Dog owners cause upset

I took my two-year-old daughter and six-year-old son for a walk in the South Stoke woods on Sunday and out of the blue, a large dog (similar to a Staffordshire terrier, I believe) came bounding towards us.

It knocked my daughter over and almost down a large ditch, and my son was sent flying into the air, then flat onto his back. He was left with a large red mark on his forehead from the dog's paws and still has two large bruises on his bottom from the impact of hitting the ground.

The owners then appeared, with the man saying nothing to us and the woman uttering a half-hearted apology, without even stopping to check my children were ok (clearly they weren't as they were both crying).

I understand that dogs should have the freedom to run around in places like parks and woods, but what makes me furious is the way owners really don't care about any harm they cause.

I would have been mortified if we had a dog that knocked two small children over and terrified the life out of them, but obviously there is a new breed of "dangerous dog owners" on the loose, who really couldn't care less.

Name and address supplied

Littlehampton

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