THIS WEEK...
Recently a 5 year old child was bitten while she and her mum were visiting friends. The child’s ok but authorities are considering whether the dog should be put down? Should they?
Plus... Imagine being fined $100,000 because YOUR dog injured another - what happened?
Also this week...
Imagine taking your dog with you on an aeroplane... not in the cargo hold but NEXT to you!
CHAPTERS:
00'00" - Welcome Tim Webster and Kaye Browne
04'38" - Kids & Dog Bites - How Can We Keep Them Safe?
02'53" - Dog Owner Fined $100,000 for Injury To a ShiTzu
04'27" - Flying With Dogs – Fancy Sitting Next To A Rottie?
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
TIM: Time for one of our regular chats about our beloved friends, our pets, and here is of course Kaye Browne. Hi Kaye!
KAYE: Good morning Tim.
TIM: Look, I'm pleased you're bringing this up. We actually mentioned it on the air ourselves, the five-year-old child bitten while she and her mum were visiting friends. Now, child's okay, but then you say, authorities are considering whether the dog should be put down, and my point that I'm, always prone to make is, it's hardly ever the dog, it's usually the owner, but these situations are difficult.
KAYE: Every situation is difficult like this, and just to put it in perspective, for the last 25 years that I've been talking about dog bites, the number of bites hasn't decreased or increased, so it's still, around the same. Now, they brought in breed-specific legislation saying they will cut down dog bites, it hasn't, so what you're saying is absolutely true, that usually it is something to do with supervision.
Now, even the nicest dog can bite if their warning signs aren't picked up. A chihuahua can bite, unsupervised children. Now, I'm not saying this child was unsupervised, but they can accidentally hurt a dog. I've known of a dog that had a pencil poked in its ear and it turned around and went ouch, and kids act in a way that dogs find quite threatening. They're erratic, they have jerky movements, and they tend to squeal and run, and that activates the prey drive.
So, there's actually some door-cam vision of the aftermath of this bite, and you can actually see there's two dogs, and the second dog's also being held quite forcibly by an adult because it looked like it wanted to get in on the action. Now, that can happen because dogs, if they've also been, playing with each other and they normally do have a bit of a rough tumble, if one of them doesn't want to keep playing and tries to pull away, well, the other dog can sometimes have what's called a redirected aggression, and that could have happened in this case.
We don't know, but just very briefly, most of the hospitalizations are bites to kids under the age of five and the elderly. unfortunately, the kids, they put them in hospital just in case for a lot of the time, but elderly, it can be they're knocked over by dogs. So, I guess the key in this instance is to supervise, supervise, supervise, and if in doubt, move out of the way.
TIM: Exactly. Let's make the point again because we should make it often. All dogs, as you say, can and will bite if the situation occurs. They just will, you know.
KAYE: They will, but you'll be pleased to know that GSDs, German Shepherds.
TIM: Ahh yes. Little Ellie, yeah.
KAYE: Very rarely get shown in dog bite stats. Now, in the old movies, they used to be, an aggressive looking German Shepherd, but in fact, barely 4% of dog bites come from German Shepherds.
TIM: Well, when I look at that little dog of ours face, I mean, you wouldn't think she would. However, going to say it again, all dogs can and will bite. And listen, just supplementary to that, it's cost this dog owner a lot of money. They've been convicted and required to pay $100,000 to a Sydney Shih Tzu owner whose pet, god, lost a leg and only just survived after attacked by another dog off leash. Is that fair?
KAYE: Well, what do you think?
TIM: $100,000 is a lot.
KAYE: It's a lot of money, but we're not just talking payment for, vet bills and things like that. This went to the New South Wales District Court, which looked into the circumstances of this attack five years ago, and then at the effect that it's had on both the dog and the owner in resulting years. And in this case, the owner of the little Shih Tzu has suffered severe psychological trauma. She hasn't been able to work as much.
She doesn't like going out of the house because she's terrified that another large dog will come barreling up and knock her over and bite her like this other one did. So, the judge ruled that, this poor woman is undergoing continuing PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and well, the owner of the other dog didn't have it under control. And all dogs have to be under control, whether they're off leash or not, and have to pay.
TIM: Right. Well, there’s consequences. I mean, everyone should realise that, shouldn't they?
KAYE: They certainly should. And that's what I guess the councils have been trying to say, progressively the fines have been going up. And I’m hoping that we will eventually see a decrease as more and more people do the responsible thing and actually supervise their dogs.
TIM: All right. Now, this one's actually funny. If you want to have your dog or your pet sitting next to you, not down in, and I watch, I saw that Seinfeld episode. So I tend to watch that if I'm looking for something else, where Jerry meets that guy on the plane and he's drunk, and they get him to get Jerry to look after the dog called Farfel. And it's just one of the most hilarious episodes of all time. But the Italians might let you have your dog sitting up with you yeah?
KAYE: Yeah. Prego, prego. Mamma mia. This is a world first. Now, earlier this year, we heard that Virgin Airlines is considering allowing small dogs and cats under eight kilos to be allowed to come onto planes in soft-sided crates and travel under the seat in front. But the Italians have gone one step further and they're allowing dogs bigger than 18 kilos to actually go in a crate in the seat next door.
TIM: Unbelievable. Really?
KAYE: This is a wonderful thing, because sadly, over the years, I've had to report on dogs freezing in the cargo hold. Yeah. Or accidentally strangling themselves or, their water bowl got knocked over or they've been offloaded somewhere. So, there are a lot of people who would love to have their dog travel next to them.
TIM: I'm just wondering how I'd go with sitting in the aisle seat, sitting with a Rottie next to me.
KAYE: Jessie's dog!
TIM: Yeah Jessie's dog. Just a quick one, too. Don't want listeners to think we're ignoring pussycats. This is interesting. Pets' emotions. What happens when they lose a lifetime best friend and how we can help them cope with that? This is interesting.
KAYE: This is a very interesting one. And it's not the first time I've heard about this kind of thing. There was a little cat called Smokey, whose lifelong partner, Felix, passed away. And the owners noticed that Smokey wasn't really eating, moping about, looking really unhappy, looking at the door, constantly looking as though he wanted to dash outside to look for his friend because he was missing his dog.
After about a month of this, the mother was away on a work trip and when she got back, she walked inside and found that her husband had come up with a possible solution. She found a chap online who did cat portraits, not at the height you'd expect for humans, but at cat level. There were a whole lot of photos. There's a cat bed in the hallway, there's a beautiful fishbowl scene by his food dish, and there's even an amazing piece of a cat lounging on a vintage car.
TIM: (Laughing!!)
KAYE: And Smokey's been walking around his own personal art gallery.
TIM: Happy as Larry, or happy as Smokey.
KAYE: Yeah. Yeah. That is so cool. He started purring again.
TIM: That's so cool. I love it. I love it. All right. Now, if you would like Kaye to help solve your pet issue, very simple, send me an email if you like, Tim@2SM.com.au or simply 2SM.com.au. And where can the listeners find you, Kaye?
KAYE: They can find me at www.VETtalkOnLine.com.au
