All Hail the Insurance that Prevents a Bite.
My state is considering a “Dangerous Dog Law” that would require dog owners who have a dog over 40 pounds, to carry insurance with a $100,000 liability on the dog against a bite or attack.
Are they nuts!!! Let’s give the Insurance companies just one more way of making a fortune. But that is not the thing that really gets me going. The idea that ALL dogs over 40 pounds are dangerous is absolutely insane.
I have been attacked by more little dogs than big dogs.
But the truly scary thing is that we are not teaching our children how to be around dogs.
What if every person who currently owns a dog or wants to own a dog, subjects themselves and their dogs to a training class. This class would teach how to handle a dog, take it for a walk and how to provide for it so that the likelihood that it will bite are diminished.
And what if we included children, being children, in those training classes so that dogs that don’t live with children, know how to be around children and children learn how to be around dogs.
And what if we incorporated dog classes in our Elementary schools. Children would learn how to approach a strange dog. They would learn the danger signs of a dog that is about to attack and most of all what to do about it so that they don’t get hurt.
And then there are people. I know this won’t be popular but there are some people who should not own dogs.
Recently in our town a couple of dogs attacked and killed an infant. Tragic! But completely preventable. The dogs apparently belonged to the family of the infant. They were confined to a small yard most of the time and were known to be vicious. (Why they were vicious is anybodies guess but I bet it is in part because they were not exercised and were probably not fed properly and probably had limited contact with humans.) Anyways, the dogs were in the house on this day with the grandmother who was babysitting. The grandmother laid the baby down in his crib and left to fix a bottle. The dogs were in the room with the baby. It is anybodies guess as to why they attacked the baby, Grandma was injured as well, the dogs were killed by police.
It is cases like this that says there are people who have no business owning dogs.
If you aren’t going to teach your dog that people are to be respected, then your dog is going to be a danger to others.
If you aren’t going to exercise your dog, then he is going to be frustrated and unpredictable.
If you don’t feed your dog regularly, a diet that his system needs, that is a meat based diet, then he will be sick and unpredictable.
And finally you need to introduce your dog to other people and animals or otherwise he will think everything and everyone is a target. (Okay, I tried to introduce my dogs to my daughter’s kitties but the kitties would have no part of it and my dogs were just a bit too excited so kitties are still a problem, especially ones that look like my daughter’s. Squrrels are a problem too.)
So instead of more laws that don’t make sense, why don’t we use a bit of common sense and train our kids how to be around dogs and train our dogs how to be around people.
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