[gemy]

I do understand both sides. A couple of ideas if you have not thought of them yet.

Have you trained your children to be around dogs of any size? One good way to do this, is to volunteer at the shelter to walk the doggies, to visit etc.

This will also serve the function to provide a reference somewhat un-biased as how your kids are around dogs.

Is there a local breeder near to you, that you could visit, get to know, take your kids with you, as you visit the breeder? So the breeder could see how they inter-act with the dogs.