Girl, 10, was killed trying to help dog

San Antonio Express-News ^ | 14 January 2007 | Michelle Mondo

[Racehorse]

Lori Jones heard her daughter's screams. She ran into the backyard and saw the pit bull on top of her daughter. It had bitten Amber in the stomach and was now attached to her neck. Frantic, Amber's mother tried to push the dog off. A man rushed to help and added the needed strength to get the dog away from both mother and daughter.

. . .

As they waited for the ambulance Lori Jones held her hands over the wounds in her daughter's neck and stomach. The dog continued to hover. Amber's father, Robert, drove from his job at the Hilton Palacio del Rio downtown to University Hospital, where Amber was airlifted.

Amber died just a couple hours later at about 6:30 p.m.

. . .

The family wants Amber's death to be a lesson to others about the dangers of dogs. But, they said, they had no reason to think this dog, whose name they did not know, would ever attack their daughter.

"She was in the back just like she had been 100 times before," Megan said.

[solosmoke]

"I don't think I've ever heard of a fatal Dauschund attack. :-)"

There have been at least two. ANY dog, no matter how small, is capable of killing. Maybe not a grown man, but a life nonetheless. Westies, Pomeranians, Labs, Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, all have claimed at least one life. It has nothing to do with the breed.

A dog that is hurt or scared may, and often does, attack the person trying to help it. With a dog this strong, and NO ADULTS AROUND, this was a totally preventable death, and says nothing about the aggressiveness of any breed.

[eastforker]

Animals that attack humans or kill other animals should be compassionately euthanized. Otherwise, what are they guilty of? .......Guilty of being an animal, reverting to the laws of the animal kingdom. No matter how much I love our animals if I ever thought one of them could endanger a human life or do grave physical harm, I would have no reservations in puting that animal down, period, with whatever I had available at the time. About an hour ago I had a confrontation with my Jack Russel that had just pissed in the house. He has always considered me the alpha dog so to speak but he got in my face but finaly retreated. This dog is real close to family members but I would have no, none, reservations about puting him down if I ever thought he lost his fear of me. And if you don't think a 15 pound dog can't hurt someone, you better think again.

[solosmoke]

"Pit Bulls are known to attack for no reason or any reason"

Well, there you have it. And you get your information where, exactly? The media? Because every single reputable animal welfare organization, animal behaviorist, or Veterinarian disagree with this statement. There is not one breed that attacks without provocation, unless something is physically wrong with the dog, like springer rage, for example.

So, you are telling me that this dog attacked for no reason? The dog was in distress. That is a reason. The parents of the girl didn't even know the dog's name, and yet she had been "back there" a hundred times, and they trusted the dog?

It seems to me that in any other case where the dog is any other breed and this happens (and it does, a lot), you don't hear about it because if it isn't the breed to hate of the decade, then it isn't news. People always try to make excuses when a "good dog" does this, but when it's the media's money pit (no pun intended), there is never an excuse. In this situation, like a hundred before it, a tragedy could have been prevented with educated parents and responsible dog ownership.

[WV Mountain Mama]

Well, to be fair, Kellen was also taken out in a parking lot when he whiskey throttled his street bike. He is more harm to himself. Though the comments between him and Joey were very entertaining!

[spacejunkie]

"My sympathies. I suspect my lack of patience would have resulted in the Chow-Chow becoming Puppy Chow after such an encounter."


Thanks and, he did. Animal control quarantined him for the mandatory 10 days but then he was euthanized. I don't tolerate any animals that bite humans. I was bit twice on the hand HARD New Year's Eve by a standard poodle. Jerk of a dog that thinks HE'S the boss. Needless to say I'd put that dog thru rigorous training prior to being around people again and then tata to him too if it didn't cease.

I am far from a bleeding heart on dogs that show these tendancies but I'm tenacious like a pit bull when it comes to defending the breed against ignorance when its the owners that need serious jail time and fines. Right now there's nothing stopping the same losers from getting bad dogs over and over and over. And they will NEVER neuter or spay them and so, the cycle continues of more puppies being mistreated that are born of parents mistreated.

Same thing happens w/ humans.

[bboop]

hahah, Dogs of Peace indeed. You are exactly right.

I would never teach my kid not to be afraid of dogs. Some dogs are ok, many are just wolves with a thin veneer of domestication. Would you rather have your kid wary of a dog who turned out to be friendly or naively assume a dog was friendly when it wasn't.

I love dogs, have an ADHD idiot Border Collie, and have been bitten by a family's German shepherd that they assured me was 'old and friendly.' I do not trust dogs until I know more about them, individually.

[solosmoke]

"Only idiots own pit bulls. It's a tragedy waiting to occur."

There are between four to six million pit bulls alive today, making them one of, if not the most popular dog right now. The percentage of them that inflict harm on a person is 0.000002%, which is the same percentage compared to population of any other breed of dog. If it really was a breed problem, wouldn't you think there would be many more deaths?

In fact, according to bite statistics, they have between one and three percent of the bites, including the ones that attack, maim, and cause death, but they are about ten percent of the population of dogs. Labs, Dalmations, German Shepherds, and Cocker Spaniels are always the highest percent of bites.

I take offense to your remark because I have two of these dogs, and I am college-educated, successful, responsible, and my IQ score would make your jaw drop. I have these dogs not because I am a thug, and definitely not for home protection. I got them because after four solid years of researching the breed trying to prove to a friend how dangerous his pit bulls were, I came to the EDUCATED conclusion that the evidence is much to the contrary.

These dogs HAVE been bred to be dog-aggressive for years and years, but all the while, they have also been bred for the same period of time to be extremely human-friendly. They had to be that way in order for the dog fighters to stop a heated fight and not get bit. Any dog that showed signs of human aggression was culled, and fast.

You will see if you read the threads, ALL of these incidents have the same pattern, and it isn't the breed. Any dog running loose, constantly chained up, intact, and especially with puppies has a much higher chance of attacking, no matter the breed. You can see this if you look at the pit bull attacks, and also the lesser publicised dog attacks by any other breed. When you add to that mix unsupervised children, THAT spells disaster.

There are 56 breeds of dog that have taken human lives all over the world, and all of them have been reported as that breed when it was known, except for the pit bull. The CDC study so often referred to on this board is a testament to how innacuracies in media reports can turn any popular breed into a monster.

They use every type of Retriever/Lab breed and separate them all, all the spitz-type dogs have their own individual categories, even mixed breeds like wolf hybrids get their own, but any dog even remotely resembling a pit bull, (and some that don't) are all grouped together into "pit bull type". There are at least 16 different pure breeds completely unrelated to the pit bull terrier that can look strikingly similar to it, but they are lumped together. To say that doesn't affect how one type of dog is percieved is nonsense. That is the main reason why the CDC no longer does this study. It was far too inaccurate to be considered meaningful, especially considering the fact that every case was taken from media reports, with no experts involved.

[Sally'sConcerns]

Dogs act strictly on instinct. And, I disagree that Rufus bit you because "he didn't recognize your smell."

Rufus bit you because he was distressed and in pain...and he was lashing out at anything that moved as his way of defending himself against further injury and he saw a hand and bit it....even though it was the hand of his owner.

You can disagree all you want, it's not going to negate the fact Rufus let my fiance pick him up within a 3-4 minute timeframe from when he bit me. Rufus was my dog and had lived with me for 9 months before my fiance ever entered the picture. I had raised him from the time I could hold him in one hand up until he was 1.5 years old (which was when he was hit by the car). My fiance had only been around for about 8-9 months of those 18 months.

He also saw my fiance's hand but didn't bite it. As I said, the dog did recognize my voice because he calmed down and stopped his screaming when he heard me. He didn't recognize my smell as it was covered with the aforementioned household cleaning smells.

[Don W]

Pit bulls people whose names start with an apology and carry an unreasoning hatred for any of G*d's creatures should be hunted with no bag limit.

There, fixed it.

Your implacable hatred is unbecoming. It's fine to dislike the breed, for whatever reason, but to carry on in a blind, neo-liberal RAGE over a small subset of the species bespeaks some really deep-seated issues.

It's wrong to hate something just because it SEEMS to represent everything you fear. A pitbull or rottie or st.bernard is definitely capable of creating great havoc. That's why WE are given the responsibility to teach and train them well.

That said, I'd rather deal with a somewhat aggressive pit than the type of predators running around the inner cities. I know dog psychology, and what motivates them. Humans are FAR too messed up for me to try calming.

[ARridgerunner]

This story says that the dog had been caught just like this before and she had helped him, just as she did this time.

But no one helped her...she could not know the danger she was in.

Too bad there are no responsible adults in this tragic story.

Even knowledgeable adults would be very cautious when safely freeing a dog truly caught by his collar on a fence. (Muzzled dogs have been known to break their own necks trying to free themselves from fences that catch their muzzles.)

Btw, never ever chain a dog, either.

[solosmoke]

Perhaps your dog was more relieved to see both of you, and perhaps he was in less pain by the time your fiancee came out. There was a study done showing that dogs often recognise their owners by the way they look as well as their smell. Not faces, but general body outlines, I believe. If this was the case, smelling strange and stooping over the dog may have led it to believe you were someone else, but seeing your fiancee walk toward him (generally the outline a dog would see in common greetings) may have helped. However, dogs have such powerful noses that even with all the chemicals on you, he probably would have been able to recognize you by smell anyway. He may have been confused at first, but make no mistake, no matter how many years you spend with a dog and how friendly it is, if it is frightened or in pain, it will do what instinct tells it to do, and if that means biting the hand that helps it, no matter who it is, then so be it.

[Racehorse]

ANY dog, no matter how small, is capable of killing.

Yes. See this link provided by Verloona Ti.

Well, this weiner dog put a human infant into critical condition.

And my reply at 51.

Still, size matters. The kindest, most gentle monster of a dog terrifies others just because it exists. IMHO, for that reason alone, they have no place in ordinary neighborhoods. I'd ban them. But, that's just me.

With a dog this strong, and NO ADULTS AROUND, this was a totally preventable death, and says nothing about the aggressiveness of any breed.

Yes, it was a preventable death. No, it says a lot about the lethality of some breeds, and their natural aggression when provoked by something . . . distress, intrusion, food, mating . . . something.

The only thing more dangerous are free roaming packs running amok.

[Don W]

contribute to the extermination of this species.

Species name: canis familiaris. AKA the domestic dog. ALL domestic dogs.

Are you muslim?

[brytlea]

It seems to me that the dog's owner is clearly stupid. A low fence, a dog chained, and a repeat scenario. Geeze.
susie

[brytlea]

I hope you can correctly identify a pit bull (which is not really a breed actually).
http://www.pbrc.net/poppysplace/games/AdultFindabull/findpitbull_v4.html

susie

[brytlea]

If one is going to chain a dog outside (a poor practice that can easily lead to aggression) the dog should not be chained near enough to a fence to get over it and get hung up. I don't think that's rocket science (that is not aimed at you, but at the owner who was clearly negligent).
susie

[solosmoke]

I agree that if it had been a cocker spaniel in the same situation and the same reaction, the girl would be alive. Probably pretty messed up, but alive. However, something needs to be said for the size and strength of a dog. Not only that, but retrieving and flushing breeds are bred to have a very soft bite so that they don't hurt the game.

Pit bulls were obviously bred to have a much stronger bite in order to grip cattle, and later, other dogs. This says nothing of their temperaments, but does contribute in a major way to their reputation. This is perhaps why there are many more bites from cockers and labs, but not as much damage. It doesn't mean these breeds are less human-aggressive, just that they aren't built to do damage.

The same can be said for other dogs with hard bites, such as German Shepherds, Rottweilers, and Dobies. They have all had their time in the spotlight when they became too popular for their own good and had top billing in the CDC's list of dogs causing human deaths.

One interesting thing to note here, despite the CDC's admission that their study was flawed: No matter what breed comes into popularity over the years, the average number of human deaths remains the same. Even though pit bulls outnumber most other breeds right now, the total number of deaths by dogs has not gone up. They have simply replaced the last popular dog.

[Clara Lou]

I can only agree with you. Stupid is as stupid does.

[brytlea]

I don't know how you go about abolishing what isn't a breed. There are several breeds called pits, generally American Staffordshire Terriers, American Pit Bull Terriers and Staffordshire Bull Terriers. There are other breeds that get tossed in by people who don't know what their looking at, including Bull Terriers (Spuds McKenzie dog) English Bulldogs, Mastiffs of various sorts and even Boxers.
I would bet (altho admit I have no proof) that many of these dogs who do this are not registered and are of uncertain parentage.
So, who gets to decide what's a Pit and then abolish it? BTW I don't have any of these breeds, I have Golden Retrievers and Italian Spinoni.
susie

[Sally'sConcerns]

All I can do is report what happened with my dog. I doubt he was in less pain because he'd broken his hip and leg. As I didn't approach him from behind and he also was responding to my voice I know he recognized I was there.

When he bit me I was standing and then squatting down next to him in the same place my fiance squatted down shortly afterward to pick him up. He also wasn't able to see either one of us walking up to him because of the position he was laying on the street. In the position he was in he could see both of us once we walked up close enough to his head where we could squat down and then lift him up.

I was concerned when fiance did pick him up because I had thought we could make a sling type of thing with the towel and carry him in on that. The fiance picked him up under his front legs to where he could lay his head down on fiance's shoulder.

Not sure he'd have been able to smell me over the Windex, Clorox CleanUp and Barkeeper's Friend I'd been using. Anyway, I survived the bites and our pup survived his injuries.

I had to keep him still for 5 weeks after his surgery. Our vet let us borrow a playpen he wasn't using and I kept it padded with a couple of comforters as well as a regular blanket. For the first 3 weeks I could lay those plastic liners like they use in the hospitals under him and would only occasionally need to wash stuff. The last 2 weeks were entirely different though. I was washing his bedding 2-3 times a day. He and I both were glad when he was finally able to get out of 'jail'.