toddler? Good luck. Let me guess, the dog in this .gif also needs the same training?:



(This is not my dog in the .gif)

I didn't take letting go of my friend lightly. I posted here to vent about a situation where the end and necessary actions only had 1 good answer.

Not sure I agree with your decision but it is yours to make.

That dog led a full life. Im sure you made the best decision for your family.

Our dog is about 5 and does good with my infant son but we gave away my wife's dog of 7 years because he was terrible with kids and we were afraid of what he might do.

Yep.  I can't speak, because I didn't see the nature of the interaction between the child and dog, but something sounds pretty fucked up here.

so when your kid gets burned by the stove...will you put that to sleep too?
no..you TRAIN the kid.
that is what parents do.

Dogs should know their place, and biting their masters isn't their place.  A dog that will bite a child once will bite it again.  I'd rather put my dog down than risk my child having to go through life scarred because I put an animal before them.

I love dogs, but fuck a dog that bites its family.

If your  GSD/Mal actually bit your kid, I can guarantee that there would be more then ''tooth marks'' that didn't break the skin.

Wow. I can't say I agree but it wasn't my call.

What will you do when your child bites you, or someone else?

Yeah, some folks see pets as Bic lighters, to be tossed in the trash when finished. Fourteen years? And a little nip? As a child, I got bit by dogs all the time, including ours. I bet I deserved it, too*. OP, sorry for your loss? No. Sorry for YOU, though. Take your crap back up to GD, they'll love you there...

edit to add: Being as it's early in the dawn here, I was sitting on my back porch, with my two older collies, and I recall as a child, maybe 5 or 6, and my boyhood dog, a "Heinz 57" gal named Champagne. I loved her a great deal, which roughly translates to: I loved to torment her and one evening, I was teasing her at her dish, she nipped at my thumb and got me right next to the nail;  

Owwww, mommy, Champagne BIT me!!!  "Christopher Robin, I TOLD you to leave her alone while she was eating! Now look what you got!  That'll teach you, leave her ALONE! Now go upstairs and have your sister get me the Merthiolate and a Band-Aid..."  And that's how you learn, at least back in the '60's, I guess.

For you younger folks, Merthiolate was a civilian legal topically applied chemical weapon, approved for use on children as a punitive teaching tool, that when applied to a cut, scrape or bite, increased the pain by a factor of approximately 6 to 8 fold, just in case being bit by your own dog didn't hurt enough to sink in!

Thank God the next morning that I didn't have to hear that pop was taking dear old Chammy to Doc Wriggler to be "put down" for biting ME! I would have carried that on my little back for the rest of my life...

I remember being an Army brat of 9 or 10, sitting in a base housing unit stairwell with some friends in Heidelberg, and one of them had a beautiful long haired Shepherd (it was in Germany [West mother-fucking Germany for us cold-war veterans], do they even call them German Shepherds there? Actually; Shafferhund was their breed name), and I was petting him, when he turned and bit my forearm, and I mean 4 or 5 puncture wounds worth!

Yep, learned another lesson, some dogs just don't WANT to be petted, even gently! At least not that night, anyhow! So I went home, mom (good old mom) cleaned me up good, hit me with the Phisohex and Mercurochrome and Lo!, I continued to walk the earth!  

I suppose these days, the base would go into a lockdown, all dependent owned pets would be euthanized by the MPs and there would have been a mandatory 16 hour pet safety standown... (of course, the OP would have already killed his own dog out of compliance, which would have created a dilemma for the MPs, somehow resulting in his arrest for animal abuse)

There are. Here we are 3.5 days later and there is still bruising at the site. I'm not going to "train" my child to avoid dogs. Dogs that bite my children are a problem.

Folks here missing the disparity between the 18 month old child versus the 14 year old dog? How about 30 pounds versus 75? No dog is ever going to take precedence over my family, especially if that dog shows inclination to hurt and/or attack them.

Sounds like the responsible person was not being responsible, if you're going to have a kid that young around a dog then make sure you are between the kid and pet.

Take a loyal dog of 14 years to be put down because of neglect on the adults part? It should be "i'm taking so and so to the vet to be put down for being an irresponsible bonehead.

You didn't answer my question. What are you going to do when your child bites another child? It will happen, it always does, just part of childhood.

Will you standby and allow the father of the bit child to put yours down? Only seems fair and just based on your actions.



What were the circumstances biting? By the way when a dog bites it draws blood. When a dog guides it holds on with it's mouth. It only takes slight pressure to bruise an 18 month old child. The type of pressure that a dog would use to direct or hold another. Dogs also nip as a teaching technique. Your dog did not bite your child, you however did murder your dog.



So what will you do when your child bites?

And where was your wife and what was she doing when it happened? I see woman on the highway looking down at their phone with their kids in the back seat all the time and they think it's fine.

+1


TO THE OP, DO ALL RESPONSIBLE PET OWNERS A FAVOR AND NEVER GO NEAR AN ANIMAL AGAIN

yes, clearly, since people are in the same class as the animals we keep. you seem perfectly fine with a dog "guiding" an 18 month old child and leaving bruises as well as potential mental scars. my child is not another dog to be "guided." the dog bit my child. it put it's mouth on my child's arm with enough force to leave a bruise lasting more than a few hours. you're damned right I killed that dog, it is not more important than my child. should I have allowed it to "teach" my toddler by wrapping it's mouth ever-so-dog-gently around my child's neck and pinning her to the ground, the way alpha dogs do to other pack members? some folks here have a genuinely messed up perspective on protecting family.

better call PETA tough guy, the other dog that knows it's place in my house is still here.

Lots of Monday morning QBs in this thread.

Listen closely his family , his dog , his choice - not saying that I agree or disagree.

Still not answering the question, what was your wife doing when this happened? Maybe she wasn't watching and the dog saved your kid from getting hurt.

standing in the same room cooking dinner. you just can't seem to accept that the animal was wrong.

Good shoot.

An 18 month-old toddler?  Yeah, that's great advice....
 

What are you babbling about?



The dog bit the kid.



 

I'm reading through this thread and the responses are completely opposite of what I've been seeing on GD the years I've been on ARFCOM

I've lost track of the number of posts I've seen where a dog bites a kid......and everyone ALWAYS says "put the dog down....no other right thing to do.  It's a tough choice.....but kill the dog before it does it again".  That was pretty much the overwhelming response to every "dog bites kid" post I've ever seen.

Now for some reason this time....everyone is pissed that OP put the dog down.

Very confused here........why the "save the dog, train the kid" attitude now when "kill the dog" used to be the go to response??

Many, many people in here don't have a solid grasp on dog behavioral instincts and are simply posting based on their limited experience...


A dog that bites AT ALL views itself as higher on the social hierarchy than the person it bit.


The fact the dog used it's mouth at all means it will do it again and the next time may be worse.  It likely wasn't the dog's intent to harm your kid, but next time it may have been...



You are the only person here capable of judging the entirety of the situation and you made the best call you knew of.  


Possibly the dog could have bbeen salvaged, but not by a casual person and any new owner should be made aware of the past biting history.


Given the information you've provided, I probably would've made the same call.


Sorry for your loss and sorry for the beating you're taking here.

first I thought It was 100% unprovoked but then op got news from a phone call and not seeing it himself.  hope the details were true.

your 18 month old is 30 pounds?

That's because the dog did not bite the child. The dog restrained the child in the only way it can. Dogs have nothing but their mouth the grasp and hold.

The unknown here is why the dog was restraining the child. The wife was busy cooking, the OP wasn't there so this is never going to be known. Maybe the dog was stopping the child from some perceived danger, headed for an open door, stairway, hot stove. Whatever the case the dog did not bite and the OP over reacted and killed a family pet.



I've had dogs my whole life, Trained dogs for many different roles and I've seen them do some amazing, intelligent things. With the information to OP has it was not a good kill. It is just as likely that he killed the dog for protecting his child as it is for the dog asserting any type of dominance over the child. Actually the odds favor the former  as a dog will growl, chase and nip to assert dominance long before actual biting.