Radio 2SM Breakfast Segment #24 with Kaye Browne

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