A dog wouldn’t need to “feel pain” of shattered spine or a knife in its heart to be debilitated by it. Give me a fungo bat with a few nails hammered in the end and I am pretty sure I could crush the skull or shatter the spine of this breed. Especially if energized by the adrenaline of saving my one year daughter.
Good luck not hitting the kid if you go for a headshot. A deer can run a hundred yards with a heart exploded by a bullet. Odds are, this dog could have been verbally removed. But I suspect it was one of those puppies given away at 5 weeks, to a person that had no business owning it, one year old kid, or not. Bad combination. The Staffordshire Terrier of England is known as the Nanny Dog. Great with kids. Not generally bred and raised by a**holes, though.