If it’s foreseeable, then it’s preventable; goes the saying in the industrial sector, where the creation of a ‘safety culture’ has become big business for big business.
Late last year I was invited along to a lovely meal and night out for the WA Work Safety Awards as part of my hubby’s work. Surprisingly, the topic of developing a ‘safety culture’ seemed to have much relevance to, and paralleled in many ways, the behavioural change we’re trying to achieve in the pet owning community.
For example, ‘safety’ was once something people assigned little importance to. Workplace safety was practically unheard of and someone pointing out dangers would have either been ignored, or worse, heckled for doing so. Stuff just happened. And people got hurt and others died.
Part of establishing mature, modern work practices began with the development of ‘police’ style safety programs; “you will have a safe work environment, or we (the government) will prosecute you”. But it was quickly realised if everyone resumed their old behaviours the minute the ‘policeman’ left the scene then these programs would only have limited effectiveness.
Safety professionals now acknowledge that the key to the success of any safety program is developing peoples’ willingness to change their behaviour. Whether actively or passively resisting your initiative, no change will take place without people being ‘on board’ with the new behaviour and then actually doing it. And that’s not achieved by building the fear that they’ll get in trouble if they don’t (policing), or pushing them to agree with your beliefs (evangelising), but by simply demonstrating that there is personal benefit in them doing things in the new ‘safe’ manner and then rewarding them when they do.
From author of ‘Safety Culture and Risk’, Â Professor Andrew Hopkins;
Unfortunately the people at the top tend to go around giving lectures and saying how important safety is, and how no accident is acceptable and we must all pull together here. Unfortunately no amount of pep talk is going to alter the way things are done. If you want to alter the way things are done, you have to go down to the grass roots level and find out how things are actually being done, and why they are being done, and why are these operators violating rules, as they often are. And there are always good reasons why they are violating rules. In this way you can find out what is needed to have them do the right thing. It’s about changing systems and changing procedures. It is not about getting people to believe that safety is important, which is, unfortunately, so often the message that is conveyed.
In short – just because we believe that there is a safer way to do things and we have a procedure for a safer way to do things, doesn’t mean anyone has to listen. Unless we stop trying to punish and lecture our way to compliance, and instead work to build a trusting relationship, find out why they do what they do, and show the benefits of a change of behaviour… we’re not going to influence, squat.
Which brings me to the recent tragedy of Ruby-Lea Bourke, 3, and her 16-month-old sister Lilly.
With this terrible attack comes the usual media beat up, calling for restrictions on so called ‘dangerous breeds’ (with a little help from ‘animal welfare advocate’, the RSPCA’s Hugh Wirth);
Bull mastiffs, like the dogs involved in the shocking mauling of two little sisters yesterday, are one of the most dangerous canine breeds.
RSPCA president Hugh Wirth said they were bred to bring down large animals such as wild boar.
“Feral pigs are one of the most aggressive and most lethal feral animals we’ve got in Australia, and they need an equally aggressive dog to handle them,” he said.
“A bull mastiff is a very big dog with plenty of weight, and is easily stirred into a rage. Once it is stirred up, the rest (of its hunting pack) are stirred up and they won’t stop the attack until the attack is over.”
Dr Wirth said yesterday’s tragedy in Whitton, 40km southeast of Griffith, could have been prevented.
“I blame the owner for the way in which those dogs were kept,” Dr Wirth said.
“Those animals should have been held in secure lock-ups.
“If those dogs were held as a pack of hunting dogs, one has to ask why the children were involved.”
While it is tempting to argue that the people involved allowed a bad situation to escalate, we can almost certainly assume that if the parents had suspected their children were in any sort of danger, they probably would have done things differently. The real problem here is a lack of knowledge about dog behaviour… especially when it comes to dogs and kids.
There is a hazard in this picture; can you spot it?
If you can’t foresee then you’ve no hope of preventing, so having the knowledge to identify the danger is crucial. While it’s a ‘bull mastiff’ today, it’ll be a ‘labrador’ tomorrow and a ‘great dane’ or ‘GSD’ or ‘pitbull’ the day after. It’s simply that when we keep dogs we take a risk and we can either minimise or maximise that risk depending on how much knowledge we have and whether our behaviour is conducive to us living with them safely.
In recent incidents, a nine-year-old girl was attacked by a large dog at Umina beach on November 10 last year. The dog bit her on the face, cutting part of her lip. The child had to undergo facial reconstruction.
In June two Staffordshire bull terriers mauled a year-old boy in Hobartville, near Richmond. The boy was taken to Westmead Children’s Hospital suffering head, chest and leg injuries. And in 2006, Tyra Kuehne, four, was killed in an attack by three cross-breed dogs at Warren in the state’s far west. ref
All dogs can do damage, but imparting knowledge about dog safety to the people who are most at risk will be a hell of a lot harder if we’ve just condemned their loved family pets to death for being of a certain breed. And they certainly won’t come looking to us for support and solutions if they think when they do, that their pet might be at risk. Like safety in a workplace, we must build an environment of trust which allows people to report problems without fear of reprisals, and demonstrate to them why safe behaviour is over overwhelming benefit, rather than just assigning blame to certain breeds of dog.
Communication is the key – not heavy handed, reactionary breed specific legislation. It’s identifying where the problems lay, and what can be done about them. In this case, the only way to have prevented this tradegy was to have reached out to an owner with several large breed dogs to ensure they were fully aware of how to manage kids and dog safely.
