On the dog’s side

The Waikato Times reports on a mother, Sam Stevens, who is angry a dog which bit her three year old son will not be put down. The son, Caine, was in hospital for three days.

Now normally I am 100% for putting down a dog that attacks a child. There are far too many mutilations and even deaths from vicious deaths. But in this case I think the authorities have it right:

Council spokeswoman Christine Watson said the biting incident had been voluntarily logged by the dog’s owner, who also offered the dog for destruction.

As part of the animal control investigation, two independent witnesses said they had seen the boy deliberately leave the house and harm the dog by squeezing its testicles.

Animal control staff believed the dog had acted in its own defence, and after assessing its behaviour and “completely clean record” they decided it did not need to be put down.

If you squeeze anyone’s testicles, the recipient is not going to react well – whether man or beast.

So maybe it is just a sad case of a kid not knowing what he was doing, but the story goes on:

The investigation also revealed the child had been involved in two previous incidents of alleged animal cruelty.

Maybe there has been a lesson learnt here, and possibly the mother should worry less about the dog, and more about teaching her kid not to abuse animals.