blog.sparetomato.com

If you grew up in the 1980’s, you would probably remember the adverts for Stranger Danger. The media focus on child safety was extremely prevalent, yet with the recent focus on children going missing, there is a notable absence of warnings cautioning children, or heightening awareness of the dangers.

This became very apparent to me last night as I was walking my dog. On our walk, we encountered a dog who had escaped from it’s owner, a young girl who was running after it.

It was also apparent that this girl (who couldn’t have been more than 8 years old) was on her own walking the dog. Eventually we caught the dog, an hour after I joined in the chase, and three hours since the dog had broken away. Still this young girl was on her own.

She mentioned that her dad was looking for the dog in another area, so I offered my mobile for her to call him to come and find her. She didn’t know his number. I then suggested she called home to see if her mum knew her dad’s mobile number. Again, she didn’t know her home phone number.

By this time it was dark, so I suggested that she went home with the dog and hopefully contact her dad from there. It turned out that she was at least 2 miles from home, and the park was very dark, so I walked her back towards her house. Thankfully, once we arrived at the main road, her mother came by in the car and picked her up.

I made sure she got into her mother’s car OK, and her mother gave me a very dirty look. It bought into sharp focus how the situation looked. This girl had implicitly trusted me, she told me her name, her address, where her parents were… All the things I was told not to tell a stranger. To her mother, I was dangerous, because I was a stranger. I would probably feel the same. However, as a person, I was not prepared to let this young girl walk through a dark park on her own.

None of this was the girl’s fault. Firstly, the parents should not have let her walk the dog on her own, particularly as it was a strong dog (looked like a greyhound cross) and several times once we had leashed her up, she pulled the girl very hard, causing her to almost lose the dog again.

The dog could not be recalled. This is an important part of dog training, and while my dog isn’t perfect on his recalls; he loves to chase other dogs and cats – he will return, or submit if I catch up to him. This dog wouldn’t (although I imagine in this situation the dog was quite scared).

The father should not have split up from the girl, and while they would have taken longer to find the dog, at least she would have adult protection and company.

There is a strong focus on Internet stranger danger, and how it is very easy for someone to impersonate someone else particularly through chatrooms and social networking sites - but have we lost focus of the basics?

The 1980’s sereotype of the middle-aged man in a raincoat offering a bag of sweets out of a rolled-down car window may have been replaced by the sweaty, balding man sitting in front of a computer monitor, but the danger is still there.