Workshops give children lessons about dogs
Workshops teach children to identify aggressive dogs, what to do if attacked
As a teacher, Albert was clearly having trouble conveying the city ’s message about the dangers of dogs.
The nine-year-old Dutch sheepdog, with long black and white fur, was cuddling and licking his students Monday morning during a workshop about how to identify an aggressive dog and what to do in the event of an attack. When he wasn’t interacting with the children, he was dozing off, lying on the floor of the hot gymnasium of the Point-St-Charles recreation centre or licking his various body parts.
It was one of hundreds of such workshops being given to about 3,000 children at Montreal daycamps this summer, as part of a new awareness program.
“We brought Albert because he’s really good with kids,” said Régine Hétu, the clinical co-ordinator for Zoothérapie Québec, which provides the program called Fudge au camp. The group also has a program in schools called Fudge à l’école — Fudge being the name of the program’s first dog — and has been giving sensitization programs for more than 25 years.
“Sometimes, it’s because we have misunderstood the signals that the dog is giving,” Hétu said. “Often a dog will attack out of defence, thinking it is in danger, and there will usually be signs, so we want people to recognize the signs.”
Hétu said in about half the cases of children who are bitten, it is by a dog they know and often their family pet.
“It’s important to know we can’t just do anything we want with our own dogs,” she said.
The city is in the midst of changing its animal control bylaw, and the new approach will emphasize education and sensitization, said spokesperson Philippe Sabourin. The city has paid Zoothérapie Québec $8,000 to provide the workshops this summer that are open to any of the city’s daycamps that wish to have the session.
On Monday, the group of about 20 campers learned how to tell if a dog is aggressive, playful, or scared. Since Albert was only able to impersonate a happy and playful dog, educator Ann-Marie Villeneuve showed pictures of the other two moods. The aggressive dog will show its teeth and stare down its targets to intimate them, while the scared dog will have its tail between its legs and its ears pointing backwards.
“If a dog is scared, sometimes kids will think that he is sad so they want to go comfort him, but it’s not sad. It’s scared and, therefore, dangerous,” Villeneuve explained.
She said everyone should still be cautious even when approaching a dog that appears playful, and she recommended people approach from the front and offer the dog their hand to smell first.
If they encounter a dog that is off-leash and appears to charging and ready to attack, she recommended what she called the stone or tree positions — to curl up on the ground or stand still, avoid looking at the dog and protect the neck.
Villeneuve said she has been giving the sessions for several years already, and has had some interesting questions in that time.
“Rather often I will get a kid saying: what if you’re such a good tree that the dog pees on you? I tell them to just ignore it; they’re being such a good tree that they should keep on doing it until the dog leaves,” Villeneuve said.
Clara Gisèle Nadeau, 8, said she liked the workshop and especially liked giving Albert treats during the exercise.
“I learned that it’s important to protect yourself if there is an aggressive dog,” she said.