Dog bite injuries

[red_fox_writer]

Setting: medieval England (1193 to be precise

Comments

[ishara]

I've been present when a fairly big dog (a pit bull) mauled someone, so I can tell you that if the dogs teeth managed to get through the boot, there would be jaggedly ripped skin, lots of blood, gaping holes where the layers of flesh and sub-cutaneous fat would show though. There will also be considerable deep tissue bruising. It's pretty gory to be honest (don't click this link if you have a weak stomach).It looks horrible at the time, and afterwards there will be extensive scarring - back in medieval times they didn't have plastic surgeons, so it will likely be something that's going to leave a nasty scar for life

[areteus]

Yep, tetnaus is a big risk from dog bites if not rabies or something similar.

[areteus]

Would a trained guard dog actually be trying to kill? It actually takes a lot of effort to train a dog to kill a human, most of them instinctively prefer to grapple rather than bite to harm. If it has been trained to guard it is more likely to be trained to overwhelm and hold onto a limb with teeth. To make a dog vicious enough to kill you need to do a lot of abuse and negative training to do this and these techniques make them less biddable in general (not a good thing if you are depending on them for a job). Even wolves in the wild have to be fairly desperate before they will try to attack a human, especially an armed human (they aren't stupid, they know what bows are, they know what knives and swords are

[sollersuk]

Agreement re dog behaviour. Typical predator behaviour is to go for as quick and easy a kill as possible with the least possible risk to the predator.

[areteus]

Especially as dogs are not really predators in the truest sense of the word - not in the same way as the big cats. Most current wild species of dog are scavangers who attack prey if they have to but prefer to take the easy way if they can (which is my theory as to why domestication was so easy - those proto-dogs who were even lazier than the rest seeing the benefit in doing relatively easy tasks for food instead of needing to hunt for it).

[sollersuk]

You never saw one of my Jack Russells disappear down one forest path in pursuit of a rabbit, and reappear across the main path down another one in pursuit of a deer!

(But I really don't know what he thought he was going to do if he caught up)

On a more serious note, it's the hunting instincts that are used for British sheepdogs; they live in a state of permanent bafflement that not only are they, as junior pack members, not allowed to kill the sheep, the (human) pack leader doesn't kill them either. The sheep all know damn well the dogs would kill them if they were allowed to, which is why they move the way they do.