Last weekend (sorry for my delay in getting this report up), 2 week old Brayden McCollen was killed by the family's dog. According to the news reports, there was an adult home at the time with 3 other children, and when they heard some loud noises in the other room came in to find the young child already severely injured (a separate report said the mother was watching the child from outside through a window when the injuries occurred).
Early media reports called the dog a 'pit bull' based on the initial animal control report -- but later, after more investigation, the breed type was changed to a "Lab mix" by the sheriff's department. Unfortunately, much of the breed reputation damage was done when the UPI picked up the story as a 'pit bull' and that story ran in 170+ news sources, but the corrected breed type was reported by only a handful of media sources.
Regardless of the type of dog involved, the incident goes on to further show why dogs and infants should not be left alone together -- and while dogs seldom bite/attack newborns, it is a risk that should be avoided.
This has been a very tragic couple of weeks and I've had a couple of people ask why I cover these types of tragic incidents. Dogs are great with people, and seldom attack, and with 70 million+ dogs in the United States it is amazingly rare that incidents like this occur (only about 30 times a year). The reason I cover this is to try to provide an accurate source of timely information on this topic. There seem to be a handful of sources out there that will try to use misleading accounts of these attacks to try to push for irresponsible legislation against certain types of dogs.
The reality is that incidents like this particular incident show a lot of things:
1) Visual breed identification is nearly impossible, and not reliable (and often changes).
2) The media seems all too willing to over-report incidents by particular types of dogs.
3) The real solution to ending dog bite incidents like this one are is to focus on the circumstances surrounding the incident -- in this particular case, it was leaving a newborn infant alone in a house with a dog.
If we focus on the circumstances, instead of solely on the type of dog involved, we will have much better laws, and much more educated people -- which will help prevent good dogs from being needlessly killed. All of these are good things.
You expressed my concern using somewhat different words, Brent, but what's tragic about stories such as this one is the media treats the breed of dog as the focal point of these stories, rather than the fact that an infant/toddler/child died because its parents or "human caregiver" weren't paying attention.
I've been to many meetings with city/county/state public servants where I've nearly had a good-old fashioned hissy fit about this very thing, whether it was a discussion about leash laws, tethering, BSL, or MSN. Government expects people that aren't responsible about their OWN reproduction to be responsible for their pets' reproduction. Really? Half of all pregnancies are unplanned when it's a married couples, and let's not even talk about the unmarried people that can't manage to find the birth control aisle at Wal-Mart.
Same goes for leash laws and BSL. If they aren't watching their children and they aren't responsible parents they probably aren't going to be watching the pet, either. I'm sure you remember the Grain Valley, MO, tragedy just to the east of us when a ferret chewed seven fingers off of an infant. The parents claimed they were sleeping and didn't hear the baby screaming. They were "so busted" when law enforcement checked their cell phone records, which proved neither parent was home at the time. So of course we should ban ferrets (*sarcasm). There is not a room in Hell hot enough for these parents.
What's sad is law-abiding, tax-paying responsible people and their pets end up paying the price for the stupidity and criminal behavior of others. It's too bad we can't speuter a lot of people - just above the shoulders. ;-)
Posted by: kmk | September 12, 2011 at 08:49 AM
When we demonize one breed, parents relax around all others. I just read in the past few months of a vicious attack by a purebred lab in the UK - causing hundreds of stitches to the poor boy's face. The scariest part was that both the reporter and the mother were shocked by the attack because it wasn't a pit bull. The mother actually said that she let her child go up to the dog because "it wasn't a dangerous dog like a pit bull." It didn't sound like ANYTHING had been learned from the situation - and the reporter didn't help matters pointing out that Labs were not a breed to be feared but pit bulls still were. It's always tragic but never surprising in cases like these.
Posted by: Jennie | September 12, 2011 at 10:07 AM
Good grief - doesn't this mother know it could NOT have been a pit bull, as the UK banned them nearly two decades ago?
Most of our purebred dogs originated in the British Isles or Germany. One would think the English would be a bit smarter!
I'm always amused by what Jim Beers writes. Jim is formerly with the U.S. Fish and Wildflower...oops, I mean Fish and WILDLIFE service. He always says the very people that scream if a "pit bull" is walking down the street are the same people that think we should tolerate the presence of wolves, cougar, and bears because they are harmless.
Posted by: kmk | September 12, 2011 at 10:01 PM
The sheriff deputy wrote in the report it was a lab mix with further specification, The animal control officer said it was a pit bull. After confirming the information with the Harris County Veterinary Health Services who impounded the dog, The dog is a pit bull type dog. in that it is a presa canario, I confirmed this myself.. No has yet explained why the deputy chose to write down a lab mix.
Posted by: Douglas Wolfe | September 15, 2011 at 04:02 AM
I'll take with a grain of salt the "confirmed" breed identification from someone who doesn't know/understand the difference between a Presa Canario and a 'pit bull' type dog...although this would give us the third breed type stated as being involved in the attack...but breed ID is easy, right?
Posted by: Brent | September 15, 2011 at 07:55 AM
Okay, it was a "Lab MIX" but what was that Lab mixed with? Pit bull perhaps?
Posted by: PatBostwick | September 20, 2011 at 05:06 PM
Oh sure, "perhaps". There's also a solid possibility that it was simply a mixed breed dog with neither Lab nor 'pit bull' in it and is just a black-coated mutt. Without DNA testing we'll never know -- and it's been the problem with dog attack reports and studies for generations. The reality is that the breed talk, regardless of the type of dog, is a fools argument that distracts people from having real, educational discussions about safe ways of having newborn children in homes with dogs. It's very easy to do this safely, but there are some steps that need to be taken -- the first one is never to leave your dog and newborn alone together. And until THAT becomes the topic of discussion, the poor decisions that led to this attack will remain.
Posted by: Brent | September 20, 2011 at 06:22 PM