Children at risk from chained dogs.

• Position: Your Life

Dogs chained to trees and fences often become neurotic, aggressive, and pathologically protective of the patch of dirt where they spend their lives. Frustrated and unsocialized, chained dogs pose a year-round danger to unsuspecting children who approach these animals. However, children especially are vulnerable in the springtime, according to Mothers Against Dog Chaining, an initiative of the nonprofit Dogs Deserve Better. The groups are dedicated to ending the suffering endured by chained canines and to educating the public about the dangers they pose to people.

Since 2003, when Mothers Against Dog Chaining began monitoring attacks nationwide that resulted in serious injury or death, there has been an increase when the warmer weather beckons more youngsters outside. This is a time when chained dogs can be overly frustrated after another lonely, agonizing winter. In 2007, 81 serious attacks on kids by chained dogs were logged. Thirty of these occurred in April and May alone. Of these 81 attacks, eight resulted in the death of a child.

"Our records include only those attacks serious enough to make the newspapers, and include only those we were able to locate," explains Tammy Grimes, founder of Mothers Against Dog Chaining and Dogs Deserve Better. "There are many mere attacks that go unmentioned and unreported--and, of course, numerous adults also are seriously injured and killed every year by chained dogs."

The fact pattern leading up to the death in July 2007 of Tiffany Pauley, a five-year-old Atlanta girl with Down Syndrome, is typical of...