Seven Year Old attacked by Police K9 - Page 1

http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/07/7-year-old-florida-girl-mauled-by-neighbors-police-k9-as-she-played-outside/

The small Florida town of Wildwood just added their first K9 officer named Doki – Belgian Malinois – a year ago, to pursue the War on Drugs. The police K9 trainer is defending a dog he trained after it hopped a fence and mauled a Florida girl who’s only 7-year-old living next door. “When they are at home, they are typically more relaxed and aren’t as aggressive, but all it takes is a false move,” said K9 Trainer Bill Heiser to the Orlando Sentinel. “You have to remember that these dogs are tools used for policing, so it’s always best to be cautious.” Instead of taking responsibility for the poor training of a dog which cost Wildwood’s Police Department between $12,000 and $14,000 just one year ago, the trainer blames the victim- who happens to be a small child living in nearby Fruitland Park. I want to hear the excuse for a trained police dog attacking a 7 year old girl?? Looks like a case of the cops getting the dog they wanted instead of the dog they needed. 

Yikes. According to the IPO/K9 people here, a good police or IPO dog should be stable (or at least aloof) with children and people and turn a switch when they recognize a true threat or are ordered to be aggressive by handler. This seems like just a poorly tempered dog to me. And, just Awful for officer to not be more sympathetic to child and her family. He should have taken more precautions with his dog/fencing/supervision/education of neighbors/etc. Seriously. Just classless. But, for every crap story about a nervy police dog there are a handful of great working K9 stories out there of working dogs who are members of their communities and serve them with dignity, heart, courage, and professionalism. Very unfortunate incident. Glad the child was not injured fatally and hoping she can recover both physically and mentally.

Police officer should be fired and repremended severely. Having that dog is the same as a loaded gun. No consideration given to neighbours or comunty. Smiley iv said it before level balance dogs is what we need. But a lot of time we get week nerves hiden behind a tonne of drive. That's the dog that's been breed today the confidence is only their when they react first very few dog will waite to see the first action. A lack of nerve and bad handling a bad combination.

Yogi, you summed it up correctly.

"...working dogs who are members of their communities and serve them with dignity, heart, courage, and professionalism." Smiley, no dog, not even a drug detection or patrol dog, is a "member of its community" - and for sure the dog doesn´t "serve"...why do people always tend to glorify working dogs?

A dog is what it is =simply a dog = the result of nature and nurture. Maybe this dog is very good at its job, who knows.
Most of the police dogs I met were no social butterflies, doesn´t really matter while doing their job, but they need a responsible and knowledgable handler.

This nightmare must not happen. In case the story is correct, the officer handled this dog for one year. He should know the dog, he should have known that there is a child living next door, and he should have known how to secure his yard in case he wants his dog to run free.

It is totally the officers fault. Don t appear as though this officer gave anyconsideration for the training this dog underwent.
To me it seems not much difference as if he parked his police car, lights flashing,and unlocked at a playground, left a loaded gun on the seat and went to lunch

100% the officers fault. Reminds me of a guy that used to bring his dogs out to our club, who bragged about them being in training for police work, and how his male (a mal/dutchie) had just spent the week in "jail" (pound) because he had jumped the fence and bitten someone who was jogging past. That was the 3rd time he had done something like that, and this dude was bragging about how awesome his dog was because of it. Same dude lets his dog bite the sleeve and proceeds to swing him around into concrete walls and kick him in the balls while he hung from it. Dog was psycho. Owner was worse. And these are the people we let supposedly "train our police dogs".

*Thankfully* our local police dogs have a pretty good rep, recently there was pics going around of K9 Tye hanging out with a bunch of local kids that wanted to meet him, so the K9 Officer invited them and their family to tour the K9 training facilities. Which is neat.

My hometown recently got a new K9. This one is a Mal. The officer has said absolutely no, children cannot be around this dog because he's that dangerous.

I didn't take the trainer's comments as him blaming the victim--I got the impression he was pointing out the obvious, which is that these dogs most certainly shouldn't be hanging out in the handler's back yard without direct supervision, because they ARE trained to react to the actions of others, so even an innocent move by someone who's not the dog's handler can set off an aggressive response from the dog. The officer was absolutely an asshat for leaving the dog outside in the yard alone, and it's not the kid's fault, or the dog's fault, either--the kid was being a kid and wanted to pet the nice doggie, the dog was defending it's 'assigned territory' when the kid approached the boundary of that territory. Fortunately the kid's wounds were not life-threatening, which does tell us that the dog was NOT 'out of control', as there clearly was some level of bite inhibition--were there not, the kid would most likely not have survived the attack.

Chalk this up to another K9 handler who needs to be removed from serving in law enforcement, and charged with the appropriate violations for the situation.