Pit bull's young victim identified (yet another baby mauled to death)

NEW ALBANY, Miss. -- The 16-month-old victim of a pit bull attack has been identified as Destiny Marie Knox from Union County.

Her identity was released Friday by Coroner Mark Golding. Her body was taken to Jackson for an autopsy while sheriff's deputies investigated the killing, which occurred Thursday night when the child was attacked by a pit bull at her baby sitter's mobile home.

“The breed has been ruined. There is no hope for it now. Even the so called nice ones often “snap”. When they do snap, their jaws kill and maim instantly.”

The individual dogs that are responsible for human fatalities have far more in common than breed. Most are either chained up or allowed to run loose, and almost all are intact males, which screams owner irresponsibility. Dogs do not snap. This is the kind of thing people say about dogs when the dogs do something unexpected. It doesn’t mean that the dog didn’t have a reason for doing what it did, but it does mean that the person witnessing the event was unaware of the subtleties of dog behavior.

In a large number of news stories where the dog was considered a friendly, family pet, a brief call to animal control shows the owners to not only be liars, but totally inept at dog ownership. Often, the “family pet” already had a record with animal control, most often for running loose or owner neglect, and many spent their whole lives outside.

How many people do you know that chain up their Labradors? Who buys a golden retriever as a theft-deterrent? Have you ever seen someone buy a Collie and try to encourage it to be vicious? There’s a culture to owning the breed of dog in question, and although there are some really responsible, knowledgeable owners out there doing the right thing, the idiot thugs and uneducated “fur kid” owners are the ones making the fatal mistakes. This issue is much more about the people than the dogs. For the record, when a dog of another breed kills someone, the same pattern of general neglect or abuse is present in almost every single case. This is why places like Calgary are one of the few that have actually seen a decrease in attacks. They chose not to ban a breed of dog, but instead to focus on responsible ownership and education. Places like Denver, which have banned the dogs, have had absolutely NO decrease in attacks. Some have even had increases.

I have to disagree with this. My wife has show dogs and has attended many behavior classes with our vet who is extremely knowledgeable in animal behavior. They can snap, and do.

I’ll give you one example that happened to a friend of ours. She had a Yorkshire Terrier. People down the street had a Rotweiller that was kept in a fenced yard. They had kids, the dog was friendly but they often left the gate open and he got out. He had never shown aggression before. Our friend worked and had an elderly lady walk the Yorkie each day around noon. The Rottie knew the Yorkie, knew the lady that walked her, never a problem. One day, the gate was left open. He ran out of the gate, knocked the elderly lady down and killed the female Yorkie within seconds. What made him do that to a dog that he knew and liked before?
He snapped.

We had a male show dog. This is a rare breed, around 10-15 pounds, not known to be aggressive. However, the sire of this dog had been known to be snappy with other males. Our male was fine with other dogs. Around the age of a year, we had a litter of pups. He was not the sire but he was fine with them until one day, out of the blue, he grabbed one of the pups and began to shake it. He wanted to kill it. Pup was ok, scared half to death, but ok. From then on, he tried to get to them and we had to keep them separated. Then a couple months later he did the same to one of the adult girls.

We called the breeder and said he was coming back. You cannot show a dog with aggression and you certainly never want to breed them. We sent him back to the breeder, she replaced the pup, and he was neutered and went to a pet home where there were no children and no other pets. He is doing fine, but has growled at other dogs a few times. I firmly believe some dogs are just born with it. If you have ever bred dogs and observed the pups from birth to 4 months, you can see how different they are.

We had a litter last spring and within 3 weeks I knew one of the males was more prone to having a temper. He growled and squirmed when you checked his teeth or the vet tried to check his for both testicles, or trim his nails. He never changed, he was still that way when he was 4 months old. Sweet, but temperamental. He went to a pet home, neuter only. He’s fine now, doing great with their other dog, but he still doesn’t like his feet messed with and tries to bite when he gets his nails trimmed. They have to muzzle him.

I don’t think any dog with any temperament problems of any sort should ever be bred. We breed about once every 2-3 years and only to better the breed. If they aren’t high show quality they go to pet homes, with a contract that they must spay or neuter and provide proof before we give them the AKC registration papers. Never is a dog bred that hasn’t gotten it’s AKC championship. If they aren’t good enough to finish and become a champion, they aren’t good enough to breed. Period. If we sell a show pup, they MUST show it. They cannot breed it unless they finish it. If they don’t, they have to have it spayed or neutered. If it can’t finish, not good enough, we replace or refund and the pup goes to a pet home and is spayed or neutered.

I’ve seen and been around plenty of Pits and there isn’t a one I would trust around any small child or other pet. Their jaws can do to much damage with one bite and they have been bred to fight, too much inbreeding. The breed is ruined. It would take many years of extremely controlled breeding to change it. It’s not worth it in my opinion.

Just because an animal has not yet shown aggression towards another animal, it doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually happen. Dog behavior is something that many people don’t get, even when they think they do. There are so many silent, absurdly-quick messages going back and forth between dogs, which is why sometimes it appears that two normally social animals all of a sudden hate each other. Just because they have gotten along in the past doesn’t mean they will continue to do so. They do not work the same way people do, which I think is one of the biggest problems people have in identifying differences in their own animals’ behavior and preventing bad things from happening.

The simple fact that the Rottie was always outside and often off the property says to me that even if it was normally well-behaved, it certainly wasn’t responsibly owned, which means there could be a host of other issues the owners never even knew the dog had (or even ignored), such as a high prey drive or aggression issues. Going after a dog he had previously met doesn’t mean he snapped, because there are so many little details in canine behavior that are far too quick for us humans to even see. It’s possible the woman or dog made a noise that awakened the prey drive, and it’s also possible that the Yorkie decided on that day to give the Rottweiler a little attitude, which could have been something as simple as a millisecond of tensing up. Dogs, unlike people, feel no sense of obligation towards keeping civility if they are not an established pack, and even when they are, sometimes challenges are made to the hierarchy.

As for your purebred dog, it is interesting that you mention a dog that came from a nippy parent that showed the same instability. What of the siblings? If they were all that way, then I would say it is genetics. However, of the five to ten million pit bulls alive today, less than a half of a half of a percent have taken a life. Even with all of the irresponsible breeding going on, human aggression is still not an issue with the breed any more than an epidemic of unstoppable ball-fetching is with labs. Dog aggression is present, but that can be said for all the terriers and many other breeds that were originally used for dirty jobs. With responsible, knowledgeable ownership comes good dogs, and this is something that has been proven in Calgary.

That being said, I do agree that any uncontrollable, unwarranted aggression is something all breeders should avoid by either culling or sterilizing dogs exhibiting such behaviors. I also think that if the dog and one of its parents are like that, the breeder is not improving the breed, and should stop. Also, I am definitely for euthanizing any and all dogs that show human-aggression. This is something that should not be tolerated from any breed, no matter how people view them as a whole. After all, dachshunds have killed at least two children by themselves. Those deaths aren’t any less real because the dog involved was small. People need to start taking dog behavior more seriously and step up with the responsibility. Otherwise, we could end up like Italy and have 25 breeds of dog regulated or banned(banning a single breed sometimes makes it more palatable for people to do the same to others that replace the banned breed in popularity).

As for your purebred dog, it is interesting that you mention a dog that came from a nippy parent that showed the same instability. What of the siblings? If they were all that way, then I would say it is genetics
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The sire of my male show dog wasn’t nippy at first. What happened was the breeder agreed to keep one of the top stud dogs because he was being used fairly often and she was more centrally located. When he arrived, the stud of my dog and the new stud just didn’t like each other. It got worse and then the stud of my dog, began to act aggressively toward all males, never females. She ended up sending him to another breeder to keep because he and that new stud she agreed to keep for a while just simply hated each other. He was fine after that.

Then like I stated before, his pup, our show male, went off and grabbed one of our pups and shook it. He continued to not tolerate them, which isn’t all that uncommon. Often other dogs won’t tolerate small pups nipping at them, etc. However when he later showed aggression toward a female that he has grown up around and to the pups, he was out of here.

I really think it was a male thing. The pups were all males and he was fine with them until they got around 5 weeks old. I think they began to have the smell of a male dog and that’s when he changed. Why he got into it with the female, I have no explanation for. The vet said perhaps the 4 males caused him to become confused and possessive since he was used to being around only the girls.

All 4 of our pups went to people in our town. We didn’t ship any of them out of the area. We see them, they bring them by once in a while, they are all very sweet dogs. Our breed is not known for aggression at all. Aloof with strangers, but not aggressive and not fearful or timid. But that’s not true of all of them. One of ours loves everyone she sees. She never met a stranger. The other, she is more aloof.

We hadn’t planned to keep a pup from the litter but one was so nice that the Mrs. decided he should be shown. He’s very even tempered, exceptionally nice personality, gets along with all other dogs and people. I think he will finish very quickly.

It does sound like hormones definitely played a part in the dog’s aggression. Intact male dogs are much more likely to become aggressive, according to a few studies based on dog bite fatalities. I think if more people would keep it in mind, they could keep dogs that exhibit those tendencies safely. However, for the most part, people aren’t willing to take extra precautions to ensure the dogs stay out of trouble. Even though my dogs are always fixed (I don’t breed anything, just too much work!) I would never keep them alone together. I also keep them separated from the cats, when I’m not around, just in case.

No one has shown signs of aggression, but I am definitely aware that it can happen. My mother had this goofy, sweet black lab that everyone loved, but one day, she jumped out of the window of the car, ran through my brother’s friend’s open doorway, and attacked their Brittany Spaniel. They had never met before, and this lab was fixed, had been for years. I don’t think she snapped, but her reaction was very quick. Sometimes it’s easier just to think something happened without cause, but I really don’t think it’s possible. Every behavior is a reaction to some stimulus, we just don’t always see it, I think.

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