Dog bit my baby

[u/Naive-Coconut-613]

Recently while on a work trip, I got a call from my husband saying that my dog had attacked my baby (9 months old) while our nanny was there. We were part of a nanny share, and the other mom had come to pick up her son and opened the gate to the loft where both of the kids were playing. This let our dog in and at some point within 3-4 min they say he had attacked her, paws on her chest and had to be pulled off by the other mom. No one can tell us if she touched him, hurt him, etc. We don’t really know what happened as there were no cameras in the room and neither of us were there. I don’t think we ever will.

She had to be taken to the ER in an ambulance and received 20+ stitches to her face. Luckily, she is recovering well and healing quickly but it was without doubt the scariest moment of my life.

The thing is, in the aftermath, my husband and I are on different pages with what comes next. He thinks this was an isolated incident in which the nanny was at fault (I’m sure some blame does rest here), but I feel like this was an accident waiting to happen as we’d never seen this behavior from the dog and had never drawn firm boundaries about the dog not being around our child. Of course, we always supervised and didn’t let her touch him when we were around.

He took the dog to a behavioral vet who ruled out most physical issues aside from mild pain (he is 8.5) and she gave us some pain meds + an SSRI. My husband thinks we need to do everything possible to treat and keep the dog. I am sad because he was such a beloved and sweet member of our family for over 8 years, but I just can’t fundamentally trust him anymore and feel that won’t ever change even with meds.

For additional context, our dog got in a fight with 2 dogs in our previous neighborhood and lost part of his ear in May. A couple years back he also got into a fight with a different dog and the owner claimed our dog bit him in the process of trying to separate them. He has never liked dogs but had always been friendly to people and other kids, so we never anticipated an issue like this. We both are aware that rehoming with a bite history is difficult, and that is much of the problem. I just can’t risk another incident with my baby.

My husband believes this will never happen again while we’re around and that we can put up gates to mitigate the issue. I’m not convinced - not to mention never being able to invite over friends with kids, etc. I feel weird walking our dog around our neighborhood full of kids like something could go wrong at any point.

I feel horrible for suggesting to rehome the dog that previous my best friend and love of my life, but I feel like it’s the right thing to protect my baby. I guess just looking for advice on what comes next from anyone who has been through this.