Dogs Trust warn of risk 9/10 dog owners with children face

Stats have revealed 85% of parents leave their children unsupervised with dogs in their home, despite research showing the majority of bite injuries to children are caused by a dog known to the child.

The animal welfare charity Dogs Trust has told our Take The Lead investigation many incidents could be prevented with close supervision and, with children and dogs set to spend more time together over the summer holidays, they're offering guidance to parents and carers in a bid to reduce the number of dog bites.

Last year, around 8,000 people were admitted to hospital with a dog bite injury, while 91% of dog bites to children under 14 years are from dogs known to the children in the home

Children and dogs often left alone

Further research shows that dog bites in the home are often preceded by what can be seen as harmless interactions, such as children cuddling, hugging, brushing or kissing the dog.

The survey found:

• 85% of parents leave their children and dogs together unsupervised
• 55% said they did it fairly or very often
• 23% said they'd seen their dog act in a way around children that caused them concern
• 25% kept children and dogs apart in separate rooms.

The most popular method used by parents for keeping children safe around dogs is not to separate but simply to rely on basic obedience training.

Around one in three parents used a stairgate to separate dogs and children.

Advice to dog owners

The Dogs Trust has issued new guidance to try and help busy parents and carers heading into the holidays.

The “Three S’s” is designed to help them to take action to prevent dog bites from occurring, by supervising and intervening (if needed) when their children and dogs are interacting.

• Stay close - Watch, listen, and remain close during child-dog interactions
• Step in - Intervene when either the child or dog looks uncomfortable or acts in an unsafe way.
• Separate - Separate the child and dog if you are likely to be preoccupied or distracted, like using a physical barrier such as a baby gate. 

Maria Murray from Dog's Trust told us: "We take a stance that children and dogs should not be left alone, and there's no breed of dog or size of dog that's more likely to show aggression.

"A small dog can still inflict a nasty injury if put into a position where it does feel the need to become aggressive."

Maria warned that even showing affection to a dog can spark aggressive behaviour, a fact not helped by a growth in people posting "cute" videos of children cuddling up to dogs online: "Anyone who works in the training and behaviour field with dogs spends half their life in horror on social media when you see these 'cute' videos of babies and kids cuddling dogs (and comments like) 'Ah, this video is really cute!' when we can see that that dog is really uncomfortable.

"It's very common for children to put their arms around dogs' necks and hug them too tight.

"That's why we see a lot of injuries on children tend to be face bites and that's because of that hugging and kissing"

Dogs Trust say the new guidance is not only designed to prevent injury to children, it’s also there to protect dogs too as the outcome of bites sometimes results in punishment to the dog and otherwise preventable relinquishment and/or euthanasia of the dog.

More information, including a short video guide, can be found here

Hear the latest news on Downtown on FM, DAB, smart speaker or the Rayo app.