Ms Nanci Creedon:

I do not have such a country off the top of my head. I am pretty sure that they are doing it in Switzerland. The countries where they are doing these things already have very low rates of dog bites and significant behaviour issues. They are implementing mandatory training and so on for younger dogs. It is doable. There are models that we can look at and replicate.

The Senator said she had been bitten. There is a retired lieutenant from Jacksonville in America. He is a very interesting character, and very droll. He had a lot of dog bite cases when he was working. He would investigate and was the "dog guy" of all the lieutenants. Since then, he went on to get a masters degree in veterinary forensic investigation. It is something that we should be sending people to go on. I would put my hand up to do that course. When we have a fatality, the gardaí go in but they do not have a clue. I say that in the nicest way possible. They do not know how to assess what has gone on. The dog is taken away and the dog is put to sleep. We have no data from the dog.

The child will be treated and, medically, there are ways to assess the wounds. For example, in the case the dog walker who was killed as a result of a dog attack last week in the UK, eight dogs were involved, so it is not known for definite which dogs performed which bites. Jim Crosby could get a mould of the dog's teeth, however, look at the injuries and figure out which dog did what. There are many ways in which we could revolutionise how we look at dog bites, what happens after a dog bite and how we can minimise the risk of it happening again.

The Senator asked why Benji had bitten her. In the vast majority of dog bites that happen, it will be the first time the dog has bitten. Until that point, most owners will say their dog would never bite, and then the dog bites out of the blue. Dog body language is grossly misunderstood. There are many gestures dog will make to communicate their discomfort, to request space or to start to give warning signs suggesting they are not comfortable and then they may, eventually, go on to bite. If, say, a toddler is walking towards a dog, the dog may give avoidant signals such as a head turn or it might move into a corner, and nobody might spot that. Even though the dog and the child are being supervised, the parent might not have been educated in how to understand what he or she is supervising, so he or she will turn a blind eye. The child might then follow the dog into the corner and the dog might growl. When the dog growls, which is its way of communicating it is not comfortable and that it wants somebody to step in, the dog will get a slap, be told off or be kicked out to the back garden. The dog then learns that when the baby approaches it, the humans who are meant to take care of it do not take care of it. It knows that when the baby continues to approach and it defends itself, it will get into trouble. Accordingly, babies will upset the dog and it will not want to be around babies, and the next time the baby comes along, it will not growl, because that will result in it being punished, but the motivation is still there arising from the fear or discomfort around the child, so it might do an air snap, which will really get it into trouble. If the dog is not rehomed at that stage, the next time the baby approaches, it will feel uncomfortable and fear it will get into trouble, so it will want to get the baby away from it. As a dog, the way it defends itself is by biting, and then the dog will have bitten someone out of the blue.

With minimal education, however, of even a one-hour webinar, I can teach parents how to see if a bite is imminent and how to put measures in place, such as sticking up for the dog, taking it away, praising it and giving it a treat. If the parents know that the dog is not comfortable with being cornered around the baby, they will know it is their job to protect both the dog and the baby to ensure that will not happen. I am appearing before the committee as a dog behaviour expert but I am not here for the dogs. I am here for babies and for my own children. I am here to minimise the risk of dog bites to the little old lady down the road, and to do that we need to understand dogs, given we are not getting rid of them. They are not going to go away. If we wanted to prevent all fatalities and dog bites, we would need to get rid of all dogs and that is not going to happen, so instead we need to understand them. They live in our homes.