KC DOG BLOG

Tragic death of an infant near Jacksonville, FL

On Sunday night, a 3 or 4 day old toddler (reports are conflicting) was killed by the family pet. 

The new parents had just recently brought the child home, and apparently left the child alone in a room together with the family's pet 'pit bull' for "just a few seconds" and the dog bit the newborn and the child later died at the hospital.  The child has been identified as Justin Valentin.

This is obviously an awful tragedy for the family who went from having such joyous time in their lives turn into likely the most tragic.

Having a newborn brought into the family home is tough for a dog -- and takes a lot of diligence for the dog's owner to be sure to manage the newborn and the dog, understand the dog's behavior to avoid such tragedies. In fact, the fear over dog bites on children is a leading cause of dogs getting relinquished to shelters.

Most homes never have an incident like this -- and seldom are they so tragic to be fatal.  Since January 2008, there have been 11 fatalities involving newborn infants (less than 1 month old) in North America . While some will use this incident to try to create hysteria about the breed of dog involved, it should be pointed out that there were 7 different breeds of dogs involved in those 12 fatalities -- including a Jack Russell Terrier, a Labrador Retriever and a German Shepherd. In fact, Huskies have been responsible for 5 of those deaths.

Real progress can be made if, instead of looking at this as a breed-issue, we have an honest conversation with parents about dos and don'ts with a newborn infant and the family dog. If we can help people to understand dog body language, understand to never, even for a moment, leave their child alone with the family dog -- regardless of the breed of dog, and how to properly integrate the newborn into the family.

A couple of years ago I did an interview with Jennifer Shyrock of Dogs & Storks.  Jennifer founded Dogs & Storks -- which is a national dog training program designed for parents to teach them how to integrate their dog with children coming into the home. Programs like Dogs and Storks help educate dog owners/parents and focus on REAL solutions to helping prevent tragedies like this one and should be the first sources we go to for education about the causes of these tragedies (vs people with no canine experience who want to do nothing else except spread hysteria).

Speaking of the Dogs & Storks -- they have a great overview today of why dogs should not be left with infants even for just a moment in A Baby, A Dog and a "Moment".

This story has been picked up by well over 200 media outlets -- including national outlets like CNN and Fox News.

(While I was out) Dog bite-related fatality

This is an old story - -but wanted to get it recorded.  The story has had relatively little information regarding the attack -- however, in Etowah, TN, 85 year old Mattie Daugherty was fatally attacked by what has been called a 'pit bull'. The woman was outside with some family members when she went inside to check on the dog -- shortly after going inside, the family went back into the home to check on her and found that she had been fatally attacked by the dog.

There is no explanation of what may have caused the attack -- or what may have been going on that would have caused the victim to want to check on the dog (which may have given some insight into any agitation or something that would have sparked this).  There is little to no information at all on the incident, but at present, it certainly doesn't categorically fit with other fatal attacks.

I'll post more info here if any becomes available, but it seems unlikely.

The story was picked up in 22 different media outlets. My heart goes out to the family.

Updates: Two dog attack fatalities in one day in separate incidents

For as rare as dog bite fatalities are, this has been a particularly horrible week.

Today, two children were attacked and killed by dogs -- each in its own way completely preventable and each tragic.

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Update: The girl has been identified as Taylor Becker. The dog has been identified as a 5 year old, AKC registered Boxer. The girl apparently received help pretty quickly after the attack but due to the severity of the injuries died fairly quickly from blood loss.  The story has now been picked up by 79 news outlets.

In Iron Ridge, Wisconsin, a 4 year old girl was attacked and killed by a dog that is being described as a Boxer. The girl and her family went to visit some friends and the girl went outside into the yard unattended and up to the dog who was chained in the back yard. It is unclear if the girl and the dog were familiar with each other - but it is very clear that both the girl's parents, and the dog's owner were inside at the time of the attack and the girl and the dog were unsupervised together.

Authorities found the dog running free when they arrived, but authorities think the dog got free after the attack.

Neighbors have noted that they were fearful of the dog and that the dog had show signs of aggression before.

Many of the warning signs were there that could have prevented this attack -- a dog with a history of aggression, chained to a pole in the back yard and an unsupervised four year old girl left alone with that dog.

My heart goes out to the family.

This story has been picked up by 25 news outlets to this point -- and I'll update any new information that is released on the story.

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In the other attack,7 year old Jason Walker was attacked and killed early this morning by up to four free-roaming dogs. The dogs, currently being described as 3 'pit bulls' and a "mixed breed" were running at large in a rural area in central Illinois near the community of Varna. There is no leash law in the area. 

No one witnessed the attack, so it is unclear how many dogs, and which dogs participated in the attack. One of the dogs is reported to have been aggressive on previous occassions.

Dogs with a history of aggression, allowed to run as a pack at large with no supervision (legally) is a pretty bad recipe -- especially when children may be around.

The story has been picked up by 39 news sources at this time.

My heart also goes out to the Walker family as they deal with this tragedy.

It is my hope that through incidents like this people will learn the underlying causes of dog attacks. In each of these cases, the warning signs were there with previous signs of aggression. In one case, the dogs were still let to roam at-large as a pack, and in the other, the dog was left chained to a post and an unsupervised young girl was allowed to just walk up to the dog.

Both were incidents were preventable with owners taking the care to work with their dogs that have known aggression issues and with the owners properly containing their dogs.

Preventable Tragedy in Macon, GA

On Thursday afternoon, Macon, GA officials found 46 year old Tracey Brazzell Payne dead in the back yard of a home. Autopsy reports confirmed that the woman had been killed by a pack of dogs that were residing at the home. Initial reports are calling all of the dogs "pit bulls".

The night before, another man was bitten by the same pack of dogs.  The dogs apparently belonged to the previous resident of the home, but were left behind when the family moved two weeks ago. However, the man who was bitten didn't bother to report the incident to authorities and even though the dogs were abandoned, and left to fend for themselves, and had bitten someone, were left to remain in the home.

Neighbors have reported that several other people have been bitten by the dogs in the past couple of weeks while they have been on their own.

The attack occurred in the 31206 zip code of Macon -- in which 33% of the residents live below the poverty line -- more than 2 1/2 times the state average.  The zip code also includes 47% renters -- such a high percentage comes with its own set of problems.

Unfortunately, this area, which is obviously suffering from neglect and poverty led people to not call authorities about these dogs -- which were obviously abandoned to fend for themselves at this home.

The tragedy was very avoidable...and yet, tragically was not.

This story has been picked up by about a half dozen local media vehicles at this point.

Two year old San Diego boy kiled by dog

A two year old boy, Aaron Carlson, in San Diego was attacked and killed by a dog this week  in his home.

There aren't many details on the story.  The attacking dog is about 18 months old and is being called a German Shepherd mix, and has been owned by the family for about 6 months. The boy's mother was apparently asleep downstairs while the victim and his 3 siblings (aged 7, 5 and 3) were alone with the dog.  And the dog fatally attacked the boy.

The attack happened in Military housing in the Tierrasanta neighborhood. The boy's father is deployed.  This is the third similar attack on a military base in recent years.  Last year, the military missed the opportunity to educate their residents about proper supervision of dogs around children and instead blamed dog breeds -- banning 'pit bulls', Rottweilers and wolf hybrids from military bases.  When you focus on breed, and not on circumstances, people remain uneducated as to the cause of attacks and thus, how to prevent them.

The story has been picked up by 80 news outlets. 

My heart goes out to the family as they deal with this tragedy.

Video with images of the dog can be found here.

For the Pit Bulls talks about the difference in media coverage between this attack and a similar one that happened last week.

The media's race to be first

 Not long ago, when a breaking news story hit, there were deadlines. If a reporter got the story done by 5 pm it'd make the 6 pm news. If they got the story in by midnight, it might make the next day's paper. But there was a set cutoff time -- and the reporter had until that deadline to gather as much information as possible before the story was due.

There are no deadlines any more. With the development of the internet, there is no need for deadlines. Every minute is a deadline, because when breaking news hits, the information is now available almost instantly around the internet.

If a news source wants to lead on breaking news, every minute counts - -because being late will hurt the number of page views, and thus, the number of advertising dollars the media outlet gets.

And in the rush to be first, digging for truth and accuracy have taken a back seat.

The chart up above is the Google tracking chart of the number of media outlets that covered last week's story about the fatal dog attack in Memphis.

In the first hour of the 'news' being available, media outlets rushed to be first. The news of "pit bulls'  attack man" hit the media and spread quickly. Within an hour, 150 media outlets could lay claim to being on top of breaking news.

Then, in the next 5 days, the majority of the media outlets were no longer interested. Those next 5 days featured information about the events that led up to the attack.

- A dog owner who had an extensive criminal history

-  Dogs that had been loose and aggressive only two days earlier, but were left in the home

- Police hauling the dog's owner to jail, leaving the dogs behind to live in the home with no supervision

- A woman who let the dogs out - -even while knowing they were aggressive -- because a plummer needed to get into the apartment

-  Acknowledgment that police may or may not have ever called animal control about the dogs -- and even if they had, animal control is running 800 calls behind in their responses so may not have had time' to deal with the issue regardless.

Nope, once that information came out, there was little interest from most media outlets. They were too busy being "first" on something else -- likely with equally shoddy details.

This case in Memphis is far from isolated. The chart on the left is the media reporting of the fatal attack in Concord, CA.

Look familiar?

In the California case, the media equally reported only the initial "what" -- but few came back to hit on the "why's" that came out in the subsequent days.

We're all the victims in this -- because the majority of the media outlets hit a few glossy facts and moves on. We get little information that would be valuable in our quest to actually know the circumstances that led to the event.

Circumstances are important  -- in fact, they are the most important part of serious dog attacks. Unfortunately, in the race to be 'first', the media often just skips the time needed to get to the why. And as a society, we often become more ignorant as to why dogs bite, and why attacks occur.

This is why we should rely on experts (who understand canine behavior) and not just media reports and people who make irrational recommendations based on them when dealing with issues pertaining to dog bites and how to prevent them.

Because in their race to be first, the media often gets it wrong -- and often without complete information.

And if we want to get it right, we should focus on all of the information that is available -- not on knee jerk reactions based on initial media exploitation in attempts to gain eyeballs.

Meanwhile, for the media, take note. There seems to be a big place of differentiation for those who are more concerned about getting it right vs those who only seek to get there first. The internet has allowed everyone to get there 'first', but few appear to be willing to stick with it and get it right.

Updated: Tragedy in Concord, CA

Update 8/6 - Turns out the aggressive past of these dogs is becoming more clear. The dog apparently had shown aggression before to both the 4 year old son and the 2 year old victim. The dogs had also attacked and killed the family's Akita as well. Previous signs of aggression are a sure sign that you need to fix the problems with your dogs...because if you don't, the behaviors will escalate. Dogs don't just snap. Their behaviors build up over a period of time and recognizing and correcting these behaviors early is important.

Update: According to the owner, one of the dogs, named Kiwi, had shown prior instances of aggression, including attacking and killing the family's Chihuahua a year ago. "I never let Kiwi aroud my grandchildren because I didn't trust him," said Hayashi.

As Karen Delise of the National Canine Research Council says, a major act of aggression is never a dog's first sign of aggression, but usually its last.

Dog owners, if you have a dog that shows signs of aggression, PLEASE call a trainer and work with a professional on having the dog overcome its issues. There are numberous great trainers out there that can help with overcoming aggression issues -- you just have to be willing to work at it. And it's your responsibility as a dog owner to make it work.

Original Story:

Yesterday, a 2 year old child, Jacob Bisbee, was attacked and killed by three dogs at his family's home. The dogs, currently being called 'pit bulls', were in the garage of the home, when the 2 year old toddler opened the door to the garage and was attacked by the dogs.

There were a couple of adults in the home at the time, but it sounds as if they may have been in bed at the time of the attack. According to the child's step grandfather, it was not uncommon for the 2 year old to crawl into bed in the mornings with his grandmother to sleep some more. But around 8:45, Jacob's 4 year old brother came into the bedroom and hinted that something may have been wrong.

Tragically, there was.

The three dogs in the garage were all killed by animal control, as were two other dogs that were in the back yard at the time.

The step grandfather, Steven Hayashi, owned the dogs and has been arrested and is being held on the suspicion of felony child endangerment and possession of mischievous animals that result in death.

Young toddlers wandering away unattended continues to be a common theme among dog bite-related fatalities. Last year, of the 33 dog bite fatalities, 13 of them involved a toddler aged 1-5 that was attacked by a dog - in 9 of those cases, the child was left unsupervised with the dogs (there were 9 different breeds of dogs involved in these 13 attacks).

Young toddlers shouldn't be left with dogs (regardless of breed type) unsupervised - -and proper percautions should be taken to ensure that young children are not able to open doors and leave unattended. Work should also be done with the dogs to be sure they are well-socialized with children living in the home to help make sure something doesn't happen just in case something happens and they do end up alone together.  While fatal attacks like this are very rare given the population of 75 million dogs in this country it is still always smart to be cautious.

There has been very little other information provided about this story -- but it has been picked up by 260+ news sources already -- including multiple national media outlets including CNN.

My heart goes out to this family as they deal with this tragedy.

As always, I'll update this with any new news as it is released.

For More on this story, see:

Bad Rap: Concord Tragedy - The phones are ringing

Bad Rap: Media Has a Field Day

For the Pit Bulls - These were not pets - discussing the difference between companion dogs and resident dogs.

Updated: Arrest made in Memphis attack

Update:  23 year old Sherry Wooten has been arrested for her involvement in the attack. According to media reports, Wooten is dating Bernard Humphrey's brother -- and went to the apartment to let the dogs out of the bathroom because the landlord needed to fix a leak in the bathroom that was running into the apartment below. Wooten admitted to knowing the dogs were aggressive and involved in the Sunday incident, but still decided to let the dogs out to trun loose anyway. Wooten has been arrested and charged with negligent homicide. It's good to see the authorities holding people accountable for their actions -- although it is still unclear why the dogs were not confiscated after the Sunday incident. 

The original story:

Potential fatal dog attack, and why covering only part of the story is an injustice to everyone

Yesterday, news broke about a tragic incident in Memphis where a 71 year old man was attacked by two dogs. The man's daughter came to his aid and was also bitten and during the attack and the man, William Parker,  had cardiac arrest during the attack and later died at the hospital.

The Associated Press picked up the first story released after the attack -- which was picked up by nearly 200 media outlets across the country with the headline: "Tennessee Pit Bull Attacks Leave Elderly Man Dead."

 Of course, the story was far from complete -- and the headline not even completely accurate. It sure SOUNDS like the 'pit bulls' killed the man, but at the present time, there seems to be a lot of doubt as to the man's actual cause of death (which could have been from the heart attack he suffered).  All of the man's injuries appear to be on his lower legs. One news station even failed to mention the man going into cardiac arrest altogether.

Meanwhile, there is a lot more information to the story that sure paints a different story than 'pit bull' kills man.

Turns out, authorities knew in advance that the dogs were a problem -- and may, in fact, have made the problem worse.

On Sunday, police were called after the dogs attempted to attack a man. When the authorities came out, they arrested the owner of the dogs, Bernard Humphrey. The 31 year old Humphrey has quite a rap sheet -- with a criminal record that includes statutory rape, drug charges, weapons charges and vandalism.  Humphrey had recently moved to the property without notifying authorities -- which was a violation of his being on the sex offender registry.

Police arrested Humphrey - -and took him to jail. However, they left the dogs - -and it is unclear who, if anyone, was actually caring for the dogs (who, it is noted, were usually chained to a stair railing near Humphrey's apartment).

The attack took place in the 38103 zip code  in Memphis -- an area where 23.4% of the population lives below the poverty line (nearly double the national average) and 14% of the population lives below 50% of the poverty level.

Meanwhile, it would not be terribly surprising that Memphis' animal control would drop the ball when it comes to proper enforcement in the previous incident -- this is the same shelter than only a few months ago had several cases of horrific abuse in their animal shelter -- one of which led to a healthy dog being starved to death in just a short time in their shelter. Interestingly, just last week, YesBiscuit! noted that even though they had recently hired a new animal control director, the agency is still 800 calls behind in responding to calls.

So, what the vast majority of the media outlets didn't cover was an owner with a violent history -- who was hauled off to jail and no longer looking after the dogs. A neighborhood that is mired in poverty, and an animal control that is woefully behind in doing its basic job, and authorities that knew of a problem, and failed to do anything that would have prevented the attack -- or the reality that the man may well not have died from the actual dog attack at all.

When the media gets lazy, and only covers the story as a 'pit bull' attack, they do the world a disservice by not providing all of the causes that led up to the tragic incident.  When people see the entire picture, it really isn't a huge surprise something tragic happened - and it was highly preventable.  But ignoring causes only gets us further away from solving the actual problems.

My heart goes out to the Parker family -- who sounds like they deserved better than this.

Updated: Michigan boy found dead from apparent dog attack

Not a lot new, but the autopsy results did reveal that young Kyle did die from significant injuries sustained by dog bites.  The boy had multiple bite wounds on his head, neck, chest, arms and legs.

A lot of other questions remain of course, and I'll continue to update this as I get more info.

Meanwhile, I also want to note that after some conversations I've had over the past 24 hours with someone who has a lot more knowledge of Northern Breeds than I do, I'm going to say that this dog may well be some type of Husky mix. While here in the "south", we usually think of Husky type dogs looking like the ones we see in show rings, "husky' is often a very generic term for a specific type of working dog -- many of which do resemble this dog. So I'm going to leave this as being two mixed breed dogs until more information becomes available.

Original Text:

I've been holding off writing this because I'm waiting for more information to come out -- but I've gotten enough questions about it I want to at least get something out there based on at least what we think we know about the situation.

According to the reports, a 5 year old Lincoln Park, MI boy, Kyle Holland, was found dead in his home around 9:30 on Monday morning.

The boy's mother put the boy to bed around 10:30 on Sunday night. When she eventually went to go check on the boy 11 hours later, she found him dead.

Two dogs were in the house at the time of the attack -- one was a 90 lbs Wolf-Hybrid-type dog (the owner says it is a "Husky/German Shepherd mix" - but the pictures do look like the dog is a wolf-hybrid) and the other a smaller, 35 lbs "lab mix".

The dogs were owned by the mother's boyfriend -- who is being held by police for drug possession when police on the scene found drugs in the boyfriend's car. After obtaining a warrant to search the home, additional drugs were found.

Neighbors have reported that the dogs were a often a problem as they were often allowed to run loose and neighbors report "sneaking" food and water to the dogs so they would be able to eat or drink.

An autopsy was scheduled for yesterday -- but no new reports have come out since the original stories. I'll certainly update this if more information becomes available.

My heart goes out for the boy's mother and the rest of their family as they deal with this preventable tragedy.

Tragedy, speculation, the hysteria of the moment, and a ridiculous laws that don't solve problems

In Feburary, seven year old Anastasia Bingham was found dead in Terry, MS -- a victim of an apparent fatal dog attack.  At the time, the media reported that the young girl was killed by a 'pit bull' that animal control officers found roaming at large near the scene. It must be noted though, that authorities also stated that there were several other dogs roaming at large in the same area at the time - but at the time they believed the 'pit bull' was responsible.

After DNA tests were performed to see if the 'pit bull' was responsible for Anastasia's death, it was determined that the dog  was not dog that killed her. Authorities also dug up a second dog to see if it was the guilty part, but DNA tests there proved inconclusive.

So at this point, police have no idea what type of dog was involved in the attack, and only that the 'pit bull' that was was one of several at-large dogs near the scene was NOT involved.

As with many tragedies, county officials felt they had to "do something" and started discussing potential legislation (note, immediately following tragedies is never the best time to discuss legislation because the laws end up becoming more emotionally based than fact-based). After a few months of discussion, the county, just this week, passed a new law that singles out 'pit bulls' and wolf hybrids and their owners need to apply for a special permit within the county to own the dogs-- even though it doesn't appear as if either of these types of dogs was actually involved in the attack.

The end result is a law that would do nothing to have helped this young girl, even if it had been put  in place prior to her death...and the whole conversation about 'breeds' is a huge distraction from what appears to be the real issue - which is groups of dogs seeming to be allowed to roam freely at-large with no repurcussions.  However, the county allowed them to get sucked into the hysteria-of-the-moment (note that in initial stories right after the girl was found dead, the officer at the scene said he planned to push for a ban on 'pit bulls') and created a policy that wouldn't even scratch the surface of stopping the problem (and even if the dog involved was the 'pit bull'-type dog, it still wouldn't have been a viable solution).

We need to quit encouraging our cities to make knee-jerk reactions based on speculative evidence of which dog was involved, emotions and hysteria, and really pressure them to make sound decisions based on the advice of experts in their community and nationally.  Maybe then we can make a dent in minimizing attacks like this...but Hind's county's solution isn't a solution at all.