Two dog attack fatalities week ending 4/14

I'm running a little behind getting these posted --we've had a LOT going on (more to come!) and I just haven't gotten a chance to do a lot of research on these until now. But last week there were two fatal dog attack incidents and I do want to highlight them, as I do all the others. Major dog attack incidents are rare in this country, with the risk of them being miniscule compared to the 75+ million dogs in this country. But when they happen, it is important to look at the entirety of the circumstances surrounding the event in order to build awareness of the circumstances of these attacks so we can prevent them in the future.

 Tyler Jett 

Three weeks ago, in Callaway, FL, 7 year old Tyler Jett was riding his bike home from school when two dogs raced toward him and attacked him while he was on his bicycle.

One of the bites to young Tyler punctured is carotid artery and ultimately to the boy's death.

The dogs were owned by Edward Daniels, Jr -- who will be facing charges that range from culpable negligence to manslaughter. Daniels was arrested for drug charges after authorities investigating the scene found marijuana and other drug paraphernalia at his home, tampering with evidence for allegedly washing blood from the dogs' faces, and later on charges of manslaughter.

In order to prove manslaughter, they would have to prove that Daniels KNEW of the risk his dogs possessed, and didn't take necessary percautions to intervene. In this case, just 10 days prior to the attack on young Tyler, animal control cited Daniels for the dogs running at large and being aggressive toward adults and children and that whatever means he was using to secure them were inadequate.

However, Daniels did not fix the problem, and the dogs were loose again and attacked a young boy; causing his death.

The dogs in the incident have been described as either "pit bulls" or in many cases as an Alapaha Blue Blood Bulldog and a Bulldog mix. In pictures of the dogs, they appear to be just mixed breed mongrels.

Callaway is a small community of about 14,000 people -- about 18% of whom live below the poverty level (slightly above the national average). The case seems to be a pretty clear-cut case of owner negligence: including lack of containment, known history of getting loose and aggressive activity, and the presence of illegal drugs at the scene. The dogs also likely had a heightened arrousal due to high prey drive of chasing the boy on his bicycle.

It is a true tragedy, and a completely avoidable one had the owner headed warnings to contain the dogs after the previous report.

Claudia Gallardo

This story has been very odd from the beginning, and as new information comes out, it just seems weird.

In Stockton, CA, 38 year old Claudia Gallardo was attacked and killed by a dog. According to the reports, the woman hopped a fence that contained the dog and was attacked by the dog.

The dog's owner, Brian Hrenko, knew the victim. Hrenko said the victim cleaned houses for a living and likely jumped the fence looking for work. However, the incident appeared to have happened after 8:00 at night -- which would have been after dark in Stockton this time of year -- an odd time to be showing up for house work.

Neighbors have allegedly complained about the dog in the past having gotten loose and acted aggressively. Hrenko also noted that the dog got in fights with the neighbor's dogs all the time and that he had previously attacked people who entered the yard including chasing them into their trees or into their swimming pool.

The dog in the case is being described as both a blue "pit bull", and as a "pit bull/mastiff mix" .  Based on the images presented it's difficult to tell which would be more accurate.

 The 95215 area code where the attack occurred has a poverty level of over 26% -- nearly double the national average. Nearly 18% of the zip code lives on income below 50% of the poverty line -- which is more than double the national average.

While some of the information is still a bit unknown, it's a tragic situation and one marked with poverty, a dog with a history of aggression, and an individual jumping a fence to get into an area with a contained dog at night while the dog's owner wasn't home.

It was nice that one news station went to a local dog show and asked some of the experts there about 'pit bulls" and what they thought.

 My thoughts go out to the families in both of these tragedies.

Comments

[DubV]

ANOTHER one today.

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/22066382/fulton-county-child-attacked-by-dog

This will be 11 out of 11 deaths by dog attributed to pits so far this year.

Do you have absolutely zero pattern recognition skills?

So, how long will this streak have to go on before you begin to question your views? There must be a number. 30? Let's say the next 19 people killed in the US are all by pit bull, to make 30. Will that make you question yourself? Is there anything that could?

[Brent]

Dub,

And thus far this year, somewhere between 5 and 8 million pit bulls have not been responsible for anything negative and have been nothing more or less than simple house pets.

If this behavior were because of genetics, doesn't it seem unlikely that 5-8 million would NOT have the gene, but 11, or 20, or 30, would? That doesn't make any type of rational sense and certainly defies science. So what is it about these 11 that make them different from the other 8 million? That's what you need to be looking for.

You're trying to find a pattern in a very small data set that is a statistical anomoly in a much larger pattern by looking at one common factor and not at the entire picture of causal results. Canine behavior is so much more complicated than that.

[EmilyS]

the key phrase of course is "attributed to pits"

There's not a shred of evidence that any of the dogs is anything other than some blockyheaded shorthaired dog

Speaking of "pattern recognition"...

How many studies of the identification of the dogs accused in attacks would YOU need to read, DubV, before you understand what the issue is?

[DubV]

Show me one such study that doesn't rely upon DNA breed tests that are not accurate, especially for pit bull types. The most famous DNA breed test states that they have not built a proper profile for pit bulls. Any study based upon them is a priori invalid.

[DubV]

Brent, why would I try? If I make a decent point, you'll delete the comment.

[DubV]

Brent, is it your argument that the only way to view this is that there either is or is not a "kill switch" gene and if a pit has it that it will definitely kill a person? To state for this to have a genetic basis that the 11 pits that have killed this year would have to have the "kill switch" genes and the rest that did not kill must not have the genes is....ludicrous.

There is something called reduction ad absurdum, Brent. I can push your argument to where it would still be valid, given how you stated it, but would make no sense to anyone else. This is how: your argument would still hold if 1,000 people were killed by dogs this year in the US and all 1,000 were killed by pit bulls. That is a hint that your framing of this is unsound.

But, I've never made any sense on here yet according to you, so I'm sure I just can't see all the complicated nuances that are vaguely referred to.

[Emily]

Dubv, can you please give us your definition of a "pit bull?" It's hard to talk about anything if we're not talking about the same thing. What does "pit bull" mean to you? How do we measure and define one? And who and what would you be willing to accept as an authority on breed recognition? I've had (not kidding) confused law enforcement officers bring a pure-bred Boston Terrier to my shelter with Pit/Chihuahua mix written on the impound slip...

[Brent]

First of all Dub, over the past 3 weeks you've made more than 70 comments on this blog, 50 of which remain. Many of the ones that were deleted were when you resorted to name-calling. So you're now admitting that of the 50 that remain, none made decent points? I tend to agree, which is why I've continually said you're wasting everyone's time.

You're the one that is implying that there is something genetically about pit bulls that is leading to the attacks -- even though millions of dogs that share the same genetics (and none of the dogs involved are genetically linked to each other) are not involved. It is a ludicrous assumption (agreed), but it's the one you're making. Meanwhile, you seem to want to ignore the reality that the incident yesterday took place in a meth house -- which I'm sure had no bearing on what happened. The one today involved an unsupervised 2 year old and who knows at this point what the interaction looked like between the two prior to the incident. And strange that the mother who said she was just in another room at the time didn't hear a commotion during the attack. Do you not find that odd?

[DubV]

"You're the one that is implying that there is something genetically about pit bulls that is leading to the attacks"

FATAL and DISFIGURING attacks

It is a common tactic to spin this into being about bites.

Number of beagles left alone with a child without killing it yesterday? Also, pits kill kids right in front of parents all the time.

Because pit bulls are killing kids, we are to believe this is normal behavior from domestic dogs when they are upset. It is not.

Again, this is how you should be viewing this: "I know that the adult might've been able to prevent this if in the room. They made an error leaving that was a part of the chain of events that lead to this death. However, what was the average conditions across various breeds that day? Is this poor treatment actually concentrated in pits to such exclusion that it explains their seeming monopoly on these events?"

You have a data set with presences and absences, but you are only examining the presences. Read something about the basics of logistic regression or a chi square analysis to see how one would begin to look at this from an analytical standpoint. The way the analyses are set up mimic a relatively rigorous form of human thought.

Answering another question, what is a pit bull? The standard breeds put in their are all of this group. I would say it is uncontroversial that APBTs and AmStaffies should be in the group. If you think those two breeds are worlds apart, I'm rather speechless, but many people do think that. It is as if splitting breeds into infinitesimal and less and less important distinction is a badge of doggie smarts. I would also lump in Staffordshire bull terriers. That should be should be non-controversial.

Where you and I will part ways is that I consider any breed recently derived from this breed group in large part to be basically pit bull mutts with posh sounding names that people can feel cool about owning. If you read the history of the current incarnation of the American bulldog, then they are in this group. Don't read the history from the fan clubs for the breed that want to differentiate their dog and make it seem posh.

As far as nothing I've written making sense, I'll leave that up to any less biased readers to decide. There is an interaction between signal and receiver.

[Brent]

Dub,

You're seeming really testy today, so I want to be VERY clear in what I'm talking about.

I'm sharing this video with you because I'm not sure you saw it since (I'm sure coincidentally) this is one of the few posts you've not commented on in the past month.

http://btoellner.typepad.com/kcdogblog/2013/04/almost-horrifying-video-highlights-why-human-behavior-is-so-important-in-judging-dog-behavior.html

Anyone with any knowledge at all finds this video hard to watch. The child is BOUNCING on the dog. The dog is clearly distressed and removes himself from the situation. But the owners make him go back for more.

The dog in this case is a Rottweiler (another breed that people often think has a vicious reputation). It doesn't bite. Most dogs don't -- in spite of the situations we put them in as people. But had the dog bitten, would we blame Rottweilers for the attack and say the dog attacked because it was a Rottweiler? That would seem absurd in this case. It's clearly parental negligence. They (and the child) are saved because the dog is more tolerant than most.

THIS IS WHY WE MUST LOOK AT THE CIRCUMSTANCES BEHIND THE ATTACKS. Because if you just looked at the breed of dog, you would easily dismiss it as a Rottweiler attack, and not the act of parental negligence. AND THIS IS WHY YOU ARE WRONG.

And it's this type of situation that led to the death of Liam Perk, by a family Weimeraner 3 years ago.

http://btoellner.typepad.com/kcdogblog/2009/12/two-year-old-boy-dead-from-dog-attack-in-cape-coral-fl.html

Sure, dogs are put in these situations all the time. Often they are fine. Often they are not. And in this case, we're talking about fatal bites, not disfiguring ones, because there is no accurate information on breeds associated with "disfiguring" attacks. And you know what the difference is between a fatal bite and a bad bite? Location. In almost all cases the difference is whether the deep bite hits a major artery or not. This was the difference between Liam Perk being a tragic story that made the news, and a story that went unnoticed by the media.

And when you talk to anyone, with any knowledge at all about canine behavior, and why dogs bite, they almost UNIVERSALLY point to these types of situations as the causal factors.

And until you start focusing on these causal factors, incidents like this will happen. We cannot let parents continue to think that they're child wandering outside alone into a pack of dogs is ok. We cannot let parents who are doing meth in their home off the hook for child negligence. We cannot let parents think it's ok, even FUNNY, for their child to bounce on the dog and continually cause anguish for the dog.

As long as we continue to blame the dogs, we'll never make progress in stopping the incidents.

[EmilyS]

A reference to chi squares just more pseudo intellectual smoke blowing.

Once again DubV fails to explain what he calls a "pit bull" other than 2/3 breeds. Which neither he nor 95% of all the people in the US, including ACOs, police and newspaper headline writers, can properly identify.

The absolute observable truth is that the dogs shown in photos/videos are merely blockyheaded shorthaired dogs of unknown breed/s. Of course once you identify every blockyheaded shorthaired dog as a pit bull, then...

He might investigate the term "tautology"..

[DubV]

EmilyS,

In a deleted comment, I addressed this tautology business.

It is ironic you called me a pseudo-intellect before for bringing up a term in statistics. The term "tautology" (way to avoid the use-mention error there) has a definition within rhetoric and one within logic. The definition of it in rhetoric does in fact refer to fallacious reasoning, but the use of the term in logic is very different and tautologies are very important starting points in logic.

The definition of "tautology" within the context of rhetoric is a bit weak, and somewhat contradicts its use within logic and seems to likely be based upon a misinterpretation of its use in logic. I suppose only a pseudo-intellect that needs to investigate the term would know that though.

[Brent]

Not that any of this makes your position on the subject matter any more correct.