[dogscoff]

The parent should have been punished for negligence for sending the kid into an obviously hazardous situation.

That said, I think there is something very wrong with people who raise dogs to be so savage. What exactly is going on in their troUsers that they need a barely-controllable, snarling, slobbering child-mutilation-waiting-to-happen tied up in their back yard anyway? What's wrong with a nice, friendly, sociable dog?

There used to be a guy across the road with a really vicious alsatian. He deliberately raised it to be as violent and unstable as possible. One day when I was young I came across him and he had his dog on a lead. It snarled at me and I was afraid, and the guy saw this and advanced on me until I was pinned up against a fence with him holding the dog just a few inches away from me, and by now the damn thing was in a frenzy. He held me there for ages. He thought it was funny. He moved house shortly after, never saw him again. I hope the son of a ***** got his arms chewed off.

Another uninteresting anecdote:
Also I did various delivery type jobs as a kid (paper rounds etc) and I remember there were several houses that I was afraid to go anywhere near due to aggressive dogs. Luckily in my case they were always locked up or tied up, but I was always thinking what if it jumped the fence? What if it slipped its collar? What if they forgot to close the gate? What if it bites my hand as I poke the paper through their stupid spring-loaded letterbox? I suspect now that the owners got some kind of peverse ego-boost out of scaring the crud out of little kids. I should have left their damn newspapers in the hedge.

(NOTE- despite the above, I like dogs. I just hate people who own dogs for the wrong reasons.)

[ August 26, 2003, 10:07: Message edited by: dogscoff ]