4-Year-Old In Critically Injured In Attack By Family's Dog

News4Jax ^ | 2.17.05

[ambrose]

News4Jax.com

4-Year-Old In Critically Injured In Attack By Family's Dog

POSTED: 3:47 pm EST February 17,

2005

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A 4-year-old girl is in critical condition after she was attacked by her family's pit bull Wednesday.

Kaylin Flowers' grandmother said she was playing with the dog in their yard when the the dog snapped, biting the girl on the head, neck and hand.

"She so small. The dog just grabbed her and bit her," Karen Flowers said Thursday. "He slung her and ... dragged her on the ground."

According to the police report, the attack lasted several minutes, the pit bull throwing Kaylin's tiny body around the back yard.

Kaylin was rushed to Shands-Jacksonville, where she had emergency surgery.

"There are no skull fractures at all, but there are teeth marks in the skull," Flowers' said. "She's doing better. She's a fighter."

The family said they don't know why the dog attacked as he had never showed signs of aggression before.

The dog was confiscated by Jacksonville Animal Care and Control, where he will remain for 10 days.

"They are brought here and held in a quarantine area to check temperament and health issues," Animal Control's David DeWitt told Channel 4's Jennifer Bauer.

While all dog breeds have the potential to attack, experts say rottweilers, pit bulls and German shepherds are the most common breeds for deadly attacks.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while almost half of all children are bitten by a dog at some point, kids aged 5 to 9 are most at risk for dog attacks. Statistics show that half those attacks occur at home or with a familiar dog.

Copyright 2005 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[kanawa]

Pit bulls are bred to be paranoid and aggressive.

Not by any breeders I know. Stable temperament is the top characteristic looked for when breeding.

The breed is hopelessly contaminated.

Your view of the breed is hopelessly contaminated.

Pick up any dog fancier's magazine and look at the classifieds to see what the market is for these animals

Examples please. If they're taking ads for dogs touted to be aggressive, I'd like to go after the publishers of those magazines.

[GodBlessUSA]

This breaks my heart. Prayers for that little one. I hope she fully recovers.

I know the parents must be devastated. I will never understand how parents can feel comfortable having a dog with their children so young.

[Darnright]

>The family said they don't know why the dog attacked as he had never showed signs of aggression before.<

Sure he hadn't. And I'm Queen of England.

[Darnright]

>Bichon Frises and Cairn Terriers cannot do this (not that they would, temperamentally).

But, "slinging" is part of the pit bull's reportoire, as is "dragging" and "biting." <

Cairn Terriers most certainly will "sling" a smaller animal they attack (and they are TERRIERS). I've seen a Cairn grab a young kitten and kill it ferociously.

The same Cairn bit the neigbor kid (to whose family the nasty thing belonged) in the face.

They are not all cute little Totos.

[Darnright]

>neigbor

Spell check is our friend. That should be, "neighbor".

[shezza]

Speaking of cute little Toto's, our next-door neighbors had a Toto-esque Yorkshire Terrier. That thing bit every ankle or hand that came in striking distance, including those of its owners, whose daughters cuddled and kissed the thing constantly. The good thing was, its mouth was too tiny to do any damage. But the desire to attack was definitely there in its beady little eyes.

[dervish]

I am very sorry for this poor little girl. Small children should never be left alone with dogs.

Pit Bulls were bred to fight other dogs. They were bred to be dog aggressive, but in order to handle them in this "sport" they were people responsive and not people aggressive. Being dog aggressive is much different than people aggressive.

Much of the problem with Pit Bulls come from two things in my opinion -- bad owners and the fact that these are highly powerful animals pound for pound. They are not inherently bad dogs.

[Rodney King]

Stupid f'ing parents. Anyone who has one of these dogs around kids is a moron.

[Ditter]

The problem is that dogs do not always recognize young children as humans. They see them as another animal because their little faces are right down on the dogs level. That little piece of info comes right from vets and dog trainers. Even a dog who would never attack an adult will see nothing wrong with attacking a small child.

[kanawa]

If you're going to use that lady's picture it might be proper to credit her site....

Pitbulls on the Web

Please note that Pit Bull dogs are not the breed of choice for multiple dog households. It requires a lot of precautions, a good understanding of the breed, and quite a bit of vigilance to be able to live with several dogs created and bred to fight other dogs. There is no room for mistakes and we do not take our dogs for granted, even the ones who "appear" to get along.

All our dogs are strictly supervised and separate when no one is home. Some of them don't get along at all and cannot be in the same room together. We use extra-large wire crates, kennels, strong baby gates, and we live on a rotation routine.

We realize that our lifestyle is unusual but we are rescuers, not regular pet owners. We made an informed and well thought through decision when we began rescuing Pit Bulls. We never expected all those dogs to get along and we knew that Pit Bulls often did not do well in pack. We believed those dogs needed help anyway and we decided to jump in fully aware of the sacrifices it would require.

Our dogs constantly prove us they are worth the precautions and efforts. We don't think this lifestyle is for everyone however, and we do not encourage people to have more than one or two Pit Bulls.

[the OlLine Rebel]

I really don't understand why people think it's black & white why breeds/types/species(?) are like they are.


All the nonsense out now and spouted alot here is that it's ALL the owners' fault - or SOME1 in the dog's past.

BS.

Genetics is at least half of it, people. Get real. If it weren't, there would be NO different breeds at all. Part of genetics is temperament/character/personality. Be serious.

Stop automatically blaming some human, and glibly accusing them of "abuse" or "neglect", or even just "poor socialization". I'm sick of this BS. Yes it's all part of it, but ONLY part.

A basically good dog is hard to make bad. A basically bad dog is hard to make good.

That's the truth!

[Darnright]

>The problem is that dogs do not always recognize young children as humans. They see them as another animal because their little faces are right down on the dogs level. That little piece of info comes right from vets and dog trainers. Even a dog who would never attack an adult will see nothing wrong with attacking a small child.<

There are other dog experts who use the analogy that dogs recognize the adults in the home as alpha, and see themselves as alpha to young children in the home. If a subordinate to the dog gets "out of line", the dog sees nothing wrong with biting the subordinate.

Basically the same idea, expressed in a different way.

[HairOfTheDog]

our next-door neighbors had a Toto-esque Yorkshire Terrier. That thing bit every ankle or hand that came in striking distance, including those of its owners, whose daughters cuddled and kissed the thing constantly. The good thing was, its mouth was too tiny to do any damage. But the desire to attack was definitely there in its beady little eyes.

Some people have nasty little dogs (and awful big ones) but the point not to be understated is that kids need to be supervised around dogs for two reasons, one, to make sure the dog behaves... but just as important, to make sure the CHILD behaves. Little kids are mean to dogs. Some intentionally, some just lacking in awareness.

Two of the dogs I've had in my adult life have snapped at children, both times in self defense. One was a cocker mix, and the child visiting had chased her around the house with determination, after being told by me repeatedly to stop. I got no support from the parents at all. When we heard my dog yelp and turned, the kid had fistfulls of hair and was pulling the dog out from under a chair. Zulu snapped and gave the kid a red mark right on her nose. Thinking she was in trouble, Zulu then ran away, while the child started wailing.

My large dog Gidget also bit a child who I found out had been chasing her around the yard with a whiffle bat, had grabbed her collar, and when she rolled over submissively, the kid fell on her. She bit the source of her pain, the kid's knee on her leg. Neither of my dogs left a mark on the children that lasted more than a few minutes.

A child also did something cruel to my Labrador, grabbed his [balls] and proceded to twist them around and around. Now, my Labrador, like most Labradors, had the patience and constitution of a saint. He cryed and scrambled to get away, but he didn't bite her. I don't think it'd be in him to bite anyone any time for any reason.

I think most family dog bite situations involve culpability, if not real blame, in the child's behavior. They need to be taught how to treat dogs, and most family dogs who snap are trying to do just that, in the same way they'd discipline rowdy pups in the pack.

It's silly, Ditter, to say they 'don't recognize young children as humans". We can't know what a dog's sense of self and family really are, but stable normal dogs most certainly understand babies. They know exactly what children are, I believe, and most have great patience with them. But dogs, particularly little dogs, are very vulnerable to being hurt by kids, and they will quite naturally snap at them if no other relief is offered by parents who should be stopping them from being "innocently mean".

Why do pit bulls snap in such a radical and lethal way? Well, personally, I think it's because Nitro is volitile by nature. I do not buy the premise that the aggressive nature is so finely tuned that they can be called 'only' dog aggressive.... Aggression is not that finely tuned by breeding, only perhaps by training. A pit bull has in him an ancestry that fought to the death, I don't think hoodlums in back alleys that are breeding these dogs are as sophisticated as you give them credit for.

[Ditter]

Either way it makes sense. Dogs bred for aggression against anything are going to revert to that. If it is a big powerful breed bred to fight to the death, they are going to hurt and kill things. My Jack Russels are in the back yard right now chasing small rodents and digging holes. Doing what they were bred to do. Why should it surprise me?

[the OlLine Rebel]

Sound advice, but it doesn't delineate between a dog who simply replies to irritation and 1 who won't let it go.

Many good dogs who are irritated by something will simply "snap" (literally) and let it go at that. Kind of like we mite yell "stop it now!", or maybe slap a kid. Then it's over.

The problem dogs are those that, even if replying to simple pain (and sometimes, let's be honest, not), won't "let it go". They won't stop the "discipline" - it's not merely a snap, but anything from a series of snaps all the way up to latching onto the offender. In essence, it is a fight rather than just discipline.

[sinkspur]

OK. Name another Cairn that did the same thing. I can go out to Google and drag up examples of fifteen pit bull attacks in the last two weeks.

And that's just those that were bad enough to make the paper.

[Ditter]

You think it is silly to say dogs often recognize small children as another animal? Go tell that to the vets in my brothers vet clinic. A discussion of 4 vets with a combined total of aprox. 120 years of experience said that. I have heard professional dog trainers say the same thing.

[HairOfTheDog]

There may be something in the wiring of the fighting dogs, that they don't stop when it should be over. Normal dog fights between rival males don't go to the death. It's not about death, it's about dominance, and stops when the lesser dog lays down.

Pit bulls take it further. They don't/can't stop.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Part of the "problem" is that only big dogs generally cause much damage that is *reported*.

I can't tell you how many times the Napolean complex has shown thru on little dogs. Not all - I've known of many nice 1s. Also known quite a few unstable 1s.

Including the "cock-a-poo" of neighbor-friends I once cared for while they were gone (I was maybe 11 or 12). I sat down while she ate, she came up on my lap, stiff and sort of looking at me, and when I moved a bit - vicious angry growling snap at me. Now this too could be spoiling the dog and not nipping those tendencies in the bud - she died some time later and was never a "problem" per se. But I knew however it came about she was unstable and not totally trust-worthy.

[HairOfTheDog]

Yes, I do think it's silly, because we aren't in their heads. I don't know what my dog thinks I am, besides Food-God and Door-God, and "she who we must obey". Pack animals, and herd animals, understand the concept of young, and normal well-balanced dog brains do not go after children as prey, but rather see them as small, sometimes annoying parts of the family, that they either see as something to protect, or as competition for affection, depending on their temperament.