My dog bit my 7 year old sister

[mariewalter]

@fragment We have, it was really just the youngest that was still learning. Apparently (I asked my sister again when she woke up today) she had heard Luna growl at her to get away, and said it was her own fault for not moving away from her. I told her it wasn’t anyones fault, and that she should pay more attention to that kinda thing but that Luna didn’t mean to hurt her. Idk if her not meaning it is true or not, but I thought it would help her feel better in the moment. Thanks though

 

[sothern1]

@mariewalter

"... but immediately knew she did something wrong before my sister even realized what happened and the pain set in, backing away and whimpering. She was frazzled too later, acting very lovey to me and sad, not wanting to play at all and licking me a lot."

The dog doesn't "know she did something wrong". She is simply reacting to the behavior of the humans around her. All the fuss over your sister startled her and she retreated to you for comfort.

Anyway, this is a problem. Not a terrible unfixable problem, but it is something you are going to have to work with.

• Luna doesn't know bite inhibition. Dogs learn this from their mother between 8 and 12 weeks old. Since many puppies are sold at 8 weeks, they never get the training. A dog should know how to both play and warn using their mouth, but without applying any destructive pressure. Luna doesn't have that skill. The only way she knows how to use her mouth socially is to bite full force. That means a misunderstanding (like with your sister) can mean someone can be hurt.
• "Being territorial" with food or toys is another danger. If a dog will become aggressive when they have food or a toy, then you have to either monitor them when they have these things, or just not give them anything unsupervised. Even then, you still have a risk of something happening when you are not looking or before you recognize the warning signs.

None of these make Luna a bad dog - she doesn't want to hurt people. But her habits around biting and toys still make her dangerous.

 

[mariewalter]

@sothern1 Yes, the territorial-ness is what I have told my mother we need to find someone for, as previously we thought the bite inhibition training was working. Clearly not thought and we need to do more research and probably professional training for it now

 

[shotaro]

@mariewalter I think you’ve had plenty of legal advice about this so I won’t add to it.

However I would advise getting a dog trainer as soon as you can to deal with your dogs resource guarding. At nine months old it should be possible to rectify this issue with your pup before it gets to become a permanent fixture in her personality. It’s super important that you are able to remove things from your dogs mouth because a time may come when she has something that could potentially harm her.

As far as the child is concerned- kids should not get their face close to dogs faces. Often it is the case that by the time a dog has bitten a child the dog has tried to communicate multiple times that it is uncomfortable with how the child is behaving/encroaching on their personal space, but these signs have been consistently ignored and missed by the child and all the adults around. At this point I would discourage your sister from initiating any interaction with the dog and allow the dog to come to her. Absolutely no entering the dog’s space, especially when she’s eating or playing with a toy.

 

[mariewalter]

@shotaro Yeah I thought about this a lot, especially because of how my sister knows what to look for now head on, rather than us just telling her what she should do. A dog trainer is a good idea though, currently we only have one for normal training, but behavioral specific one is a good step now I think

 

[shotaro]

@mariewalter Yes a good dog trainer is a god send. I have two rescue dogs and I honestly don’t have a clue where I would be without a dog trainer for either of them. It’s taken me from a place where I had so many issues to deal with that I could tear my hair out, to a point where I have two well behaved and normal dogs. Your pup sounds like she just needs to learn not to be possessive over toys. It takes consistent work but with the right guidance, given her age, I’m sure it will be totally achievable.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@shotaro

kids should not get their face close to dogs faces.

This is true for adults, too, honestly (especially if you are not super familiar with the dog/don't have knowledge of dog body language). Unfortunately it seems to end badly for a lot of kids though.

 

[shotaro]

@imagebeastmarkbeast Yes I agree- adults too. The thing with kids especially is that they’re kind of loud, energetic and overwhelming to some dogs, and equally because of their age, tend to miss key signals that the dog isn’t comfortable with that level of close contact until they learn the hard way. Sadly this means that a lot of dogs have been put down simply because nobody stepped in and prevented this from happening. All of it is completely avoidable and it’s a big shame.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@shotaro We monitor our golden closely around kids even though she's always super gentle but it never fails to surprise me how many strangers will ask to pet her and then get down and put their face right in our dog's face. Which, she's not gonna bite anybody. She's one of those dogs who actually loves hugs (and if I kiss her and make an exaggerated kissy noise, she gets SO happy and excited, you just have to watch out or you'll get licked in return and I'm not a big fan of having my face licked, haha). But a lot of dogs don't and I have had so many people get down on the ground and kiss/hug/get their face right in her face. Her body language is super friendly but I don't really trust strangers to know that.

I also always think of that TV host who bent down and put her face right next to a dog's face on a TV show and had her face severely bitten. If you are not SUPER familiar with the dog, just don't put your face in its face (and especially not in a situation where the dog is nervous or tense, you know, like when there's a TV audience cheering and being loud).

But people really need to teach their kids not to get in a dog's face, esp when they have a bone or a toy or something. I know when I was a kid, my parents would always tell me to leave the dog alone if he had a toy or was eating. And they'd tell me that with dogs in general. We don't have kids but we always taught our nieces and nephews to be gentle and even though we trained our pup a lot to be OK with people touching her toys/food/etc we never let them do that. (Ex: with both our dogs, when they were puppies we would have them eat with our hand in the food dish and periodically drop treats in, so they would associate "human hand near my food" with "I'm about to get something extra good!"). The training worked awesome and we've never had a resource guarding issue but I still wouldn't let a kid get in her face while she had a bone or was eating. Just in case. Dogs are animals, after all. People (and especially kids and those who aren't experienced with dogs) need to treat them as such.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@mariewalter From my experience in Texas if the dog is owned by a member of the household, it’s up to date on vaccines, and there’s a reasonable explanation (which y’all have with the toy being involved) the Dr won’t report.

 

[p4m3l4]

@imagebeastmarkbeast It’s county dependent. They definitely always report in my county, but generally animal control will let you quarantine at home if it was a household member and didn’t happen when the dog was at large.

 

[mariewalter]

@imagebeastmarkbeast That seems to be the general consensus I think, but thank you for the extra confirmation with it, it’s much appreciated