Originally Posted by WarChild

I think it's important to understand that dogs operate under different drives. I hace included a brief description of some of them below.

Pack Drive - The social behavior displayed by dogs. When your dog brings you and presents you a toy, he is operating under pack drive. The need to please you.

Defensive Drive - The need to protect self, property and pack mates (Your family falls in this category as pack mate). A dog barking at strangers is demonstrating defensive drive.

Prey Drive - The desire to chase down what is observed as prey. This drive is a lot stronger in some breeds, like Rotteweilers for instance.

Children are _most_ often attacked by dogs in prey drive. The high pitched squealing, running and fast and jerky motions children often make is easily misunderstood by dogs. The body language children display is much different than adults and very confusing to dogs. A dog running up and down a fence (called fence running) barking at a group of children is most of not in defensive drive, rather, he is in prey drive.

My Male Rottweiler is about as friendly a dog as you can find. Loves everybody no questions asked he just wants to be your friend. That being said, it's completely my responsibility to make sure he never gets out to wander on his own. Children running by most probably get chased and cats or other small animals would be too much temptation for him to ignore. That's why I have a fenced yard, with locked gates. My dogs simply can't get out.