Last week's fatal dog attack in Wisconsin - Updated

Updated 11-24-13

Alldogsbite.org has an update from the police report. While there is some interesting information in the police report, there is one very compelling piece of information. In the police report, Iwicki notes that she orginally got the dogs when they were three weeks old. Academic research, and information from trainers and good breeders, consistently shows that removing dogs from their litters prior to 8 weeks of age can lead to myriad undesireable behavior traits, including destructiveness, excessive barking, fearfulness, noise reactivity, toy possessiveness, food possessiveness, attention-seeking, aversion to strangers, stranger aggression, owner aggression, play biting, tail chasing and house soiling. 

Based on the police report, the dogs may have been exhibiting many of these behaviors in the minutes leading up to the attack and certainly during the attack. They also showed signs of fearfulness around strangers when authorities arrived.

Canine behavior is very complex and includes breed, breeding (within breeds), environment, how animals are cared for, how they are trained, punished, rewarded, spay/neuter status, when they were removed from their litters, etc. All of these factors are intertwined to create a full picture of the dog's behavior and looking at just one factor is always going to lead to failure. 

And in this case, there is also the fallacy of relying on newspaper reports to provide you all the information you need to determine causal factors. At best, they provide just a surface level of the situation, at worst, they just provide inaccurate info. When you dig deeper, you can usually find pretty significant causal factors, as appears to be the case here.

Updated 4-9-13

Finally a bit more information about this case. According to a report in the Janesville Gazettte last week, the babysitter, Susan Ilwicki, owned two 45 lbs "pit bull terriers". On the afternoon of the event, Iwicki went outside and were reportedly playfully nipping at Iwicki as she held the 14 month old boy. Iwicki then reportedly "yelled at them" and "batted" them away. It was upon that striking that the dogs became frenzied and started pulling at her coat and biting at her hand. Iwicki then lost hold of 14 month old Daxton and the boy fell to the ground and the dogs pounced on the boy.

There is more to the story according to the police report at the link. Essentially it sounds like the dogs were overly excited (either just by being outside, or with the presence of the young toddler). In their over-excitement Iwicki yelled and struck the dogs -- which resulted in an even more heightened level of arrousal. 

We talk a lot her about understanding warning signs and understanding canine behavior -- and understanding that if you have highly arroused dogs there are ways to calm that excitement. Yelling and hitting them isn't it.

Even more bizarre is a neighbor's claim that he heard Iwicki's screams but didn't investigate because he'd been "watching too many horror movies lately" - which may be the more bizarre statements I've ever heard.

Original Story

In a story that I'm sure most of the readers of this blog have heard about already, last week, 14 month old Daxton Borchardt died from injuries sustained in a dog attack. There has been a LOT of media coverage about the incident (50+ news reports), but not a lot of actual causal information that has come out.  I've been holding off posting until more info came out but it now seems that that will be less likely for awhile.

So this is what we know:

The young toddler (who was very mobile) was staying with his babysitter, 30 year old Susan Iwicki in the small community of Walworth, WI (population 1,676) . The two dogs involved in the attack (both described as "pit bulls") were owned by Iwicki. The incident apparently happened outdoors, and not in the apartment where Iwicki lived. The apartment is apparently in a remodeled old barn behind another home.

The boy was tragically bitten, and tranported to the hospital where he later died.

Walworth is a tiny community (population 1,676) that is situated about half way between Milwaukee and Chicago right along the Wisconsin/Illinois border.

The dogs were immediately taken to a local veterinarian and euthanized.

Little else is really known about the incident at this point, and the media coverage has been hit or miss with some trying to create unnecessary hysteria, one outlet that used no common sense in stalking the father's facebook page and publishing his despair (I refuse to provide a link)  and others noting that this is the third fatal dog attack in Wisconsin in the past 11 years (with three different breeds of dogs involved in those incidents).

I've been in communication with several folks up in Wisconsin and there seem to be a fair amount of speculation as to the cause of the attack, but nothing tangible to date to report. I'll definitely update this as more information comes out.

My heart goes out to the Borchardt family and those close to them as they deal with this tragedy and I hope that as time progresses we can find out more about the circumstances that led up to the attack so that other families can avoid similar situations. Tragedies like this are very rare, but having intelligent dialogue about the circumstances that cause them can help others -- and it's a shame that anonymous breed haters and not real animal behavior experts have flooded comment sections of media outlets spewing mis-information and hatred.

 

 

Comments

[Dubv]

Joel, please explain how the splitting of data techniques used in classification and regression trees (which look at each independent variable separately) can possible estimate the influence of one variable while controlling for the influence of others. They cannot, by design. By design, they will mask the influence of correlation among independent variables. They are useful, but, again, they are your hammer.

[Selma]

PS Sorry, Brent, I was going to play in this sandbox. But.

I wonder how the pro-"pit bull"-BSL gang feels about "huskies" (also not a breed but a shape)? In Canada, where I live, they are by far the leading shape involved in DBRFs; in all but one case the victims have been children.

Is that due to breeding?

We have had one fatality in Canada, ever, attributed to the "pit bull" type. Are our "pit bulls" wimps, or what?

I think it's safe to say that mixed breed dogs are involved in the most biting/mauling incidents overall.

[Selma]

While I'm at it, nobody is actually verifying the 'breed' when a dog is involved in a DBRF.

If a Lab x Collie bites someone (pretending that mutts are F1s which is actually rare), is it the Lab or the Collie? Or is it maybe just a DOG?

The basic flaw in all of this, on both sides, is that when you combine a handful of breeds, over a dozen lookalike breeds and an unknown number of mongrels (the most popular type of dog in the US), the whole 'breed'-based behaviour thing falls apart.

A recent experiment by Maddie's fund showed that even those who are very familiar with breeds of dogs differ significantly when asked to visually ID a mixed breed dog's ancestry.

In a population of roughly 78 million dogs, 30 or so DBRFs a year, while horrific, are not enough to predict any kind of trend around dogs, dog breeds or dog behaviour.

What we look for are ownership practices to try to discern whether there are common factors that lead to bites, attacks and fatal maulings.

Focusing on the dog's shape is misleading and does a disservice to the public at large, espcially the non dog-savvy among us.

[Joel]

Dubv, sorry I'm not going to put in several years of study into anything. But I'm not going to be conducting any dog attack studies either. I'll read your paper if you post it though.

Instead of trying to show everybody how smart you are, why don't you make the proper analysis a project of yours? Seems like you're only going to accept your own methodology anyway.

[Dubv]

"A recent experiment by Maddie's fund showed that even those who are very familiar with breeds of dogs differ significantly when asked to visually ID a mixed breed dog's ancestry."

I've seen it.

It is a very bad study. I'll explain why. I am a trained scientist and so am fit to evaluate these things. Every strong statement I make below can be confirmed independently if you so wish.

DNA fingerprinting in order to determine paternity or presence at a crime scene is HIGHLY accurate. Therefore, people get it in their heads that anything using DNA is like this. The identification of breed components using DNA relies upon a totally different approach to the data. It often uses mixture modeling (a math technique) and is much less accurate. It is blatantly stated by the test manufacturers that the tests ONLY work for mixed breeds dogs. That has something to do the mixture models used, but I have a more cynical view: it is so the results cannot be adequately checked easily. If they worked on purebreeds, then the DNA test could be shown to give crazy results. Please take time to watch videos of people reading off the results from the most popular testing company (MARS)where people laugh when the company claims that their Great Dane is really a chi.

So, POINT 1: the accuracy of DNA breed testing is questionable and has not been confirmed. To confirm this, an independent study would need to be done on the particular technique used by the Maddie project to determine the accuracy of the DNA testing. This would involve, at the least, testing mixed breed dogs of known origins (those cases where a registered bassett hound knocks up a registered lab) and see if they are accurate.

Maddie's project, instead, assumes that the DNA tests are accurate and shows that visual identification does not match the DNA results. In reality, the visual match may be more accurate. The project could've done something like brought mixed breeds of known origin in front of breed identifiers and then tested the same with DNA techniques. They did not.

Also, MARS and other testing companies state that they have not been able to build a breed profile for pit bulls. This might have political reasons (they do not want their test used for BSL) or it maybe for the reasons they state.

Further, it unclear whether or not the breed identifiers knew that they were in a study designed to test whether or not pit bulls can be visually ID'd. The test should have been double blind. It is unclear whether or not it was.

Lastly, the only reference I see to this study is a poster. It has not past peer review. And the references on the poster, etc. indicate a leaning on the part of the researchers and vets are NOT formally trained in research while receiving their DVM, so it is no wonder they would make mistakes.

[Selma]

I see you've been tripping around the inter-tubes. It sounds as though you might have read some of my stuff LOL

The reason they can't build a profile for "pit bulls" is that it isn't a breed, as they state. American Pit Bull terrier is a breed but those registries did not donate samples to the genome project as the AKC did. But what they are really saying is that they cannot identify mixed breeds. That concurs with the scientific evidence to date.

However, I wasn't talking about the DNA aspect at all, since in my opinion (and I admit I'm only skimming posts here) the study showed that two unvalidated methods disagreed, not that either one was better.

My point, again, was that even experienced dog people, when asked to guess the ancestry of mixed breed dogs, disagreed - a lot - about what that might be. That was the only worthwhile takeaway point. (And it's not the only example out there).

Therefore, the chances that dog bite victims, bystanders and others would even achieve that level of accuracy are slim at best, especially given that eyewitnesses are notoriously poor at reporting detail.

Maybe if you weren't nitpicking, looking for tiny holes, you might actually understand what people here are saying and see the big picture.

Brent, what was the name of that person who used to hang around, from Florida, claimed to be a researcher or something. Was it Doug? This guy reminds me of those heady days.

I'm finis, this is the usual waste of time.

[Brent]

Yeah Selma, I'm going to have a quick hook on Dub from here on out.

Dub, here's the bottom line. Last week, a 7 year old boy was killed by a dog. While a family mourns, I think it's fair to ask the question of 'why did this happen?' and "what can we do to prevent it from happening again?"

In the process, the vast majority of the experts in the animal professional community, including the vast majority of trainers, animal handlers, veterinarians, and animal control officers will point to the facts that the dog was raised in a household where violence existed (the male owner was convicted of murder), that the dogs were malnourished, neglected, and chained in the back yard.

You would have us believe the attack happened because the dogs were pit bulls -- even though there are 5-8 million pit bulls in this country that are not responsible for attacks like this. That not only defies expert opinion, but also common sense and the depth of knowledge and research on canine behavior that exists.

Even you acknowledged that the majority of the expert community is opposed to your stance. I'm all about challenging the status quo, but in order to do so, you must have the experience, expertise, or knowledge to challenge it.

But you don't. You're someone who comments annonymously online. And not only as anonymous commenter can you not have credibility, you have now posted 20 times in the past 52 hours (many I've deleted just to clean things up a bit, because they were not adding to the intelligent dialogue, or because that amount of posting is just excessive) and the only outside knowledge you've brought to the table was an article by a hack editorialist out of Canada.

So instead, instead of challenging the plethora of knowledge that exists within the science and expert community with facts and expertise, you have done what the dogsbite.org community has consistently done in comments sections of news sources around the world -- post frequently, excessively and anonymously hoping that by hijacking the comments sections of media outlets and shouting from the rooftops loud enough you can somehow add somehow legitimize a point of view that completely lacks credibility right now.

The victims deserve better than this -- and they deserve intelligent conversation from the expert community, and they deserve it from people who are willing to put their name and personal records on the line and stand behind their point of view.

I'm done letting you use this blog space as a platform for you bully pulpit when you're merely acting as a spamming internet troll

[Dubv]

"I'm done letting you use this blog space as a platform for you bully pulpit when you're merely acting as a spamming internet troll"

Convenient for you.

"But you don't. You're someone who comments annonymously online. And not only as anonymous commenter can you not have credibility, you have now posted 20 times in the past 52 hours (many I've deleted just to clean things up a bit, because they were not adding to the intelligent dialogue, or because that amount of posting is just excessive) and the only outside knowledge you've brought to the table was an article by a hack editorialist out of Canada."

Brent, if someone is incorrect in their reasoning, then no amount of experience will change that they are wrong in that instance. One person that is anonymous can show them to be wrong. That is simple reality. You are using circular reasoning. I am attacking the premise that these so-called dog experts are actually framing this topic correctly. I feel an outside perspective can show that they are not. These dog experts are investigating human fatalities, but they are all heavily invested in dogs, enough to make them their vocation. That is telling. I am questioning whether the weight of their expert opinion is deserved here. This is a foreign concept to you?

Further, outside knowledge is not needed when one is commenting on the framing or reasoning of another's argument. I am poking holes in the general thinking of you and others. I can do that by simply reading and seeing what goes wrong.

Go ahead and block me. Let the echo chamber continue.

[Brent]

Dub - -it's not a handful of people you think you're poking holes in. It's essentially everyone with knowledge of canine behavior. I mean, it's trainers (on both sides of the spectrum), it's scientists, its humane organizations, it's animal handlers, it's veterinarians, it's animal control officers -- it's nearly everyone who has working knowledge of animal behavior. And it's important to note that it's not group-think with these groups - -most of these groups exist because they're notorious for not agreeing with each other. And yet. On this subject, they're nearly unanimous.

You're not poking holes in it. You're commenting over and over hoping something sticks until you get to a point where you're arguing scientific methodology instead of canine behavior and the impact human-created conditions can have on that.

And while you may think it convenient I keep you on a very tight leash, it's convenient that a site you are a regular on, who is one of the few sites that share your point of view, is notorious for not allowing any counter-points, creating the worst of the worst in group think and excluding expert thinking. I think allowing 15 comments here has more than showed my willingness to listen to all sides of an argument. Your side does not. Nor does it bring expertise in canine behavior. Or even real names and faces. It's just a series of anonymous internet profiles.

[Emily]

Well, dang. My car mechanic is heavily invested in cars, enough to make them his vocation. Reckon that's telling... next time my car breaks down, I'll sure avoid going to him...

[Selma]

Emily FTW!

[Erich]

Dubv, if you want a civil conversation you should removethe evil, nasty comments on what I am guessing is your own website.

You criticize DNA tests yet use journalists' passing comments in a news article as proof of breed of dog?

[EmilyS]

Dubv is a pretty prime example of the use of babbling jargon instead of, you know, actual fact-based analysis.

[DubV]

Brent, are you man enough to at least let me comment that I do not own a blog? Someone here accused me of having a blog that contains nasty comments. I predict you'll delete this also, but let people continue to refer to me and make accusations.

[Brent]

DubV -- if you have a point in posting, and it's civil, it can stay. But the rambling, obsessive commenting and overall disrespect isn't welcome.

[Nancy Tranzow]

Ummm...Dub? Are you SURE you know about genetics? Do you truly believe that genetic phenotype expression is changed via genetic drift? I don't mean to insult but when was the last time you were in a lab by chance.

You leave out a great deal of the story. First, there have been no genes or combination that have been found to promote or infer aggression in canines. Second, regardless of genotypic expression, environment plays a tremendous role in phenotypic expression with the exception of basic appearance.

One does not need to throw around big words, nor cut and paste from scientific literature to point out the most basic of concepts, nor to understand them. Clearly, your lack of knowledge is obvious in your need to pound your pseudo-intellectual chest. I am always amused when people like you come into my lab. It's cute. Sad to be sure, but cute.