Originally Posted by
mtb_addict
What about a girl entering the property to sell girl scout cookies and get mauled after ringing the door bell? Is that provoked or unprovoked?
Originally Posted by
TimothyH
I don't know.
My guess - and this is only a guess - is that the owner would be cited for not having a dog under control. In most counties around me a dog must be under control - fenced, leashed, invisible fence or certified as trained and actively under voice control of the owner. A dog simply on the owner's property isn't necessarily under control.
I'm not 100% sure though. That would be up to the animal control officer and perhaps a judge and jury.
These situations are so hard to call ... as a kid one of my friends his dad worked for massive corporate security company in the UK and they had one of their retired Black Lab / German Shepherd crosses as a pet, a few people had said the dog wan't to be trusted.
Me and my friend were playing in the garden one day, they had some scaffolding poles and were pretended we were jousting and "charged" towards each other screaming playfully as we a young kids were just playing a game.
The dog tore across the lawn at me thinking I was attacking the boy and thank the big man above the mother walked into the garden that second ... instantly realised what was happening and screamed it's name and as a highly trained guard dog it stopped literally inches away from me.
A few weeks later I went to knock on their door and as the mother opened it .... totally unprovoked the dog launched itself at my neck .... I stepped backwards and dropping off the step and it caught me between my lip and ear ... did it just remember me from the incident in the garden and at that time what it if the mother wasn't there ... a couple of kids playing and it could had killed me .. we were only about 12 the..
Our Labrador bless her soul, was the soppiest never hurt a person ever .... but the postman putting letters through the letter box in the door she saw as an intrusion and her noise was blood curdling ... open the door and she might lick the postman to death but she'd never hurt them ... we put an outside box on the wall to stop it happening and to stop the credit cards getting teeth marks through them.
She also loved her brother / sister in law .... often away with them for long weekends or them staying at ours after a BBQ and a few too many to drive home ..... My sister in law is a bit of an insomniac and I'm a lie in at the weekends guy ... but one morning she decided to do a surprise dawn raid as a laugh and to wind me up ...... the dog had a flap to access the garden whenever she wanted.
Sister / brother in law tried to covertly sneak through the side gate down the side of the house and was met by a pet that picked up on "the sneaky" approach ... sister in law backed out and came to the front door and said I've never seen Ellie like that but I wasn't going to try and go any further ... anybody who didn't know her and happened to see this would instantly back out of your property ... anybody that knew here would instantly know it was completely out of character.
I've had a similar encounter when I was a kid and frightened of dogs, going round to a friends mansion (should have married the daughter they were F... off rich but she made Fiona in Shrek look quite attractive on her bad days
) .. knew the dog for years but went to the servants entrance (which were always used as the main doors were too big to open) but nobody else was down that end of the house at that time and I was pinned against a wall by their retriever I'd known for years .. if at that stage IF I'd been more dog confident as I am now I would have taken control rather than showing the dog I was uneasy and I'm sure it would have panned out very differently but I pooped myself for 20 mins until they realised I was there.
Now having had dogs for years I'd walk in with a totally confident attitude and fussing over the dog in a positive way that I'm sure the whole scenario would be very different from the outset.
There is no perfect answer .. neither our dog nor the retriever that pinned me to the wall would ever have actually attacked anyone I don't believe unless they felt they were under serious threat ... but in both situations the intruders were giving off negative vibes which cyclists that aren't used to being around dogs could do to a degree.
If some people live "In The Country" and there's so little traffic around and they don't fence their dogs in .... wherever they're allowed to freely roam they'll consider their territory and anybody entering it is an intruder ... you now take someone who like me as a child was scared of dogs and sending off the wrong vibes and they're entering what the dog considers as their territory at speed and it's not a good combination ,,, it's a serious threat that's happening very fast.
We've also very recently had this in the UK where I guess someone's child had possibly gone away with a friend over the holiday period ... my 1st question is WTF is the dog owner doing leaving a child that's not a family member alone and unsupervised with a dog.
https://news.sky.com/story/woman-rel...-park-11693591
At the end of the day it's down to the owners and whilst we live in a totally unmade up single lane with only 4 houses after us, I'd NEVER let a dog roam outside of my fenced boundaries without my supervision.