Another death how many injury's?
Every dog has a Wolf in its ancestry we can not change that.
A police or fire engine gos past and that little fluffy hair dyed pink thing at your feet may howl.
I love dogs, but every one of them can turn on some one.
And great numbers, take on the personality traits of their carers.
Do we need to look at the man made changes in dogs?
We love them display them train them and they take on our feelings and often do things because of that is that always ok.

No, not every one will turn on anyone. I've had 10 dogs in my life. Only one of them, a kelpie that spent its first 12 months on a farm, being mistreated because it wasn't a "yard" dog, which was what it had been bought to do, was in any way genuinely aggressive. She had little sense of self-control and was a bit of an escape artist, but even she never attacked anyone and wouldn't even bark at anyone except when she was in her home yard.

The pit bulls are a stupidly dangerous breed that exist only because someone wanted a dog that would become insanely aggressive when in the presence of another animal. A friend of mine has one that is a very gentle animal, but he's very stupid and has little self-control. There's no way I'd trust him not to react to a child running away from him in fear by chasing it down.

At the risk of being accused of racism here, I do have to mention the fact that the victims were Sudanese. In my experience, dogs are much more aggressive with African people, even my dog Max who is normally extremely placid will get quite worked up at an African walking past the yard. I live in an area in which there are lots of African immigrants, both working close by and living here, so I've had lots of chances to observe this effect.I've also noted that many African people seem terrified of dogs. I would imagine that if you come from a country that has had a long-term war, the dog population would have become somewhat feral and feral dogs are very definitely "wolves" in all but name. Perhaps he smells their fear.

In short, don't blame "dogs", blame stupid owners, dumb breeders and poorly-educated people generally. As a child, while dog bites were relatively common compared to today, it was much less common for children to be killed by them. I grew up around unsupervised dogs and learnt to understand how to deal with them. Some didn't.

Dear Belly,

From the pitbulls we've seen walking with their
masters on a leash they appear to be non-threatening
despite their appearance. I believe that all animals
react to a sense of fear and if they are trained to
be aggressive they will attack.

My husband was walking home late at night and was
surrounded by an aggressive pack of dogs. For half
an hour my husband stood with his back against a fence talking
to the dogs in a soothing voice until one of the bigger
dogs turned on the others and chased them away and then
proceeded to follow my husband all the way home.

The next morning he found the dog asleep on the front porch.
We've never seen the dog since.

Dear Anti,

My dog smells people's political inclinations.
He attacks Liberal supporters.
And no - we didn't train him to do that he
just has a natural aversion of some kind.
Maybe its from some experience in a previous life.

I love dogs! have owned kelpies blues, red, black German Shepperd's and my Jessy the loverly Colly, the one in that NZ cartoon.
A dog can live on the front or back porch or be chained up up the back yard.
It too can like mine be in the house at our feet madly demanding we go for a walk.
Every dog, every single one who has been involved in serious injury's, never did it before, or would have been shot.
We train our dogs to Gard to search for drugs lost people, they lead our blind and comfort our hospitals for the infirm.
Pit bull? we know they first came about because of dog fighting in pits, so humans could watch in safety while only the dogs suffered.
We all us dog owners, have story's of our dogs trying to please us, learning what time we get home, the welpanned welcomes, I love dogs.
We too know some people use dogs as an extension of them and their ego, some truly forget, dogs are not live teddy bears.
My mate next door is a Bully hard as iron he bounds to my fence in welcome for his scratch and cuddle.
He treats every one that way a warm cuddly big marsh mellow, he took after his owners.
But, strange but true a car driven by unfriends of those owners drives past twice a day.
Big mash mellow turns into a hate machine, at the fence then and only then a different dog.
Do we need to know why some have dogs?
The next death will come too from a dog that no one thought would ever do that.

Typically dumb kneejerk reaction, Lexi. Still, I'll put it down to your having never known any African people and not having had much to do with dogs. No doubt you've read books about them.

Domestic dogs are usually easily controlled by people: they're bred froma long line of selection for that very characteristic. While working for Optus and Telstra I have walked into literally hundreds of backyards with dogs in them and I have never been bitten except on one occasion when I entered a friend's yard and his Jack Russells got one leg each. Only had one occasion where I felt in any genuine danger and backed out of the yard. I've had lots of owners tell me what a nasty piece of work their fido is though.

If the dog came into the house it was undoubtedly chasing the child, perhaps initially wanting to play or just out of its instinct to chase down prey and becoming overexcited with all the commotion going on. I would imagine the mother would have tried to shoo the dog away, as is only to be expected if you don't know dogs, and the rest is terrible tragic history.

The problem is still with the owner and the breeder of such aggressive breeds. They have no place in the suburbs simply because they are too dangerous around anything smaller than them. They may be perfectly fine most of the time but they're bred to fight, not to be pets.

Dear Antiseptic,

I'm going to take a quote from Pericles
when he once told Col Rouge, "I'm pleased
that you took me seriously. It would have
been a shame - if you'd have thought I was being
merely facetious."

BTW: I actually deal with many immigrants,
including ones from Africa on a daily basis.
A also run Storytime Sessions for their children.