Get your kid that dog they begged for all year? Think it’s time to unleash them both and let the fun begin? A child-safety expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham warns against it.

“Everyone thinks their dog is good and will never bite, but we can’t forget that all dogs are animals,” says David Schwebel, Ph.D. director of the UAB Youth Safety Lab. “If it’s provoked enough — and a child is much more likely to provoke it than an adult — even the best-behaved, best-trained dog can bite.”

Schwebel, associate dean for Research in the Sciences in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences, is the first author of a paper published in the most recent Journal of Pediatric Psychology that studied the effectiveness of software designed to teach children safety around dogs. They reported that the children did learn more about animal safety; however, they also demonstrated that the new knowledge did not translate to behavior.