[QUOTE=TequilaMockingbird;8568799]
I was attacked by a neighbor’s German Shepherd completely unprovoked when I was 6 years old. I was jumping rope over 20 feet away in their front yard. The neighbor was there, with his two German Shepherds, in the same large front yard. His kid, who was a couple years younger than me and three or four other kids from the street were also there playing together.
Many times I’ve looked back at this incident and realized how lucky I am that this didn’t create a lifetime phobia of large dogs. I grew up with four Standard Poodles and was around other show dogs regularly. Had it not been for years of good memories with large dogs, that bite would have colored my view of dogs for the rest of my life.
The one saving grace for this child is that the OP has other dogs of the same breed. But every child is different. I think the worst case scenario for this dog is it getting loose one day.
I had a neighbor in the same time frame as the above story with a Chow Chow that got out constantly. I had no fear of strange dogs and would go up to them if they seemed friendly. That Chow Chow was the one dog I never attempted to approach even though I saw it all the time when I was by myself. It never acted outwardly aggressive (growling, barking etc) but something about it’s body posture and the way it would stare at me said “leave me alone.” But again, I had a lot of experience with dogs even at that young age. There are a lot of kids who would not have seen the warning signs and I doubt it would have ended well.[/QUOTE]
I was attacked and bitten somewhat seriously (broken skin, blood) by a friend’s cocker spaniel when I was a kid. The dog was known to bite and their solution was to keep it locked away when any guests were over. Well, life’s imperfect. I was out in the yard with my friend and grandmother didn’t see us out there and let the dog out. It came running up and bit me, no warning or effort to retreat. We didn’t make a big deal about it, but it could have been very very bad (luckily this was in the 80s and I was wearing an oversized sweatshirt covered with disco mirror things which ended up providing a decent shield between the teeth and my skin, but even so I ended up with a bleeding wound).
Things were less litigious back them. From then on I didn’t go to friend’s house, if we played together she came over to mine.
To this day I am very wary of cockers. I don’t like putting my hand near their faces. There is nothing in the world that would ever result in me letting one near my face no matter HOW well I knew the dog. And I love animals and generally like dogs. But I want NOTHING to do with cockers, I will always be leery of them.
