If a dog bites your child in Texas, get medical care first, then confirm the dog’s rabies vaccination status and report the bite to animal control. Identify the owner and photograph the wounds as they heal. A child’s two-year deadline is generally tolled until age 20, and scarring is recoverable.
The first hour: medical care and the rabies question
Get your child seen by a medical provider. Because of their height, children are bitten on the face, head, and neck far more often than adults are, and a puncture wound that looks small can be deep and can carry infection. An emergency department or urgent care visit is also the medical record that everything else later rests on.
Then, ask about rabies. These are the questions that determine what happens next medically:
- Is the dog currently vaccinated and can the owner produce the certificate?
- Is the dog available for the observation period animal control requires or did it run off?
- Where on the body did the bite happen and was the dog provoked?
If the dog cannot be found
When a dog cannot be identified or its vaccination status cannot be confirmed, your child’s physician may recommend post-exposure treatment. That is a medical decision made by the treating doctor. It is not the dog owner’s call, and it is not an insurance adjuster’s call.
Tell the provider it was a dog bite and ask that the mechanism be written into the chart. A record that says only “laceration to left cheek” leaves a gap someone will point at months later.
Report the bite and identify the owner
Report it to animal control for the city where it happened, or to the county if it happened outside the city limits. This is not an act of aggression toward a neighbor. It is how the rabies observation and a vaccination check actually gets done, and it creates a dated record from a neutral source.
Before you leave the scene, if you are able, write down:
- The owner’s full name, address, and phone number
- The dog’s name, breed, approximate size, and where it is normally kept
- Whether the owner rents or owns, and the apartment complex or landlord’s name
- The name and number of every person who saw what happened
- The responding officer’s name and the case or report number
Photograph the injury, and keep photographing it
Take pictures the day it happens, before dressings or sutures are applied, if possible. Then, keep going: at the emergency visit, at each follow-up, at suture removal, and every few weeks after that for months or until the injury completely heals and the scar, if any, is permanent
Scarring changes over time, and on a child it is the part of the injury that lasts. One photo of a fresh wound describes a single day. A dated series showing how a scar matured describes the injury which a claim is actually evaluated on, and there is no way to recreate it later.
Practical habits that make the series usable: shoot from the same distance in similar lighting each time, include a ruler or a coin for scale, take one straight-on and one angled frame, and keep the original files with their time stamps intact rather than only the compressed copies which a messaging app produces.
Keep a short, written log, alongside the photos as well as records of interrupted sleep, refusing to go in the yard, fear of neighborhood dogs, changes at school. Parents consistently underestimate how much of this they will have forgotten a year from now.
What a child’s claim can recover
A child’s dog bite claim is not limited to the emergency room bill. The recoverable categories generally include:
- Medical care, including future care such as scar revision or reconstructive surgery which a physician says will be needed later
- Disfigurement and scarring, valued separately from pain
- Physical pain and mental anguish, past and future
- Psychological injury such as anxiety, nightmares, and lasting fear of dogs, when documented by a treating professional
- Physical impairment such as loss of function or sensation in a hand
Why the psychological side is not an afterthought
Texas places no cap on non-economic damages in ordinary negligence cases, and most of a child’s scarring and trauma claim falls into that category. Having a child evaluated by a counselor or child psychologist is worth doing for the child first; that it also documents the injury, is secondary.
Parents usually have a separate claim of their own for the medical expenses which they paid on the child’s behalf. Those are different dollars from the child’s claim, and they are normally resolved at the same time.
Your child’s deadline is longer than yours
Texas generally gives an injured person two years to file suit (CPRC §16.003). For a child, that clock is tolled during minority, generally until age 20 (CPRC §16.001). Your child does not lose the claim because the family was busy handling surgeries and school.
That is real protection and also a quiet trap. A parent’s own claim for medical expenses is not necessarily tolled the same way, and the evidence which a dog bite case depends on does not wait on things such as animal control files, the vaccination certificate, the neighbor who saw it, the broken fence that has since been repaired.
The sensible rule is to treat the tolling as peace of mind, not as a plan.
A minor’s settlement usually needs a judge’s approval
When a claim belonging to a child settles in Texas, a parent generally cannot simply sign and cash the check. Court approval is typically required. In practice that means a friendly suit, which is an agreed proceeding in which a judge reviews the settlement, confirms it is in the child’s best interest, and approves how the money will be handled.
The court often appoints a guardian ad litem, who is an independent attorney whose only role is to look out for the child, separately from the parents and from the lawyer handling the case.
The money is usually protected rather than handed over. It is commonly deposited into the court’s registry until the child turns 18 or used to buy a structured settlement that pays out in the future on a schedule. Approved medical bills, fees, and expenses are addressed in the same order.
This adds time to the process. It also protects your child and it is the reason a minor’s claim should never be conditionally settled casually over the phone with an adjuster. If a dog has bitten your child in Arlington or anywhere in the DFW area, Jim Ross Law Group offers a free consultation at 817-275-4100, and there is no fee unless we win.
Frequently Asked Questions
My child was bitten by a friend's dog. Do I really have to make a claim against them?
The claim is filed in the owner’s name, but a homeowner’s or renter’s liability policy is normally what responds and pays. That is the risk the policy exists to cover. Most families find the process far less personal than they feared, and medical bills for a child’s facial injury can run well past what a friend could pay personally.
The owner says the dog is vaccinated but won't show the paperwork. What now?
Report it to animal control and let them verify. Confirming rabies status is a core part of their process, and they can require the observation period. Do not accept a verbal assurance as the basis for skipping your child’s follow-up care. Ask your child’s doctor to decide treatment based on confirmed records, not on what the owner says.
The bite barely broke the skin. Is it still worth reporting?
Yes. Reporting is about rabies verification and creating a record, not about the size of the wound. Puncture wounds also carry an infection risk out of proportion to how they look, and infection is a common complication. A report costs you very little now and is impossible to create after the fact.
Will reporting the bite get the dog euthanized?
That is not the routine outcome of a single report. The usual first step is a rabies observation period, which in many cases happens at the owner’s own home. Declaring a dog dangerous is a separate legal process with notice and a hearing. If this is your concern, ask your local animal control to walk you through what its process actually involves.
How long should we wait to know how bad the scar will be?
That is a medical question for the treating physician or a plastic surgeon, and it is one of the main reasons a child’s claim should not be rushed. Scars mature over many months, and a scar’s final appearance drives both the value of the claim and whether scar revision surgery will be recommended. Keep the photo series going while you wait.
Can we settle now and reopen the claim later if the scar turns out badly?
No. A settlement release generally ends the claim permanently, including for consequences that show up afterward. That is exactly why settling a child’s injury before the scar has matured and before a physician has weighed in on future treatment is risky, and it is part of what a judge examines in the approval process.
My child was barely hurt physically but is now terrified of dogs. Does that count?
It can. Mental anguish and psychological injury are compensable in Texas when they are real and documented. Documentation is the operative word: a counselor’s or physician’s records, your own dated log of specific changes in sleep and behavior, and a school note carry weight that a general statement about the child being upset does not.
This page is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different and past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Jim Ross Law Group, P.C., 2201 E Lamar Blvd #110, Arlington, TX 76006.