jourdain2 - //You obviously reinforced your daughter's irrational fear of dogs, tonyav (I mean by assuming that the dog's intent was evil and hoisting her up) I daresay she's now as frightened of them as you are. //
Point one, I am not remotely frightened of dogs, I have never said I am, because I am not in the slightest.
Point two, my daughter is now twenty-six and she absolutely adores dogs, and always has, from a child onwards.
//Yes, the owner should have had greater control, but a labrador is far, far more likely to want to play than anything else. The most that would have happened is that she would have accidentally been knocked over.//
If you imagine that I would wait while my daughter saw an animal bigger than she was with an open mouth and rows of teeth running towards her, and then let her figure out that the worst thing it was going to do was to knock her over, then you don't know much about my relationship with my children.
She was frightened and screaming, it was not a time to debate the finer points of dog / child interaction, or wait and see if the Labrador was indeed typical of its breed, or of it could just be the one that took a large chunk out of her, no doubt with attendant 'He's never done that before!' from the amazed owner.