Nine year old South Carolina girl dead form dog attack

In a tragedy in South Carolina, nine year old Kristen Dutton was attacked and killed by a Japanense Akita that was owned by her grandfather.

The dog was recently purchased by the grandfather for his grandchildren and although they had only owned the dog for 3 weeks, it does appear as if it had spent a lot of time around the victim prior to the attack.  The girl had just walked the dog and was apparently out in the back yard playing with the dog when the grandfather went inside to fix dinner. When they called the girl 15 minutes later to come in for dinner she was found badly injured on the ground from a bite in the neck and died a short time later.  Reports indicate the dog was attached to a cable run at the time of the attack. There were no witnesses.

Although there are few details in the case, I think it was great that WJBF also tried to provide some education around dog attacks to help break down some of the fear mongering that could likely follow a story like this. While dog attacks like this are exceedingly rare, they can happen, and a better understanding of canine bahavior and supervision of children around dogs is essential to stopping the ones that do occur. 

To this point, 35 media outlets have picked up the story in South Carolina.  The attack happened in McCormick, SC, a small community of 1500 people, 27% of whom live below the poverty line (more than double the national average).

Comments

[YesBiscuit!]

A tethered, powerful dog and a kid - unsupervised. This requires the kid to be able to read the dog's body language and realize that "games" such as Chase Me! are inappropriate in this setting. I don't know of any kids qualified to be in that position. (IDK if this kid WAS playing Chase Me! - just saying an unsupervised kid COULD think that sort of thing was fun for the dog.)

[kmk]

Very unfortunate. I always tell my students that dogs don't even see children as "equals" in the pack. It's hard to guess what happened here.

You know, as a kid I don't ever recall even entertaining the notion that a dog might kill you.