A five day old infant in Georgia was bitten by a family dog. The infant was in the baby's bassinet and the mother heard the baby crying. When she entered the room where the baby was, she found the family's dog on the bassinet -- the dog bit the young child -- who died later in the hospital.
The dog is being called a 'pit bull' type dog.
The article features some good information from Conyers K-9 Academy owner Danny Lowery:
“Any dog can be good with kids if you socialize it and train it the right way,” Lowery said. “He needs mental and physical stimulation every day, and you can’t set him aside when a baby comes or you’re going to have issues.
You got to work at it. You got to let the dog know he can’t develop jealousy issues over the baby,” Lowery said, explaining specific, necessary steps to go through in the training and acclimation process.
“Training is so important ... because the dog is going to be curious,” Lowery added. “It all goes back to socialization. You can do a lot even before the baby gets here.”
This was an entirely preventable, and tragic, incident. While these incidents are extremely rare (it happens only a handful of times each year) this incident, along with a simlar incident last week again shows the dramatic need for information that will help new parents integrate their newborn infant into their family when there is a dog present.
To that end, I plan to do a follow-up with Jennifer Shyrock at Dogs & Storks sometime in the next couple of weeks so I can provide more information on this. Owner education is too important not to spend time on this.
My heart goes out to the family after this tragedy.
I fear with several dog bite deaths occurring in such a short period of time, MSM may pick up on it and do their usual half-assed job. Remember the summer of the shark a few years back? Shark bites were actually DOWN that year but it became a story so...
Posted by: YesBiscuit | February 24, 2010 at 11:43 AM