It's me or the dog

i saw "its me or the dog" too, it was very sad, me and my husband had tears in our eyes! very sad, especially when he had to drive him to the vet to be put down. ... but if a dog bites your daughter once and you give it a second chance, then it bites your daughter again, it really is the best thing to be done. how could you trust that dog again? the daughter didn't have one bite either, she had several, on her arms, chest and legs.

I think if its true that they handed the dog over to a pound or rescue group then Victoria was right to make them get it back and pts. Its very very wrong I think to take what looks to be a very normal dog that shows no signs of problems and let someone rehome it. If they have never seen an attack they are not going to believe how serious it was. I don't believe in fostering serious problem dogs on to others. If the dog did indeed suffer rage then there was no hope for the dog, no training was going to fix it. I believe Victoria thought this was so, otherwise she wouldn't have been so firm about it and it made the family take responsiblity for what had happened as I believe they too are to blame. If the dog had attacked before and they had done nothing before then they should be the ones to do the hard dirty work rather than leave to those poor people who work in pounds and already have to put enough dogs down!!

This dog almost certainly had a temperament problem, not a behaviour problem. No amount of training is going to address that. Often such problems don't emerge until the dog reaches a certain adult age, either, so I cannot see that it was the owners' mishandling of this dog. For example, the second dog didn;t have these problems, it simply was a bossy and rude dog and probably bored. It clearly enjoyed training and quickly was learning to be polite.

Given the type of attack that dog did -- two bite attacks and one mauling on one small child, one mauling on the next oldest child -- she was right as far as I am concerned to try and get it from rescue for it to be pts, if it had been handed to a rescue. That is not a dog that should have gone to rescue unless rescue knew the FULL story behind those attacks, and it would be extremely irresponsible for any rescue to rehome such a dog except to a very experienced dog handler.

In addition, the story does not sound right. Rescue doesn't have to hand dogs back -- though the police could have arrived with an order for the dog to be pts on the grounds that already existed -- no warden would have rehomed such a dog, it would have been pts about two bites earlier. Also, not all rescues are alike. Some are little more than very inexperienced people who want to do something, but aren't equipped to handle difficult dogs, or even recognise them. And all rescues have diffeent standards. It's why I only work with a very small number of other rescues whose policies and people I know or who come recommended from other people I trust completely.

Not all dogs can integrate safely with people and finding someone who is experienced and responsible enough to manage such dogs is both risky and difficult to do in the first place. And right now there are hundreds of cockers of good tempermant sitting in rescues and shelters all over Britain, and no one will start a letter writing campaign on behalf of all of them, much less offer them a home.

There is so much work to be done in rescue and to me complaining about this programme would fall at the very bottom of the list. Maybe each person who is going to write would also go out tomorrow and home one dog from the pound themselves. That would be a lot more productive. Or maybe a letter to MPs regarding puppy farms in the UK, which could help many cockers in dire circumstances right now.

This is really an interesting topic, I'm learning a lot. I had never heard about the rage issue with Cockers, altho now that I recall a friend's Cocker, I can see that my friend's dog no doubt had some issues along those lines. He pretty much had to keep his dog away from all people at all times, it would just snap and try and bite. And if you stopped by to visit you had to be darn sure to never approach the dog and keep your hands away, if you didn't approach the dog, the dog was OK. I do give my friend credit for working with the dog tho, he and the dog got along great, and he was a responsible owner by keeping the dog away from people (he got this dog when the dog was already a mature dog). He is a single guy with no kids, and there were never any kids around the dog.

Sort of off track here but, a friend of mine takes her dog to the dog park pretty frequently, she has a very large dog, and she has had several run ins with aggressive dogs attacking her dog. She has had to take him to the vet once already to have a torn ear checked out. She had asked me at one time if I wanted to bring my 2 dogs with her to the dog park, and I told her absolutely no way. I know that most dog parks are fairly safe, but I have heard too many horror stories about the dog park here in our city. There are too many irresponsible dog owners in my area that like to own a pit bull-type dog for the wrong reasons (nothing wrong with the pit bull, it is some idiot people in my area). My 2 dogs are much too small and much too friendly for their own good to go to our dog park....it is a shame. In my area hunting dogs are popular, and a lot of the hunting dogs in my area, for some reason, are very hyper and some are very aggressive. So, no dog park for us!

My wired haired pointer had rage syndrome. She was a beautiful dog and I loved her to bits. She was great with the kids and was going really well in obedience, but then one day when she was about 2 yrs old she suddenly turned on one of my dogs and killed her. It broke my heart to find find my little girl dead and there was no mistaking who did it. Anyway, I kept my pointer away from my other females thinking it was a dominance problem. She continued to be her sweet self until one of my bitches got into her part of the garden. My husband picked the dog up to get her out of the way, went through the gate that seperated them and to his horror, the pointer flew over the gate and grabbed the dog out of his hands. He managed to fight her off and the little one was not badly hurt. So I spoke to several professionals about this and they all pretty much said the same thing. Just keep her away from the other dogs. Anyway the last straw was when she attacked in front of me. I was letting my old girl have a stretch around the garden when out of nowhere comes my pointer grabs her and starts shaking her. It was such a blind reaction. You could see that the dog only saw red and wasnt going to back down for anything. I managed to get her off and put away. But I started to really worry that she might do this and get one of my children. I had her assessed by a behavioural dog psychologist and she put it down to rage syndrome. I felt I had tried everything with her and nothing worked so I made the horribble decision to have her pts. That was 12 months ago now and my heart aches every day for that dog. I miss her very much, but for the safety of my family, animals and humans I know it was the right thing to do.