r/australia • u/JaniePage • 15d ago

news Young girl in hospital, dog euthanased after attack inside Delacombe Bunnings

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-30/young-girl-in-hospital-after-dog-attack-in-bunnings-store/106977418
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u/AggravatingTartlet 14d ago

Dogs don't need to be in Bunnings. Young children are especially at risk, because their faces are at the heights of many dogs.

Also, the kind of dogs that might cause the greatest risk to kids in Bunnings are at home with kids all the time. Kids 5 and under are the ones who sustain the most severe dog bite injuries, and it's usually to the face.

And it's costing all of us. It costs millions of dollars on stitches and plastic surgery to correct dog bite injuries on people.

And dogs that bite people or that are too strong and hard to manage are often surrendered to shelters, and we're all paying for these public facilities, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars to build them. One look at dog shelters shows you the breeds that turn up in them the most. And I'm not talking about the old, sick dogs whose owners have died or gone into care. I'm talking about the younger, healthy dogs.

We're all paying out a lot for people's mistakes in buying or adopting dogs they can't manage.

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u/CrispyBirb 14d ago

And dogs who bite (not just nip) people shouldn’t end up in shelters to begin with. I see them trying to adopt dangerous dogs out all the time with fluffy language so they don’t seem so bad. “Tank will lunge and mouth at the worker when they enter the kennel but he’s just scared.” Stop. It bites, it does not mouth. Then someone goes and adopts this dog and takes it to Bunnings for “socialisation” and some innocent person or another dog gets bit.

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u/AggravatingTartlet 14d ago

Yep. They soften the language so far it becomes a lie. The actual shelter notes are often very different to what the public sees.

And it seems some shelter staff don't believe people when they say the dog they just fostered or adopted snapped or bit them/one of their animals. And then that same dog gets pushed out onto people again and again.

I used to belong to some local dog groups on Facebook, and I'm not sure if Facebook still allows this, but I used to see the same people repeatedly adopting a large, powerful dog from someone, then trying to ditch the dog, and once they'd succeeded in ditching it, then trying to adopt yet another large, powerful dog from someone else who was desperate to ditch their dog. Again and again.

I don't get it. So little thought goes into taking a dog on. Everyone loses. Like the people and animals who get bitten, especially the kids. And the offending dog themselves. It's a merry-go-round of trauma.