Posted on 02/11/2005 12:47:07 PM PST by ambrose
Pit bull locks jaws on Auckland teen's face
12 February 2005
By PAUL MULROONEY and KELLY ANDREW
A pit bull terrier that attacked a South Auckland teenager remained clamped to her face for 45 seconds as three relatives fought desperately to prise its jaws apart.
Police suspect the pit bull may have attacked the woman after becoming agitated by a domestic argument at a Manurewa house.
Animal behaviourist Steph Loader said that with some canines, raised voices was all it would take before before the dog would "get in there".
The victim suffered facial, ear and throat injuries and was in a stable condition in Middlemore Hospital last night after surgery.
Sergeant Rob Hunkin said the three relatives who rushed to help all suffered cuts as they used bare hands to prise the dog's jaws from the left side of the woman's face.
The dog has been seized and impounded by Manukau City Council and will be kept locked up during a police investigation. It can be destroyed only with the owner's permission or after a court order.
Police have joined council officials in trying to find the owner of the unregistered dog and said it might have belonged to a family member.
Police and the dog rangers plan to persuade the family to have the dog destroyed. "We don't want dogs in the neighbourhood attacking people," Mr Hunkin said.
Ms Loader said that in a domestic dispute and when a dog believed itself more dominant than its owners, it would not take much to make the dog agitated and aggressive.
"Particularly if the dog feels it is his place to sort out a problem like this. If it hears screaming and shouting it can sense what is happening with people and then become aroused.
"The pit bull has a very low threshold for this kind of behaviour."
Council environmental health and compliance manager Kevin Jackson said pit bulls were classified as a menacing breed and had to be de-sexed. In a public place they had to be muzzled.
The incident was the third serious dog attack in Auckland this year. On January 17, a five-year-old girl was taken to hospital after a German shepherd-Labrador cross lunged at her outside a supermarket in Auckland.
She was left with a flap of skin hanging from her face and needed reconstructive surgery.
Three days later, a 10-year-old boy was bitten in the face by a pit pull terrier near his Auckland home. He needed 17 stitches for a 2.5-centimetre puncture wound near his lip.
Dog attacks in 2003, including one in which an American Staffordshire terrier mauled Carolina Anderson, aged 7, prompted strict new dog control laws, which came into force two years ago.
Owners of dogs involved in attacks face stiff penalties. Councils can declare dogs to be menacing if they pose a threat to people, farm animals, pets or protected wildlife.
I can't tell from the article, but it sounds like the dog reacted to someone berating its' owner.
Morale of story: Don't yell at someone who has a bonded pit bull in the same room.
Morale=moral
jeez
There were two female elementary school students attacked by a pit bull in Austin TX yesterday after class. I could not find anything in the paper today or I would have posted it on FR.
One girl had her earring ripped out of her ear and a bite on that ear. The other had bites on her leg.
A teacher pulled the animal off the girls and got them into a bus. One of the people in the neighborhood killed the animal.
Any bets the owner will press charges against the person who killed his pet???
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