Dog Attack

[Kavik]

Monday night, my wife and I took our dog on a walk. Normally, our dog walks half a mile or less because of her age, but, because we'd waited to take her until the evening, she had a lot more energy and walked about a mile and a half and even went into parts of the neighborhood she hadn't ventured into before.

We were almost home when she decided to take the turn before our street, which wasn't a big deal since it ultimately leads to our house too. There was someone walking two other dogs in the distance, coming towards us, but our dog's nose led her across the street, so now we were on opposite sidewalks. Apparently, one of the dogs was not on a leash and ran over to sniff ours. The owner was a 10-11 year old girl who was holding another bigger dog by a collar or choke chain, not a leash. It looked as if the dog was stronger than the girl and actually pulling her around. The girl came over to retrieve the other dog and apologize. My dog got uncomfortable with the dog's sniffing and jolted forward a bit to start walking away when the bigger dog attacked her, biting at her neck and face.

I was able to grab the bigger dog and pull it off of her. Surprisingly the dog was interested only in my dog and not me. I expected to be bitten in the process, but it was only interested in going forward and let me hold it back without much fight. At this point, my dog's leash was completely tangled between me, the attacking dog, and the little girl, but, fortuitously, the D-ring on the collar (more like body harness) had broken off in the attack, so my wife and dog were able to run off while being chased by the sniffing dog.

As I was untangling the leash, I twice asked the girl if she needed help getting her dogs home, to which she replied no. I ran to my wife and dog, and the only damage to my dog was a tear in her eyelid and a bloodshot eye. We took her to the animal emergency room, and she was given a cone and antibiotic eyedrops. The doctor said the eyelid will probably heal better than he could fix it, so he decided against surgery especially given her age (12-13). She is obviously not thrilled to have a cone, and her eye oozes puss and needs to be wiped every couple hours. One eyedrop is required three times per day, which is very hard to apply to a dog who doesn't want to look up or stay still. I'm hoping for no permanent damage. I'm not sure what the little girl was doing with those dogs; the only scenario I can imagine is they got out of the yard and she was retrieving them, but I don't know why she would be doing that alone.

[tp4tissue]

@ Kavik,   Tp4 recommends a healthy dose of Indoors..

Minimizing outdoor activity is highly correlated with the reduction of dog v dog accidents.

_Ronery4ever
_OutsideBad

[fohat.digs]

Dogs are natural predators. My cousin has a large and powerful dog that is barely under control, even on daily Prozac.

It has bitten her numerous times and she has scars to prove it. But she lives alone and dotes on it, treating it like an infant.

I loathe dogs.

[noisyturtle]

My roommate was attacked by an unleashed dog a few years ago. The thing came out of no where when he was walking home from work and got him pretty good, had to get stitches and shots. He still has scars from it.
Not sure if the dog got put down, that always seemed like an extreme reaction to me. Every dog has a bad day, it shouldn't be 'One Strike Your Dead' type of deal.

I loathe dogs.

You and my dad would get along famously

[fohat.digs]

You and my dad would get along famously

Don't worry, I have gotten my comeuppance - my son is in veterinary school.
 

[Kavik]

I loathe dogs.

I generally love dogs, but, like people, they can vary drastically in temperament. My dog is very docile and doesn't even bark (we have heard her bark twice). But some dogs are aggressive or hyperactive. Some dogs just have crappy owners and act out because of that and can get better if properly cared for.

My roommate was attacked by an unleashed dog a few years ago. The thing came out of no where when he was walking home from work and got him pretty good, had to get stitches and shots. He still has scars from it.
Not sure if the dog got put down, that always seemed like an extreme reaction to me. Every dog has a bad day, it shouldn't be 'One Strike Your Dead' type of deal.

My brother is a mail carrier and was attacked by a pit bull several years ago. He was bitten on the cheek, ear, and torso, requiring surgery. That dog was put down. I believe the thinking behind it is to prevent another attack. I do have mixed feelings on that myself; it's probably just the easiest and safest solution compared to training or re-homing the dog.

[fohat.digs]

attacked by a pit bull several years ago. He was bitten on the cheek, ear, and torso, requiring surgery.

The owner should have been sued for the maximum punishment the law allows, plus a very large award for "pain and suffering" and loss of function and appearance. Presumably a jury would recognize that an innocent person had survived grievous and permanent harm through no fault of his own. And it was certainly NOT an accident.

Until people believe that they are risking financial ruin by keeping such an animal on their property, some people will keep doing it. Oh, and insurance companies would start rapidly writing animal attacks out of "blanket" policies ....
 

[Kavik]

attacked by a pit bull several years ago. He was bitten on the cheek, ear, and torso, requiring surgery.

The owner should have been sued for the maximum punishment the law allows, plus a very large award for "pain and suffering" and loss of function and appearance. Presumably a jury would recognize that an innocent person had survived grievous and permanent harm through no fault of his own. And it was certainly NOT an accident.

Until people believe that they are risking financial ruin by keeping such an animal on their property, some people will keep doing it. Oh, and insurance companies would start rapidly writing animal attacks out of "blanket" policies ....

My brother did sue, but he somehow lost. It really blew my mind that he got nothing. According to him, the resident's daughter opened the door as he was delivering the mail, and it ran out and immediately jumped on him and started biting. It was in a poor part of town, and the dog owner was a renter, so I think the lawsuit was against the homeowner since he was the one with the insurance policy. I don't know why he lost, but I think it was on some BS technicality because of the renter/owner thing. I didn't ask him about the cause of the loss at the time because I presumed he was too livid to discuss it.

It could also have been that juries are stupid and more sympathetic to a dog than to a person. The local news ran a story on it and it completely centered on the dog and its owner.

[fohat.digs]

the resident's daughter opened the door as he was delivering the mail, and it ran out and immediately jumped on him and started biting.

From my perspective, the dog was a dangerous weapon that the daughter "fired" at your brother.

Anti-gun control advocates constantly strive to draw distinctions about whether guns are evil or whether the people who fire them are evil, but the victims are still lying on the ground.

Regardless of whether there was a law against owning dangerous animals or a law requiring that they be restrained at all times, there must be responsibility and accountability.

A situation like this goes to the core of the current (psychopathic) movement that postulates "Freedom means that I can do whatever I want and other people are not my responsibility."

[iri]

I really like British dogs. They are so docile and cute. I want to pet each one. Too bad I'm allergic 

[Kavik]

A nice neighbor stopped me when I was walking my dog today and told me where the owner of the attacking dogs lives and that she has video of the incident from her security camera. Maybe I won't be on the hook for these vet bills after all.

[Rob27shred]

the resident's daughter opened the door as he was delivering the mail, and it ran out and immediately jumped on him and started biting.

From my perspective, the dog was a dangerous weapon that the daughter "fired" at your brother.

Anti-gun control advocates constantly strive to draw distinctions about whether guns are evil or whether the people who fire them are evil, but the victims are still lying on the ground.

Regardless of whether there was a law against owning dangerous animals or a law requiring that they be restrained at all times, there must be responsibility and accountability.

A situation like this goes to the core of the current (psychopathic) movement that postulates "Freedom means that I can do whatever I want and other people are not my responsibility."

Now that is a pretty extreme view on animals, about the only thing I can agree with is that there must be responsibility & accountability for animal owners. My whole life my family & me myself have owned very large dogs, some of supposedly "problem" breeds. TBPH it's all about how you train them, my whole life with every dog I've ever had never once did any of them attack a person or animal. Right now I have an English mastiff & Pitbull that are both big babies & extremely obedient. Simply because I trained them with positive reinforcement (for the most part, like any being sometimes they deserved a good smack to learn their lesson) & never trained them to be aggressive in any way. To me that is the biggest mistake dog owners make, is to try to teach their dog to "protect" them. Your dog will protect you in the proper situation without being trained to & not make a situation worse if they are not trained in any aggressive ways. I think Kavik's story speaks to that, his dog knew he had the situation under control & peaced out. Where if Kavik had trained his dog to be aggressive at all that situation would've been a lot more ugly IMHO.

Also I should say to me proper training does not excuse proper reasonability for owning a pet such as having your property or at least an area fenced in for them to run around outside, always walking your animal with a leash, etc.. I believe proper training & responsibility massively reduces the chances of incidents like the one discussed here from happening, much like anything else. While I get that not everyone will be like this, I really do not think restricting people's right to own pets or making it a huge financial liability will really change anything. In fact it would probably make it far worse as it would drive the market for pets further underground & into the black market where nothing good ever comes from. Never underestimate the "muh freedum" effect. There will always be some people who are gonna do whatever they want regardless of rules, laws, possible repercussions, etc. So would you rather they have easy access to well bred animals from proper channels & the materials needed to be a good, responsible pet owner. Or have to get their animals from illegal sources where the animals are already not being treated or trained properly & the sellers have no cares as to if the person they are selling animal is gonna love it & treat it right or take it home butcher it & eat it.....

[fohat.digs]

it's all about how you train them

making it a huge financial liability

Note that I used the word "dangerous" twice in my reply.

In your opinion, who SHOULD pay kavik's brother's medical bills? And is an innocent person needlessly being damaged and/or disfigured for life just "having a bad day"?

[Rob27shred]

it's all about how you train them

making it a huge financial liability

Note that I used the word "dangerous" twice in my reply.

In your opinion, who SHOULD pay kavik's brother's medical bills? And is an innocent person needlessly being damaged and/or disfigured for life just "having a bad day"?

IMO the dog owner should be responsible for his brother's medical bills & if the dog was properly trained that would have not happened. Although we are talking real life here so you know as well as I do the actual outcome will lie somewhere in the middle. See that's one of my big problems with trying to put rules & regulations on everything. They do work both ways & there will always be some slimeballs out there who find the loop holes & embolden idiotic behavior. They're never gonna protect everyone.

Furthermore, I do believe **** happens. There is no rhyme or reason to why it happened to a good person or bad person. Just wrong place, wrong time. You gotta keep on your toes when out in public, ultimately you are responsible for your own well being IMO. Not any other person, law, or govt. dept.. While I think it's horrible that happened to Kavik's brother & feel bad for him I do have to ask why he wasn't carrying pepper spray or a taser for self defense (he is a mail carrier that can be targeted by all kinds of idiots, let alone having to deal with poorly trained animals), or just didn't kick the living **** out of that dog. To me I am the only one responsible for my own well being & can not expect any other person or animal to give two ****s about it. You protect yourself & your loved ones to the best of your ability & can't worry about what is out of your control. It's just the world we live in, someone else's decisions can & will affect your life at some point. No amount of rules, laws, or threat of litigation can ever change that. So to me the only chance you have at keeping something like that from having a bad outcome for you is to figure your own way out of whatever situation life presents you if possible.

Edit: I do get that you are speaking of dangerous animals & I am not trying to start an argument with you. This is just something I feel very strongly about & I wanted to provide the counter point that rules, regulations, & threat of litigation really do not have much of a bearing on some people's decision making process.

[jamster]

Dogs are natural predators. My cousin has a large and powerful dog that is barely under control, even on daily Prozac.

It has bitten her numerous times and she has scars to prove it. But she lives alone and dotes on it, treating it like an infant.

I loathe dogs.

Don't loathe dogs, loathe dog owners who are too stupid or irresponsible to own dogs.

A nice neighbor stopped me when I was walking my dog today and told me where the owner of the attacking dogs lives and that she has video of the incident from her security camera. Maybe I won't be on the hook for these vet bills after all.

Best of luck!

[fohat.digs]

the counter point that rules, regulations, & threat of litigation really do not have much of a bearing

This is something that I also feel very strongly about.

The disintegration of social responsibility in post-1980 America has been a process that was planned and executed in a cynical and methodical process for the benefit of a small group of hyper-wealthy players, following a playbook written in the late-1950s in the aftermath of Brown vs Board of Education. (The Calculus of Consent by James McGill Buchanan)

We don't live in the Wild West, contrary to the narrative that certain individuals continue to espouse in an ever-increasing din of self-aggrandizing noise. The fact is that our ever-shrinking modern world has become a global village that requires legitimate co-operation to an exponentially increasing degree.

In the absence of well-established social norms that are overwhelmingly accepted and adhered to (with transgressions generally enforced by coherent social pressure), rules and regulations are the best (if not the only) bulwark for the protection of individuals and groups against predations from malefactors. With the threat of litigation (including legitimate and timely punishment) as a backup. Today, in an environment of legislative dysfunction in the US, litigation has become a significant mechanism for social enforcement.

In a modern civil society citizens should not have to live their lives in fear because the society itself lacks the will, or a functioning mechanism, for protecting its law-abiding members against anti-social behavior.

[Kavik]

I do have to ask why he wasn't carrying pepper spray or a taser for self defense (he is a mail carrier that can be targeted by all kinds of idiots, let alone having to deal with poorly trained animals), or just didn't kick the living **** out of that dog.

I wasn't there, but I imagine it's hard to kick a dog when you've been tackled to the ground, are being bitten, and are carrying a heavy mailbag, not to mention the blood loss in the aftermath (the face bleeds a lot). I'm not sure of the exact regulations, but postal employees generally prohibited from carrying weapons, with the exception of pepper spray, I think. But these things happen so fast that employing OC spray even if he'd had it probably was not feasible unless he'd had it in his hand already and had known a dog was going to bolt out of the house. I'm not trying to sound catty, but it's a chaotic, split second, surprise type of thing. I agree that people have a responsibility for their own safety and defense, but that doesn't excuse the aggressor from liability.

[Sintpinty]

Monday night, my wife and I took our dog on a walk. Normally, our dog walks half a mile or less because of her age, but, because we'd waited to take her until the evening, she had a lot more energy and walked about a mile and a half and even went into parts of the neighborhood she hadn't ventured into before.

We were almost home when she decided to take the turn before our street, which wasn't a big deal since it ultimately leads to our house too. There was someone walking two other dogs in the distance, coming towards us, but our dog's nose led her across the street, so now we were on opposite sidewalks. Apparently, one of the dogs was not on a leash and ran over to sniff ours. The owner was a 10-11 year old girl who was holding another bigger dog by a collar or choke chain, not a leash. It looked as if the dog was stronger than the girl and actually pulling her around. The girl came over to retrieve the other dog and apologize. My dog got uncomfortable with the dog's sniffing and jolted forward a bit to start walking away when the bigger dog attacked her, biting at her neck and face.

I was able to grab the bigger dog and pull it off of her. Surprisingly the dog was interested only in my dog and not me. I expected to be bitten in the process, but it was only interested in going forward and let me hold it back without much fight. At this point, my dog's leash was completely tangled between me, the attacking dog, and the little girl, but, fortuitously, the D-ring on the collar (more like body harness) had broken off in the attack, so my wife and dog were able to run off while being chased by the sniffing dog.

As I was untangling the leash, I twice asked the girl if she needed help getting her dogs home, to which she replied no. I ran to my wife and dog, and the only damage to my dog was a tear in her eyelid and a bloodshot eye. We took her to the animal emergency room, and she was given a cone and antibiotic eyedrops. The doctor said the eyelid will probably heal better than he could fix it, so he decided against surgery especially given her age (12-13). She is obviously not thrilled to have a cone, and her eye oozes puss and needs to be wiped every couple hours. One eyedrop is required three times per day, which is very hard to apply to a dog who doesn't want to look up or stay still. I'm hoping for no permanent damage. I'm not sure what the little girl was doing with those dogs; the only scenario I can imagine is they got out of the yard and she was retrieving them, but I don't know why she would be doing that alone.

Sorry about your dog being attacked. Hope they recover well.

[Kavik]

I took her to the vet Wednesday, and she hit her eye on the bench outside on the way into the building because she wasn't walking the right way and suddenly course corrected and yelped. The softer cone I bought her to replace the plastic ones she kept breaking didn't protect her from the impact. When we got inside, drops of blood dripped out of her eye, and it was too tender for the vet to even look at it. The vet said to bring her back Friday so that he could sedate her to look at the eye. I also made contact with the owner of the attacking dog, and she offered to pay the vet bills.

This morning, I took her back to the vet. He called me to tell me the eye has ruptured and that it needed to be removed, so she just got out of surgery. I don't know if it's because I couldn't get the eye drops in her eye well enough, if it's because she hit it on that bench, if the new cone I got her made it worse since it's flexible and has nylon sections that let her rub the eye against it, or if the injury just got worse on its own. The vet said that it's nothing I did or didn't do and that the injury just progressed to this point, but I think he just said that to make me feel better. After the attack, her eye just looked a little red, and the damage seemed to be mostly to her eyelid, and it was starting to look a little better to me before the impact on the bench. I guess it doesn't matter since the damage is done.

I don't know what to feel. I bet the attacking dog's owner isn't expecting the vet bill to be ~$1000, but, even with that paid for, it doesn't seem like enough to compensate for an eye.

[suicidal_orange]

Not the best ending but plenty of one eyed dogs seem happy enough.  Must be annoying at first just as it would be for us but if she walked her eye into a bench it doesn't sound like the eye was working before that (even if it was just the soft cone getting closer as she approached it should have alerted her to change course) and a rupture is not caused by infection so no amount of eye drops would have prevented it - you did your best, as the vet said.

[Kavik]

Not the best ending but plenty of one eyed dogs seem happy enough.  Must be annoying at first just as it would be for us but if she walked her eye into a bench it doesn't sound like the eye was working before that (even if it was just the soft cone getting closer as she approached it should have alerted her to change course) and a rupture is not caused by infection so no amount of eye drops would have prevented it - you did your best, as the vet said.

Thanks for the encouragement. I read that infections can degrade the cornea to the point of rupture, so in retrospect I somewhat blame myself for waiting too long to take her to her normal vet after the ER. It didn't look very bad at the ER, and even the ER vet seemed to think that the eyelid might heal a bit funny and nothing else. But, at this point, what's done is done, and she seems to be adjusting to it ok as you said. I just need to accept that accidents happen, and she made it through 80% of her life without incident. I'm sure it will look better once it has healed and fur has grown back in (since half of her face was shaved for surgery), but it just hurts every time I look at her since she looks so disfigured. She is a very pretty dog, so it's all the more shame.