Responses

  1. Good advice to remain calm and try to cut off the dogs air asap, but the sad reality is that most people, even big strong guys, won’t be able to do it if they haven’t the requisite training and experience. And if the dogs doesn’t have a collar, forget it. Someone’s gonna get bit. The dogs might get clubbed to death or shot. I’m out a lot with my dog and I always carry strong pepper spray as well as citronella spray. I’ve used the pepper spray once in about 10 years, and I’m glad I did. (After the owner could not recall her young, frisky pit bull running off leash in the woods. There would have been a serious fight, because my Malamute wouldn’t have taken kindly to being charged. The owner thanked me. I sprayed downward toward the ground in front of the dog. It was enough to stop him and defuse a potentially dangerous situation.) I used the citronella spray once, and probably didn’t need to. (I wasn’t experienced at the time.)

  2. Here’s a story [see link below] that’s closely related to the one in the video above. This happens so often, and its totally unnecessary. Having a dog is a big responsibility and too few people behave responsibly………………….
    The dog will be blamed and probably killed for a human-caused problem. No dog, especially a pit bull, especially a jumpy, excitable kind of pit bull, should be off leash and unattended, ever. I will never hesitate to do whatever’s necessary to keep an off leash dog a safe distance from me and my dog, up to and including pepper spray, a club, etc. Not my first choice, by a long shot, but if all else fails and the situation’s going south, which can happen in the flash of an eye. The better you are at reading a dog’s body language and using your own body language and voice to communicate w/the dog, the better. But that takes time and experience, and there’s no guarantee even an experienced person will get it right. In this case, what probably happened is that kids rapid, excited, jerky motions excited a dog with a strong propensity (and strong jaws) to latch onto the kids. The more they jerked around and yelled (perhaps initially to play w/the dog), the more excited the dog became.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-36330540
    There were about 30 kids in there and the dog just arrived from nowhere.
    “I got in and started lifting them up and out of the park. As I was doing it the dog leapt up and bit my son on the arm.”
    Stevie Brooke-Maddison was in the park when the dog arrived.
    The 12-year-old said: “At first we were laughing, because it was just jumping up and being silly.
    “And then one minute it just snapped and was being vicious and went for everyone.
    “I climbed up a climbing frame but it jumped up and latched onto my leg, I was kicking but it wouldn’t let go.
    “I was crying and screaming and everything.”
    A spokeswoman for Northumbria Police said officers remained in the area to reassure people.