So I usually post once every couple weeks and yet this is my third post this week! I'm apparently on a soapbox issue. Today, I received an email about this incident involving an injury to a maltese at a dog park. It's titled "DOG ATTACK RAISES CONCERNS" The only concern it raised for me is that pet professionals are not doing a very good job of teaching dog owners what is safe and what is not safe when they are socializing their dogs and frequenting dog parks.
Instead the article starts out with these sentences: "Shiloh, a 10-pound Pomeranian Maltese Shih Tzu mix, bears the scars of a wicked attack. Across his shaved back is a 4-inch gash sewn back together with stitches. A pair of tubes extends from both sides of the injured area to allow toxins to weep out. "He has puncture wounds that go through several layers of tissue," said Amie Seiberlich, who regularly takes Shiloh and her two other dogs to Lafayette's Great Bark Dog Park. On Sunday, she said, a greyhound turned mean at the park and nearly killed Shiloh. The little dog was spared more severe injury by a Good Samaritan who draped himself over the animal to protect it."
I feel badly for Shiloh and for his owners that had to go through this. Shiloh is very luck to be alive. If the greyhound had wanted to kill him, he could easily have done so. If the greyhound had shaken him rather than simply bitten down and punctured/torn tissue (ok, still not a good thing) he could have died of internal injuries.
The article discusses this whole incident as an entirely unpredictable, out of the blue situation resulting from a vicious animal that didn't have prior training. Park officials and others are going to put some signs up telling people not to bring vicious animals into the park and they are going to put together a task force on dog park safety.
A task force on dog park safety should start with the premise that large dogs and small dogs should be separated! It doesn't matter how well they might play with other dogs at home. Large dogs and small dogs in an off-leash pack of dogs is generally a bad idea. In this particular scenario, putting a greyhound off leash in an enclosure with any tiny dog is a recipe for disaster. Greyhounds are, after all, bred to chase small (around 10 pound) animals! If you asked me one of the most predictable scenarios for a dog attack in a dog park setting, I'd probably tell you it would be any sighthound (such as a Greyhound) and a tiny, fluffy dog.
We just need to teach owners that those things are predictable so incidents like this don't happen. Dog parks should have separate small and large dog play areas.
Ok, I'm off my soapbox for now.
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