None that I know of, kids are too expensive. (Ha-ha) I have known 2 MWDs that were sent along the perimter fence in the dark, after what turned out to be children, both dogs simply broke off of the send. They were both there when the handler got there, and both handlers were very tickled that the dog knew enough to not bite the child. Kids do the darndest things, like run along the inside of a perimter fence at night. Both kids were pretty lucky, had either one of those dogs been that insane Malanut the kid would have taken a real chewing.

Cynthia,
Actually, what the dog bite stats say is that children as a whole are bitten by a dog that is "known to them", which can also mean a neighborhood dog, not necessarily the family dog.
That has actually been discussed in depth in the past ( I'm chairman of an county Animal Control Board, and I'm pretty darn familiar with bite stats as a whole )

"after raising 6 kids I am NOT an amateur at parenting" - that statement put a smile on my face! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

As cute as the story about the MWD not engaging a child might sound, if said child had explosives strapped to them and were penetrating a perimeter to kill U.S. soldiers ( like just our opponents have done in the past ) the story wouldn't sound too good then, would it?
I rely on my canine to do a job. It's up to me as a handler to make sure he does that job - and the dog's job is not to discriminate between opponents, but to get the mission done. The time taken up by a dog that would supposedly go towards discriminating between opponents could well end up costing you or the canine it's life. Think what you want about what I'm saying, but it's a big bad world out there, and fantasy notions about what a dog can or can't do could well get you killed in the Real World.

Although I can't quote you directly, what other conclusion would one logically draw from the phrase "the dog shouldn't be kept"...you're gonna save it's life by dumping it over the fence of the nearest junkyard? No, you didn't sat that either, lol.

Point taken and accepted. Both were stateside, and both were over 6 years ago. What you said makes sense to me, my GSD would probably not do too good as a MWD, unless scaring folks can deter them. At 105 he can be pretty intimidating, but he is not a sport dog, or a K9. Also, he is still pretty young at 15 months old. I have had a few scares with him, like a larger kid screaming and waving a plastic sword at my 5 year old daughter on Halloween night. Luke came pretty much unglued over that, I had no idea that there were that many teeth in there, the kid almost peed himself while I got dragged across half the length of my front yard before I could utter the word "OUT".
But this was a LARGER kid, maybe 125lbs or so.
Luke did respond to the out, and downed & stayed, but he continued to growl, even after being told "ach" . This has been the only real "fright" that I have had with him. He is a good boy, and he has the patience of Job with my kids, no food aggression, and when he did bark at one of them over a rawhide bone, I took it away from him, downed him, and handed the bone to the child and then had the child give it back to him after looking at it for a minute. We went through this a few times, and he has gotten the point pretty good. I have tried to re-create any situation where I saw a bump in the road, and made sure that Luke accepts what I want from him in that particular situation. Is this the correct approach to it? He seems to have worked out ok doing it this way.

Cynthia, I think that there is a function for even the most aggressive dog. But being as I have children (lots of them) I would not keep a dog that has displayed a willingness to bite a child. Does this mean that I'm preaching to anyone? NO. Does it mean that I'm advocating breeding such a dog, once again, NO.
Such a dog has a use, but it is not in my home. The dog inside the privacy fence that bit the child was in a home, not a K9, and not a MWD or sport dog. This is "no" training, natural aggression from my understanding, to me that means "no other provacation than the child being where he wasn't supposed to be" . It is difficult to justify, and to try to justify it just doesn't serve anyone. It is things like this that cause your homeowner's insurance to go up when the insurance company asks what breed of dog you own. A privacy fence is not a kennel, life happens, kids go up a tree to get a kite or a ball that is stuck, the kid falls out of the tree onto your side of the fence, it is an innocent happening. If he breaks his arm you'll be lucky if you don't get sued, because people are halfwits w/ $ signs in thier heads. Now add Fido chomping a few hundred stitches into the kid, not only does your insurance go up, but so does everyone that has that same breed of dog. Council Bluffs just added a breed ban that was provoked by alot of drama over things exactly like this, now whether or not the ban is justified, it isn't, but still this is the world that we live in.

Kevin,
I'm going to respectfully disagree here - a person, even a child invading my fenced and posted property isn't an innocent occurrence. It's a crime. I wouldn't like being a victim, and I'm prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to prevent it from happening. And sorry, kids are arrested for B&E at age eight years old nowadays, nobody gets a free pass as "innocent" by a smart home owner.

I don't care how the kid got into my yard over my six foot fence with multiple keep out signs, he's now an intruder in my eyes, end of story. If I saw him in my backyard, and my dogs were up, I would call 911 and have the him sitting down on the ground with his hands in the air awaiting the police to arrive - and I would be armed ( I always am ) . That's my right as a home owner. If the parents don't like it, tough, *they* let the kid trespass onto my posted and fenced property. If their little trespassing brat is scared about about a large, angry armed man, oh well, he shouldn't have come into my yard without my express permission. That's what the signs and big fence are all about.
I'm sick of irresponsible idiots. I spend several thousand dollars on strong, high fences. If it was legal in my area, they'd be topped off with barbed wire ( no, I'm not kidding ) I do my part, why shouldn't I expect parents to do the same?

Kevin, you're looking at this from a parent's view. I'm looking at this from a property owner's view.

I think that small children are a real challenge for dogs. It's hard to go to the neighbors and borrow their toddler so you can try something with your dog. There is nobody my dog Krieger loves more than my 12 year old stepson. When he comes for the weekend my dog just about is thrilled. However when he sees kids that are under about 10 I wouldn't trust him at all. We took my niece and nephew camping this summer. At one point my nephew came running down the hill towards our campsite with an inner tube around his middle, yelling at the top of his lungs. That's a pretty strange sight for a dog who is with adults 95% of the time. That same weekend my 10 year old niece went from standing still to suddenly leaping in the air, flinging her hands above her head and yelling Tada! I think she was thinking of being a cheerleader :rolleyes: . Once again adults don't behave that way. Kids have high loud voices, they behave unpredictably and often give little thought to what their actions could provoke.

We were pretty strong with our neighbors as they would wander over to play around the pond as well. We put up the no trespassing signs and told them that they and the kids could not wander over. The dogs are kenneled (they would also wander over to visit older dog), but our biggest concern was that there were young children wandering over, with no adult supervision, to a large body of water and getting the dogs barking. And they would tell the other neighbors that it was OK to come on to our property at anytime and fish/go into the pond.

We put a screeching halt to that and needless to say, we do not talk to our next door neighbors anymore. No big loss.....

The funny thing is that if you are gone on vacation, the county sherrif will do a property watch. We let him know of the situation and the 1st time we were gone, he ended up kicking the next door neighbor off the property. They were steamed, but.... trespassing is trespassing....

You did want to provoke a discussion, so...

The fact that you think aggressive dogs have a function shouldn't be entered into this conversation. You were making a statement regarding your own pets.

You said you wouldn't keep a dog that displayed any aggressionm towards a child. When that dog is 7 years old and is in fact a pet, what are the options for it's future when it's rehomed? PTS, or what? Not many will want that dog. If you surrender it to a shelter, you have a moral obligation to be forthcoming with the dog's background regarding it's bite history.

To say that your dogs have shown great patience with your children and your neighbors' children because of "instinct", "cognitive thought" or "reasoning" is misleading. Your dogs were actually taught to accept them by the mere fact alone that they were raised with them. You being a responsible parent also had alot to do with it.
Monitoring the dogs' interaction with the neighbors kids also played a big part. If all dogs had this "instinct" in them genetically, then the environment in which they were raised wouldn't make a difference in their behavior towards children. Well, we all know that this statement is dead wrong, don't we?

To generalize further...if all family pets have this inherant instinct, then an attack towards a child by a "family pet" would rarely, if ever, occur. You're suggesting that a dog will not bite a child because it knows not to. Let the
statistics speak for themselves.Most wounds are inflicted to a small child by a dog which is known to that child. This implies to me that the bite is inflicted by a dog that is kept as a pet.
No, perhaps not their own personal pet, but most likely another family member's dog, or a friend's or neighbor's. Regardless...a pet dog. So where does your idea of the dog's capability to "reason" enter into the picture?

Before you post a reply, google 'dog bite statistics'. There's more than enough evidence.
Time to sharpen those blades, lol.

I see what you are saying, and I am probably downplaying the role that a ton of socialization has played in Luke, and attibuting it to genetics when in fact he does what he does because of what he has been taught. He is not crated, and literally does everything with us from going to kid's soccer games, to going fishing. Over time this means that he has seen almost everything. Alot of dogs are not this fortunate, so who am I to say how and what someone else's dog ought to be. Different situations, different conditions, end up with different endings. I have always been very fortunate with the dogs that I have had I think.