Actions and Consequences - For People and Pets

If you look in the glass reflection, you can see this kid thumping her chest -- a provocation to the adult gorillas at this zoo.

What follows next is a full-on killer charge that was only (barely) stopped by shattered safety glass.

Things could have gone very bad here -- for both human and gorilla.

And yet the gorilla was simply "going gorilla," and the kid was just "monkeying around."

Now change the animal in question, and make the gorilla a wolf, or his near-cousin, a dog, and remove the glass.

See the point?  

Every day kids are seriously mauled by dogs.  "My kid was just playing," the parent explains, "and the bite was unprovoked."

Really?  You speak dog? You are bilingual in wolf?

Here's the thing:  any dog can bite and, under the right circumstances, almost all dogs will.

Children need to learn to respect dogs and other animals, especially ones they do not know well.

Respect is not fear; it is simply a recognition that when a gorilla charges, or a dog bites, they are not doing something unnatural.

A lot of life is a ZIP function -- "Zero" chance of it happening, but "Infinite Potential" harm if  it does. Teach kids to think through the consequences, especially the price to be paid by the animal if things "go bad."

This was from a Jack Russell terrier,