Man’s best friend is down to us

The first time my dog attacked was an accident. I’d not long moved rurally when I discovered the stereotype of the country neighbour who doesn’t knock is a stereotype for a reason. My dog discovered it seconds before I did.

Said neighbour’s hand was still on the door handle when said dog’s teeth were in her arm. The resulting wound was deep enough for stitches, but rural types are sensible sorts, so I paid the doctor’s bill, and she always knocked thereafter.

The second time my dog attacked was also an accident, just one that had been waiting to happen.

Dog attacks play out with sickening regularity in New Zealand. In just the past few months we’ve read about people, pets and livestock being mauled by the animals, and, earlier this week a young boy was critically injured after he was attacked in Southland.

For a country of dog lovers – 34 per cent of households have one – you’d think we’d be a bit better at controlling our pets, but as dog numbers grow, so do the attacks.

My neighbour was one of almost 5000 people who received hospital treatment for dog bites between 2004 and 2014; a number that works out to about a person a day. Children under the age of 10 were the most common victims and most injuries happened in homes.

When I was growing up the usual parental response to a dog bite was demanding whether we’d done something to provoke it, which we invariably had. Later, my own son developed a habit of sticking his hands into kennels at dog trials and always received an appropriate lack of sympathy for the resulting nips.

Our only actual unprovoked bites came from a neighbour’s elderly jack russell, who’d stagger dementedly across the paddocks and into my house, where it would then attack me and the children. We used to keep a blanket by the door to throw over her before lugging her back over the paddocks like a snarling present in a Santa sack.

Dog attacks are almost always the fault of humans.

I’ve worked with the animals long enough to know it’s rare to find a biter who hasn’t either been allowed or conditioned to do it by people.

An attack might not always be the fault of the owner, but it’s hardly ever the fault of the dog.

While my own dog’s neighbour-biting was rightly excused because of the extenuating circumstances, I always knew she was an attack just waiting to happen. Loyally bombproof with her family, she was also nervous, ill-socialised and overprotective.

And although those behavioural traits were already well in place when I got her, I knew damn well she had them.

So, when a few months after the bite incident my bloodcovered pet pranced into the house all waggy-tailed, I knew instantly what she (we) had done. The results of a dog attack on a sheep are horrific, especially as the injuries rarely kill the animal immediately; in our case the suffering was even further prolonged by my panicked inability to get a gun.

Owning a dog is a privilege, not a right. The joy of sharing your life with a dog can’t be underestimated – that oftdescribed loyalty is unlikely to be found anywhere else – but with it comes a responsibility to them and everyone else they meet.

Socialise, train, and always, always, keep them contained. Make sure that loyalty to you isn’t misplaced.

Because dogs are both man’s best friend and a loaded weapon in the wrong hands – mine was. Is yours?