Dog bites - who's responsible for the vet bill?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to copypaste pp because they get it and a lot of y'all need to.

"There's always a warning. People just tend to either ignore it or misread it. In this instance, the person in question should definitely have had the dogs separated and should have paid more attention. People who foster dogs should probably be required to take a class, but typically they aren't and rescue groups are mostly volunteers so here we are."

People ought to have a certification tests and an actual license to own animals the same way you need a license to drive a car. All dogs can bite, and the person on-duty is responsible for the animal(s) in their care.

"There is no such thing as attacking without provocation/ out of the blue. Sounds like there are many people on here who do not understand dog behaviour and should not be owners if you believe stuff like this. Unless your dog is cujo, there are always signs. If you ignore them and an animal gets hurt, that’s your fault as the supervising human."

Seriously. If you don't understand dogs, you'll think it's "out of the blue" when, to a more experienced/intelligent owner/handler, there are all kinds of signs. Even Cujo had signs, and a dog like that is a known issue; they don't "just snap" the way some of your idiots would allege.

If you're not willing to learn how dogs work, at least enough to handle them safely, you shouldn't have or handle dogs.

Okay, so I was the babysitter in this case who was attacked by the family's dog. I was 17 years old when I was attacked. What warning signs and obligations did I, as the person in the house have and ability to correct the dog that bit me. For what it's worth I did prevent the young children in the house from being bitten, my putting myself physically between them.

So this whole "there are always signs". If your dog is dangerous enough that someone has to be a dog mind reader to be safe around your dog, you are a bad dog owner who handed someone a hand grenade.

It's on the owners.

Agree with this. You shouldn't need a PhD in dog body language analysis to be around a dog.

Our doodle is fantastic - the kids roughhouse with her, I've accidentally stepped on her tail, I can take literally anything from her mouth, there's zero aggression. Never even a growl. That should be the standard for dogs.

You can have all of that and more and that's great. It doesn't mean your dog will never have a negative interaction with another dog. Putting two strange dogs together in one home without proper introductions and vetting is newbie BS and asking for trouble. The sitter was delusional to think this was a good idea. Sure, it could be fine. But a dog could meet your described standard and still get into it with another dog even if they never would with a human.

100% the bolded. Keeping animals separate from one another initially and then eventually facilitating a slow, supervised introduction is one of the first things the shelter I volunteer at discusses with all fosters and adopters. The only way the rescue could be remotely on the hook for anything here is *maybe* if they failed to properly train their foster volunteers. And even that is minor compared to the responsibilities of the owner to train their dog (and warn people of possible reactive and/or biting behavior) and, mostly, the foster to properly handle multiple dogs in her home that don't know one another. This went off the rails the moment she agreed to watch the relative's dog while she had a foster when she had no plan in place to keep them away from one another.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi DCUM,
Question re financial responsibilities of the dog owners vs pet sitters
here is the deal - my friend fosters dogs regularly, and sometimes takes relative's dog in when they have to travel (free of charge). All was ok until it wasn't: relative's dog attacked foster dog out of the blue, foster had wounds were serious enough for emergency vet visit. Initially, the rescue covered all of the bills, but now is asking for reimbursement.
Who is responsible for that bill? Dog owner or pet sitter/dog foster?

I would say dog owner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m also a dog foster (haven’t done it in years though), but I’d never take a dog sitee when I had a foster. IMO it’s the humans fault. If I’m paying someone to sit my dog, I expect them to be safe. If I’m a rescue ams send a dog to a home to be taken care of, I expect that animal to be kept safe. The person should have been supervising, I highly doubt the dogs attacked “out of the blue”. She was careless and lazy at best not to keep them separated, negligent at worst.

Without details you can't say that pp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to copypaste pp because they get it and a lot of y'all need to.

"There's always a warning. People just tend to either ignore it or misread it. In this instance, the person in question should definitely have had the dogs separated and should have paid more attention. People who foster dogs should probably be required to take a class, but typically they aren't and rescue groups are mostly volunteers so here we are."

People ought to have a certification tests and an actual license to own animals the same way you need a license to drive a car. All dogs can bite, and the person on-duty is responsible for the animal(s) in their care.

"There is no such thing as attacking without provocation/ out of the blue. Sounds like there are many people on here who do not understand dog behaviour and should not be owners if you believe stuff like this. Unless your dog is cujo, there are always signs. If you ignore them and an animal gets hurt, that’s your fault as the supervising human."

Seriously. If you don't understand dogs, you'll think it's "out of the blue" when, to a more experienced/intelligent owner/handler, there are all kinds of signs. Even Cujo had signs, and a dog like that is a known issue; they don't "just snap" the way some of your idiots would allege.

If you're not willing to learn how dogs work, at least enough to handle them safely, you shouldn't have or handle dogs.

Okay, so I was the babysitter in this case who was attacked by the family's dog. I was 17 years old when I was attacked. What warning signs and obligations did I, as the person in the house have and ability to correct the dog that bit me. For what it's worth I did prevent the young children in the house from being bitten, my putting myself physically between them.

So this whole "there are always signs". If your dog is dangerous enough that someone has to be a dog mind reader to be safe around your dog, you are a bad dog owner who handed someone a hand grenade.

It's on the owners.

Agree with this. You shouldn't need a PhD in dog body language analysis to be around a dog.

Our doodle is fantastic - the kids roughhouse with her, I've accidentally stepped on her tail, I can take literally anything from her mouth, there's zero aggression. Never even a growl. That should be the standard for dogs.

That's about the training, not the breed or the individual dog. My pit bulls are the same, because they're also properly trained. I'm still not going to leave them with some noob "pet sitter" who doesn't understand basic body language. Nobody expects PhD level skill, but "don't put two strange dogs together" is basic dog handling 101. You don't need to be a mind reader to know that not every pairing will automatically get along. In fact, you'd have to be pretty stupid to not understand this, which is why the sitter in this scenario is liable.

You don't know that they put the dogs together on purpose. We haven't been given that detail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to copypaste pp because they get it and a lot of y'all need to.

"There's always a warning. People just tend to either ignore it or misread it. In this instance, the person in question should definitely have had the dogs separated and should have paid more attention. People who foster dogs should probably be required to take a class, but typically they aren't and rescue groups are mostly volunteers so here we are."

People ought to have a certification tests and an actual license to own animals the same way you need a license to drive a car. All dogs can bite, and the person on-duty is responsible for the animal(s) in their care.

"There is no such thing as attacking without provocation/ out of the blue. Sounds like there are many people on here who do not understand dog behaviour and should not be owners if you believe stuff like this. Unless your dog is cujo, there are always signs. If you ignore them and an animal gets hurt, that’s your fault as the supervising human."

Seriously. If you don't understand dogs, you'll think it's "out of the blue" when, to a more experienced/intelligent owner/handler, there are all kinds of signs. Even Cujo had signs, and a dog like that is a known issue; they don't "just snap" the way some of your idiots would allege.

If you're not willing to learn how dogs work, at least enough to handle them safely, you shouldn't have or handle dogs.

Okay, so I was the babysitter in this case who was attacked by the family's dog. I was 17 years old when I was attacked. What warning signs and obligations did I, as the person in the house have and ability to correct the dog that bit me. For what it's worth I did prevent the young children in the house from being bitten, my putting myself physically between them.

So this whole "there are always signs". If your dog is dangerous enough that someone has to be a dog mind reader to be safe around your dog, you are a bad dog owner who handed someone a hand grenade.

It's on the owners.

Agree with this. You shouldn't need a PhD in dog body language analysis to be around a dog.

Our doodle is fantastic - the kids roughhouse with her, I've accidentally stepped on her tail, I can take literally anything from her mouth, there's zero aggression. Never even a growl. That should be the standard for dogs.

That's about the training, not the breed or the individual dog. My pit bulls are the same, because they're also properly trained. I'm still not going to leave them with some noob "pet sitter" who doesn't understand basic body language. Nobody expects PhD level skill, but "don't put two strange dogs together" is basic dog handling 101. You don't need to be a mind reader to know that not every pairing will automatically get along. In fact, you'd have to be pretty stupid to not understand this, which is why the sitter in this scenario is liable.

You don't know that they put the dogs together on purpose. We haven't been given that detail.

From the OP: "relative's dog attacked foster dog out of the blue"

If you're not actively preventing the dogs from having contact, this can happen. Dogs weren't separated. They were in proximity to each other such that an attack could happen "out of the blue", which strongly suggests one or both dogs weren't properly supervised, let alone separated.

They didn't actively separate them on purpose. The quoted text doesn't happen when both dogs are properly separated and supervised.

Sitter's fault. Sitter's responsibility to fix.