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Havent read teh whole thing so apologies if there is something ive missed.
One: This was not 'unprovoked'... simply the provocation for the dog to first jump the fence and secondly to 'attack' and thirdly to bite, are just not things non dog owners would consider 'provocation'.
We dont know if the dog jumped the fence INTENDING to attack. He may have jumped the fence to join in the fun of the kids playing, or the noise of the kids playing may have been scary to him and he jumped over to ward off what he percieved was a threat.
So now we have a big dog in a garden full of children who are scared or at least wary of dogs. And they predictably whizz about screaming their little heads off, as children will.
THAT to pretty much ANY dog is provocation enough to run about barking or growling and if the dog is wary or scared of children or even if he is just boisterous and playful, to bite either in play or as defence. Taking my dogs as an example, one would run away from children screaming.
The other three would all hurtle about bouncing an dbarking and probably nipping at ankles and sleeves. None of them are inherently nasty or viciuos but in a situation liek that, it IS dangerous even though they are playing and intend no harm.
The dog at this stage may well still have been 'playing' but as the kids scream more and adults start screaming and hitting and kicking and throwing thigns etc etc, the dog will then get aggressive if he wasnt already so.
If this was my dog. Well it wouldnt be, because i wouldnt allow my dogs to be in a garden wtih fences they could jump unsupervised.
If it WAS my dog and i hadnt previously known that the dog could jump the fence, or that the dog would chase screaming children and nip or bite them, i would not put the dog down.
I would make sure the dog could never repeat the incident, and i would enrol in some training classes or get a behaviourist and work on the chasing and nipping behaviour, or the aggression if there were any.
IF i knew the dog had this tendancy anyway, and i knew he had jumped the fence purposefully to attack, i would put the dog down.
If i was the owner of these children, i would teach them proactively (by going and FINDING nice dogs( taht dogs are NOT all scary adn that if a dog runs at you, the safe thing to do (stand still and shuttup) to prevent any dog being wound up. Its fine saying and its true, that dogs should be kept safe and prevented from biting children, but thats no use when a dog is running at a child and the child antagonises it further by squealing and running around, blaming the dog or the dogs owner afterwards is not going to help.
I will say though, if this dog very much intended to kill or to seriously injure, it would have done so before adults could remove it, there wouldnt be minor injuries there would be huge great chunks of flesh missing and probably broken or crushed bones. Even not very big dogs are perfectly capable of crushing bone.
The OTHER thing to remember when working out how or what happened when a dog bites a child, is that dogs faces are around the same level as childrens faces, dog bites to kids faces happen more frequently because of teh simlar size NOT because dogs like to savage childrens faces. If you swap an adult for a child in all the horrific 'dog savages child' stories, youd have 'adult gets knees bitten' storeis instead.... knowing that takes some of the horror out of the incident and lets you look at it a little more objectively.
Em
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