Ratties and the other terrier breeds were designed to go after rats and other vermin; Rotties and Dobes were designed for the two legged varieties. Slight difference in scale but both are fully capable of nailing you.
My grandkids all learned the same lesson -- don't poke the dog. BTW, dog also trained not to bite, so the sequence is funny: poke, poke, poke, warning, poke, growl, warning, poke, snap!lick! Dog's expression comes out as "Honestly, boss! I was licking and his/her fingers snagged on my teeth!" All the kids treat dogs with respect and know the warning signs for an unfriendly dog.
Ontario is making the big step and proposing what British Common Law has always said -- the owner of a dog is financially responsible for what the dog does, unless the victim of the dog attack is doing something he shouldn't like B&E or trespassing. That and bringing in a off-property-muzzle-law for the assault breeds.
The technique is taught as a self defense mechanism. An example of circumstances where military personnel might be without a weapon would be escape from a pow facility, or from a downed aircraft.
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-linux_lad To verify that this post isn't forged, click here:
It's all about buying time. I've never had to do it myself and I don't know anyone who has, but I saw a disturbing video produced by the Russian military successfully demonstrating the same technique with a large and aggressive dog. The idea is to trigger the dog's gag reflex, which will cause him to temporarily lose focus of his attack. If you have ever seen a dog try to dislodge something from his throat, you can probably form a good idea of the mechanics at work. To survive an attack from a dog trained to kill or injure people, you must disable the animal's ability to mount an attack, and to do that, you need time to smash a foot or dislocate one of his legs. If you try to kick the dog, you could lose your balance and fall, placing you at an even greater disadvantage. When I was a kid, I learned that most (pet) dogs would break off an attack if I threw a rock at them. Sometimes the act of bending over to pick up a rock was enough of a deterrent.
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-linux_lad To verify that this post isn't forged, click here:
Niles, my Great Dane, would be an outstanding deterrent. Unfortunately, he thinks running along side my bike is only slightly more stupid than riding it. Walks are great; running is for other dogs.
No need to pick up a foo foo dog. You can just kick him like he was on a tee. ;-)
I've _gently_ held big dogs mouths shut when playing or scolding but never on a dog intent on doing me harm. The only times I've been bitten were when I reached out to pet dogs who hadn't warned me or by accident when breaking up dog fights (I don't advise other people to do that.) None of these bites were serious. If you aren't gentle when you grab a dog by the snout you can hurt him so be careful if you want to practice on your dog.
My experience with playing with the big dogs in the tall grass leads me to believe that if you have one by the snout you can lift the front legs off the ground and then kick low or let go and kick high I freely admit I haven't tried it, but it sounds better to me than the Tues manouver.
All I know is you don't read about a lot of mauling by Golden Retrievers. You do about Pit Bulls, Rotts, and Shepard's. Operating on this simple principle and a the fact there are innumerable other breeds out there, I would never own one. And that same belief leads me to the belief that most (not all) people who do own them own them for the wrong reasons, they had other options and chose the dangerous one.
I have a Rotti x Pitbull. A nicer dog would be hard to find. It is protective of the house but lets kids grab her round the neck while she walks along with them dragging behind.
Mom and Dad inherited a Shepherd back when they were renovating a farmhouse. For some reason, they thought they needed a bigger house for five kids . . .
When the dog moved in, she IMMEDIATELY became "Mom's Dog."
There was one guy on the HVAC crew whom Mom didn't much like. Peabo wouldn't let him into the kitchen (the divide between the old house and the addition was there).
Wrong. For three or four different reasons. And I say that as a former newspaper reporter and editor for wire services and daily newspapers. Among the problems are misidentification of the dog's breed, lack of identification of the dog's breed (remember, in by far the largest percentage of fatal dog attacks the dog's breed is unknown), and the scare factor of the name 'pit bull'. Not to mention the relative unimportance to the media of getting the breed right.
Let me give you an example from another area that may help clarify how the process works. Three or four years ago a drunk in the upscale community of Scottsdale, AZ, was driving home after an evening's drinking when he hit and killed a boy of 10 or so. The drunk had the misfortune to be driving a Rolls Royce. As a result the story got at least ten times as much play as a typical drunken driving fatality of a child and every stinking one of those stories mentioned the guy had been driving a Rolls Royce.
Now as with most communities, the make of vehicle involved in a fatal accident almost never makes the news at all, unless police are trying to find the car. What made this car 'newsworthy' was the connotation of wealth, luxury and privilege carried by "Rolls Royce." Just as 'pit bull' in a news story about a dog mauling is more 'newsworthy' than, say, a golden retriever.
And let's not forget simple ignorance and prejudice on the part of the members of the media. Reporters and editors are usually pretty smart, but they are often shockingly misinformed.
--RC
If I weren't interested in gardening and Ireland, I'd automatically killfile any messages mentioning 'bush' or 'Kerry'
Who would have cared if it had been a white guy fighting the LAPD on tape rather than the (everyone remember the phrase?) "black motorist Rodney King?" It would have been just another drunk fleeing and eluding.
Ya gotta sell that soap, and folks won't read your paper or watch your broadcast unless you give 'em what they want.
I don't want to get into a discussion of the more subtle (I won't say 'finer') points of news coverage, but I will point out that the Rodney King story had two things going for it -- one of them legitimate IMHO and one of them illegitimate.
The legitimate point is that a lot of minorities in Los Angeles believed that the police tended to brutalize them as a method of keeping them in line. What happened to Rodney King played into that.
The bastard was that it was a very graphic piece of tape. As far as the news gerbils in television were concerned, that made it not only newsworthy but worth running and re-running and re-running. (That running it constantly might be inflammatory apparent occurred to those twits not at all.)
The hard fact is that there is a large measure of simple prejudice and not a little stereotyping that goes into deciding what it 'newsworthy.' Which is why a 'pit bull attack' is so much more likely to get big play than a dog bite.
--RC
If I weren't interested in gardening and Ireland, I'd automatically killfile any messages mentioning 'bush' or 'Kerry'
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