I wonder about having pit bulls!!!

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

I'm with you on this one Shawnee. As a mother I couldn't imagine not hearing my child in pain.

They did hear the child in pain. They woke up, and the toes were gone.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

How do you know there weren't drugs or alcohol involved?

The article doesn't mention them. I'm assuming drugs and booze weren't present. If they were present, then my opinion of the parents changes.

I think social services should keep an eye on this family for a while. The parents screwed up and the baby got hurt as a result. What I'm saying is that they shouldn't be charged with a crime. It was an accident.

[Shawnee123]

I am the biggest animal lover on earth. I hate to think that this happened but the crux of the issue, to me, is the parents not hearing the child. Toe-chewing off would take some time:

Local veterinarian Dr. Valri Brown said if the puppy chewed off the infant's toes, it would not have happened quickly.

"It would have to be a period of time -- maybe at least an hour," she said.

This is where I get confused.

There is also some speculation that the resident ferret might have had a hand, er, uh...tooth in this:

Teresa Miller, who sold the puppy to the Hansches, was skeptical the dog did it.

"He didn't chew on anything while he was with me. Out of all of them (in the litter), he was the least chewy."

It is all still up for speculation, but I can't get over the fact that it took so long to realize their baby was being chewed on. I am jumping to a conclusion when I consider that they may have been sedated in some way. I am probably even stereotyping when I read of the couple asleep on a mattress in their living room with the baby sleeping in a car seat next to them...a 6-week old puppy (they didn't think the baby would take up enough of their time?) and a ferret who may or may not have been running around the place free.

It just adds up to skepticism on my part.

At any rate, I do hope the baby is OK; she is now listed in stable condition.

Above quotation source: KTBS News website

[chrisinhouston]

Here's a video link of the story
http://video.ap.org/v/en-ap/v.htm?g=...f=txhou&fg=rss

The puppy looks so scared, he's shaking!

[orthodoc]

I'm skeptical too. After all, this puppy gnawed off four toes.

That took time and commitment on the puppy's part. The baby had to have been screaming (wouldn't you? Babies feel pain too.). Four toes! That will leave this child permanently disabled with respect to her ability to walk and run. We need our toes for normal gait and balance, and if her big toe was among the four that are now missing, she'll never walk normally.

The fact that the parents failed to wake up with an infant having parts of her body literally eaten off her while sitting right beside them suggests that they may have been under the influence of something more than fatigue. But whatever their reason for not waking, the bottom line is that they are responsible for this injury. It's not an accident because their actions set up a situation in which injury could reasonably be anticipated. We hold drunk drivers legally responsible for the injuries they cause for the same reason.

[Undertoad]

I don't think this was a pit bull thing, I think this was a puppy thing, except that pit bulls do have massive jaws and jaw power.

Pearl was a huge chewer when she was a puppy, and she destroyed $200 eyeglasses, $100 headphones, pens... anything plastic or wooden. Dog trainers explain how to teach the dog to chew only on chew toys, and also how to prevent them chewing on you: you give a yipe sound and pull away even if it doesn't hurt.

Puppies will chew on each other all the time, as part of their play, and they signal each other if it hurts.

So, I vote for parental failure here.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Above quotation source: KTBS News website

Well, now that additional information is coming in from other sources, I'll change my tune. If the baby was screaming for an hour (not stated in original article) and the parents were arm's length away, they could have easily rolled over, opened their eyes and looked at the kid. If all that is true, then they should have seen a puppy gnawing on the foot for an hour. They are negligent, and deserve to be charged.

[Griff]

A disturbing thing I noticed on the pitbull front locally is that they are giving away pitbull pups at the humane society. There was even a photo of one in the paper labeled lab mix. No lab ever resembled the dangerous mutt in the paper. Unsuitable pets like pitbull and chow mixes should not be distributed to families with kids by local pseudo-authorities especially under the false pretense of taking in a nice kid friendly dog. Like RZ said, a pitbull can be a very good dog if well-bred and well-trained, unfortunately that is becoming a rare creature.

Charge the family with neglect and put down the dog. You don't want either of these in the gene pool.

[Elspode]

While I don't dispute that a badly raised pit bull can be lethal, I feel compelled to note that the ones I know are giant pussies, and think they are lap dogs. I have friends who have a pair, and while they bark ferociously at *any* person who comes in, they then attack immediately thereafter...with tongues, threatening to lick the flesh from your bones. There is also the danger of being knocked over when they come butting their heads into you for attention, or leap up to place their paws on your shoulders to lick your face...barking all the while. They are not well-trained, but they are also not dangerous.

[Shawnee123]

From the New Yorker:

Pit bulls, descendants of the bulldogs used in the nineteenth century for bull baiting and dogfighting, have been bred for “gameness,” and thus a lowered inhibition to aggression. Most dogs fight as a last resort, when staring and growling fail. A pit bull is willing to fight with little or no provocation. Pit bulls seem to have a high tolerance for pain, making it possible for them to fight to the point of exhaustion. Whereas guard dogs like German shepherds usually attempt to restrain those they perceive to be threats by biting and holding, pit bulls try to inflict the maximum amount of damage on an opponent. They bite, hold, shake, and tear. They don’t growl or assume an aggressive facial expression as warning. They just attack. “They are often insensitive to behaviors that usually stop aggression,” one scientific review of the breed states. “For example, dogs not bred for fighting usually display defeat in combat by rolling over and exposing a light underside. On several occasions, pit bulls have been reported to disembowel dogs offering this signal of submission.”

Of course, not all pit bulls are dangerous. Most don’t bite anyone. Meanwhile, Dobermans and Great Danes and German shepherds and Rottweilers are frequent biters as well, and the dog that recently mauled a Frenchwoman so badly that she was given the world’s first face transplant was, of all things, a Labrador retriever. When we say that pit bulls are dangerous, we are making a generalization

Pit-bull bans involve a category problem, too, because pit bulls, as it happens, aren’t a single breed. The name refers to dogs belonging to a number of related breeds, such as the American Staffordshire terrier, the Staffordshire bull terrier, and the American pit bull terrier—all of which share a square and muscular body, a short snout, and a sleek, short-haired coat.

The goal of pit-bull bans, obviously, isn’t to prohibit dogs that look like pit bulls. The pit-bull appearance is a proxy for the pit-bull temperament—for some trait that these dogs share. But “pit bullness” turns out to be elusive as well. The supposedly troublesome characteristics of the pit-bull type—its gameness, its determination, its insensitivity to pain—are chiefly directed toward other dogs. Pit bulls were not bred to fight humans.

Obviously, not all pits are the same, just as all humans aren't the same, etc. I wonder if, knowing what is known (that much is unknown about the breeding of any potentially dangerous dog) having that dog is a good idea if you have babies or young children. Or, at the very least, don't time a baby dog and a baby human within two weeks of each other.

I mean, how does that work? I want a pit bull and I will have NO OTHER dog...damn what people say, damn the history of the breed. Do you really want to put your baby's life on this bet? I wouldn't.
Believe me, I saw that puppy and I just want to hold it...it's so sad. But the couple had other choices. It's not like they had this dog for years and then they got pregnant...they got the pit 2 weeks before the baby was born.

Tragic, really, for dog and human.

The dog that bites more humans than any other is a cocker spaniel.

[Pangloss62]

Some good friends of mine, already with two dogs, once noticed that the "family" next door had the penchant for keeping their pit bull mix chained to a metal post on their front yard; to them (my friends) it seemed almost an aesthetic thing since the neighborhood was pretty nice and rental homes were going the way of the Dodo. There was no real security reason for having a pit bull hangin out on your front yard with a big heavy chain. Now, don't jump down my throat when I say this, but yes, this "family" in question was Black; Iwill state without any shame on my part that Blacks in Atlanta find pit bulls among their dogs of choice. The problem with this "family" is that they pretty much just kept that dog on that chain and collar and that was it. The dog just lived this life on a chain.

My friends were kinda concerned for the happiness of the dog, and actually confronted (in a nice way) the neighbors about whether they could take the dog for an actual walk and such. The neighbors were kinda "Whatever" and let them take the dog for a walk. My friends noticed that these people never let out the collar to compensate for the growth of the dog; it was choking to death. Over about a month my friends slowly "adopted" the dog through mere atttention to it. The "family" eventually left. The landlord of the furnished house came to my friends and asked if they had seen the "family." It turns out they took all the furniture and just took off to likely less greener pastures.

This dog, named Buddy, is by far the most friendly dog I have ever met. He is just filled with love and affection, despite his past. But when you play with him, if you do the roughhouse thing, he starts a' growlin and drooling and you can see he might have the potential to hurt you or someone else. But in my mind, it's only potential, and if you treat the dog right, you get nothing but love in return. He remains my favorite dog I've ever met.

[chrisinhouston]

Northwest Harris County horse may die after dog attack


By KEVIN MORAN
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

A veterinarian said a miniature horse attacked by at least one pit bull dog early today could die from multiple bites.

"They almost killed him," said Crosby veterinarian Dr. James Hofmann, told a Chronicle photographer after the owner of a dog that attacked the 30-inch-tall horse around 3 a.m. brought the horse to Hofmann's clinic.

Hofmann said the horse suffered severe leg wounds and bites to its snout, among other injuries. It was too early to tell whether the horse would survive, Hofmann said.

The man who brought the horse to Hofmann refused to identify himself in a telephone interview from the clinic.

But he maintained that only one of two dogs he owns attacked the horse, which was tied to a tree at a small trailer park near the business where the dogs are penned up in the daytime but free to roam the property as guard dogs at night.

The man maintained that dogs owned by other neighbors were loose in the night and joined in the attack on the horse.

It was unclear whether Harris County animal control officers had taken the man's two dogs, one a pit bull and the other a mastiff, into custody by early afternoon.

"I'm taking care of the horse," the dog owner said. "I brought it to the doctor. The owner of the horse didn't want to do anything."

The man said he did not know the name of the horse's owner.

In another incident, sheriff's department spokesman Lt. John Martin said deputies on Tuesday were called to the 17300 block of Bamwoodin North Harris County at 5:34 p.m. to investigate a pit bull attack on a girl who entered the fenced yard of the dog's owner.

The girl, who is eight or nine years old, was taken to an area hospital by ambulance for treatment, Martin said.

Colleen Hodges, spokeswoman for Harris County's Veterinary Public Health division, said the dog involved is in custody at the society's shelter. She said the owners were considering having the dog euthanized because of the attack. But, because the dog was properly secured and the girl entered the owners' yard before the attack, the owners could choose to take the dog home after a 10-day quarantine, Hodges said.

The identities of the girl and the pit bull's owners as well as the nature of the girl's injuries could not be released because of privacy laws, Hodges said.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There is a question in my mind about gnawing on the kid for an hour. I Think it's more likely the four toes went in one bite...quite easy for that, or any, dog, approaching from the side. An hour of gnawing would cause massive blood loss, and probably death.

The Pit Bull breeders know their market, and too many of them are striving to build a reputation for breeding the baddest, meanest, most vicious dogs on the planet, because the demand is there. The breeders striving to breed gentle dogs are behind the eight ball, because many of their potential customers are scared off by the headlines and animosity.

[Aliantha]

If you want to breed gentle dogs, why wouldn't you just breed a golden retriever...or even staffy's? They're nice dogs but they look kinda mean...in the dark.