Child and Dog Safety

We spent a lot of this past weekend at my mother’s house. There are often two dogs at her house, so I got to thinking about dog safety.

Both these dogs are excellent with children. One dog is very old, pretty much blind and walks poorly. Despite that, he is as he has always been, an exceptionally mellow and sweet dog. The other is younger but not young, and generally the thing the kids watch out for the most with her is her tail. It’s one of those tails that sweeps things off low tables and gets in children’s faces. But the dog is a sweetheart.

But that doesn’t mean I trust her 100%. You can’t, no matter how wonderful the dog is. Kids are just too good at annoying dogs innocently. And a dog snapping at a child in play can lead to injury.

I’m lucky. We haven’t had any worrying incidents ever with any of the dogs we know. My kids are generally very gentle with animals, and the dogs we know are quite gentle. My kids have had more injuries from cat scratches than from interacting with dogs. Of course, even an angry cat isn’t likely to do more than scratch.

If you want to know more about child and dog safety, I do have more articles on child and dog safety here on this site from a wonderful contributor.

[tags]dog safety,children,kids,child,family[/tags]