About ten or twelve years ago, I was out walking our little terrier on a Saturday afternoon and he was attacked by an ex-Police dog. Being quite a large area with lots of trees etc, I didn't see the owner and dogs in the distance otherwise would've went for a walk elsewhere. The bloke sometimes used to take this dog and a smaller, more docile one, into the field over the road and it was always clear it should've been on a lead and muzzled due to the wild nature of it. Luckily it seems as if this dog was trained to stun, rather than all-out kill, as he picked ours up, getting nearly all of his middle in his mouth and shaking him about for what felt like an eternity. I was only around 12 and had never been so terrified in my entire life. The owner just stood there and waited for his dog to return, had no intention of giving the thing a kick in the ribs. We got him to the vets and the vet told us straight that he couldn't guarantee he would survive, let alone pull through the operation and other treatments required for his internal injuries. Vet reckons the little fella managed to shift himself round slightly before the German Shepherd plunged his teeth in and shook him, as it was only his ribcage that stopped him suffering fatal damage. All the owner of the dog that attacked said after it had happened was "he's up, he looks fine, don't worry about him", only after my dad gave him some rather strong words and also threatened to involve the police did he offer to cover all vet costs and our expenses, as we had to take him through to the vets about 10 miles away.

Makes my blood boil reading about things like this happening, sorry for the loss OP and for what you and your family had to experience.

Ours is a daft as a brush but still barks and growls at any strange footsteps he hears walking up the stairs to the flat and to be honest, I wouldn't have it any other way. Once he's been introduced to the "stranger" he's fine. So after the new postie has had a fright, thinking that there's some deranged hound at the other side of the door, the next time he calls, the dog just sits there wagging his tail.

He's even better when we're on an all-night fishing trip. Someone once asked if I wasn't scared of leaving £2k worth of fishing rods & reels just outside the tent, so I suggested he tried to take them away while we were asleep. He didn't get within 20' of the tent before the dog was snarling & growling and even though he had seen the dog the previous day, he confessed that there was no way he'd have gone any further.

The fact that the dog bit your daughter as well as destroying your property (your dog). Surely the owners can be held accountable for the dog's action's? It may be worth asking other dog owners in the park whether they have ever had any run in's with this dog. Being able to provide evidence that this isn't an isolated incident must help your cause.

Thankfully in over 20 years of owning dogs I've had very few incidents of note. Owning quite large dogs myself, a German Wire Haired Pointer and Munsterlander, probably spares them from quite a lot. The odd scuffle, but nothing more.

I hope this incident doesn't put you or your daughter off owning a dog again. I can't begin to imagine how traumatizing this experience must have been for your daughter.

Making a civil claim against the owner of a dog is a near impossibility.

As far as I am aware you have to show the dog had 'propensity' to attack other animals or human beings. In the absence of witness statements to that effect, it is virtually impossible to do.

You may be able to claim from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority if a human has suffered injury.

Would have thought that has already been demonstrated beyond any doubt.

No, it's not.


No, but you do have to satisfy the requirements of section 2(2) of the Animals Act 1971, and they have been confusing and defeating judges and lawyers for decades now. Why the fookin thing has never been repealed and re-enacted in at least some Earth language does beat me. I'm probably the only person who understands it, and even then only for about half an hour at a time, and then its gone

I'm trying to help with a specific question in this specific case, not write a book on every possible aspect of the CIC scheme. If you want to go off-topic, if someone set an attack dog on me, intending that it attacked me, and whilst it didn't catch me, I suffered post traumatic stress, then technically I could claim, but that is because it would still have been a crime of violence.


Probably enough IF she could claim, but you only get to that once you qualify by having been the victim of violent crime.


But not that it was a crime of violence. As I said, it is not a question of a criminal act, but suffering a "crime of violence". So, if the dog had been deliberately set on the victim with the intent of causing her injury, yes, if not, no.