A child getting bitten by your dog. It ranks high on the list of nightmares for any dog owner. But if you don’t have kids of your own, it’s hardly something you expect to happen in your living room while you’re taking a leisurely bath.
Yet that’s exactly what happened in Saint Paul, Minnesota, when this woman’s dachshund got hold of a toddler who’d wandered in from a house a block away. She’d hoped the matter would be resolved with an insurance claim and an apology. Instead, she had to turn to Reddit for legal advice on an escalating situation.
Read on to see how it all snowballed into a $5,000 demand, an arrest, and a for-sale sign.
A woman was in the bath when she heard barking and a child’s blood-curdling scream
Image credits: Ivan Garfias / Pexel
She found out where the child lived and carried her home to her mother
Image credits: Meruyert Gonullu / Pexel
The woman asked a few questions
Image credits: thugdachshund
The mom and 4-year-old came around to apologize for the incident, and the visit ended on friendly terms
Image credits: thugdachshund
About a week later, the mom sent OP a letter asking for $5K, stating it was a “fair amount” for what her child had suffered
Image credits: Arti Kh / Pexel
Image credits: thugdachshund
Things escalated after OP arrived home one day to find the kid’s father at her door
The police listened to OP’s story and then took the man away in cuffs
Image credits: thugdachshund
OP’s final update confirmed the family had moved out and no insurance claim was ever filed
Image credits: thugdachshund
Woman answered a few questions
The woman finally shared a photo of her dog
Image credits: imgur.com
Dog bites aren’t uncommon, and more than half of those bitten are children
Image credits: lazy_bear / Magnific
This particular situation is certainly unusual, but dog bites themselves are not. According to the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I), around 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year in the US. Fortunately, the injuries are rarely severe, but sadly, more than 50% of those bitten are children, most under the age of 10, with the highest rate among kids aged 5 to 9, according to the CDC.
This may be because young children aren’t yet able to read dog behavior, make sudden movements and high-pitched sounds, or—as in this case, where the child “just wanted someone to play with”—approach dogs on their own due to their innate curiosity.
Data collected by Triple-I and State Farm reveals that there has been a sharp rise in the financial side of dog bites: In 2024, insurers paid out around $1.57 billion in dog-related injury claims. This rose to roughly $1.86 billion in 2025. Rather than being attributed to more dogs biting, however, the findings suggest that this is driven mainly by medical costs and larger settlements.
Minnesota, where all this took place, ranked in the top 10 states with the highest number of dog bite cases in 2021, Milavetz Law explains. That year, State Farm received at least 108 dog bite claims in the state, which were resolved for $3.4 million.
So, who is liable when a dog bites someone?
Image credits: freepik / Magnific
Because laws vary by state, where this all happened is important to consider in relation to the OP’s first question for redditors: “Am I responsible for her injuries as she just wandered into my house?”
Milavetz Law explains that under Minnesota Statute 347.22, dog owners face strict liability for bites—there’s no “one free bite” pass like some states allow, so a dog’s clean record doesn’t protect its owner. Because it’s a strict liability rule, the injured party only needs to establish who owned the dog and that a duty of care existed. In other words, proving negligence isn’t required.
There’s a catch specific to this story, though: as Bennerotte and Associates, PA, points out, location matters—the injured party has to have been on the property lawfully, or the claim becomes far harder to win, “maybe impossible.”
Fortunately for the poster, she had renters insurance in any case, and there was footage that showed the child just walking into her house. And that’s what brings us to a part of this story that some commenters found equally, if not more, unsettling than the bites themselves.
Unlike in the majority of dog bite cases involving young children, where research has shown that the bites disproportionately affect the head and face, the child in this story was bitten around the ankles, leg and behind. While these, fortunately, weren’t too serious and didn’t require stitches, one can’t help but be alarmed and saddened by the thought of a 4-year-old wandering around a new neighborhood on her own in the first place.
Sure, Mom had her hands full with a new baby, a new home—and possibly, if OP’s neighbor is to be believed, mistreatment from her husband—but she also admitted to OP that the toddler had “done things like this before.” We’re not suggesting that blame fall on the mother for this—mom-shaming is icky—but one would like to think that both parents could have done better. Particularly the one with a warrant out for his arrest.
Because things could have been way worse.
While nobody likes the thought of a child being bitten, perhaps it’s in some small way fortunate that the story unfolded the way it did afterwards. The child was okay—she even asked to pet OP’s dog when she and her mother went over to apologize. The OP scored a discount from her insurance company for having a security camera and had the system upgraded by her landlord, and no claims were filed. The husband, we’re assuming, will rightfully face the law. And the mom and her two children, we can only hope, have moved away for a safe, fresh start.
(As for the dachshund, for those wondering, OP’s final update contained a photo of her taken on a camping trip the weekend prior, after she had rolled in dead skunk.)
What would you have done if a stranger demanded money for something that happened in your home? Let us know what you think about the sequence of events in the comments.
Commenters shared their thoughts on the whole situation. Some didn’t hold back when it came to calling out the dad
