I was surfing the interwebz and came across this post about a dog attack by an ex-police dog in training who was newly adopted by a police officer and left in the backyard with the officer's toddler in the backyard unsupervised.
I was reading the blogger's commentary regarding the attack and it wasn't until we read this paragraph that I realized how anal retentive we were:
"A new dog placed in a new environment with people he is unfamiliar with and left alone with a child. This has nothing to do with his 'rejected' status as a police dog and everything to do with responsible and safe care of a dog. When a small, physically sensitive, inquisitive toddler is around a brand-new dog, you have to go above and beyond 'safe' and into 'anal retentive'. A toddler is no match for a dog."
You can read the rest of the entry here: http://for-the-pits.blogspot.com/2010/06/strange-title-for-dog-attack-article.html
Before Ender or Barksdale, I would have completely been fine leaving a dog outside roaming free with children. I mean, why wouldn't it be okay, it happens all the time on television. Oh, wait, you mean television is sometimes misleading and I can't have that giant backyard where the toddlers and doggies are frolicking around outside while I sit inside and drink my iced tea?
But really, I hardly even leave Ender and Barksdale alone together, even if they are just hanging out in the living room and I'm using the computer in the bedroom. (Yes, granted I'm just looking out for my third baby - my 32 inch flat screen tv, you can never be too careful.) I think becoming a real dog owner means coming to terms with the fact that you can never be NOT paying attention. (In my opinion, this is the second crappiest part about being a dog owner, after all the pee and poo clean up.)
Not paying attention leads to complete and utter anarchy. Throw a few kids in the mix and the world might just implode.
Another thing I thought about when reading this article was how hard it must be to have a police dog seamlessly transition between being in a police setting versus a home setting. In a police setting, the intensity level is higher and the dog is on constant alert. Those two characteristics, if used to describe a normal dog, would mean that the dog is completely crazy.
However, the dog in that situation is provided a job and a handler, who is probably also on constant alert and giving constant direction. Those two things can create a highly effective working dog by directing the so-called craziness into something productive.
The issue is, when happens when a police dog comes into a home? I am willing to bet that the same kind of vigilance and alertness given to a police dog at work is not provided at home. And because of this, the control a handler has over the dog is probably less inside a home versus at work. In addition, the amount of exercise a police dog gets "on the job" probably is way more than they would get in a home. Those two things combined means that the "craziness" is uncurbed at home, leading to exponential crazy.
Would you leave your kid with exponential crazy?
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