Posted on 09/20/2009 6:14:00 PM PDT by Chet 99
ST. PETERSBURG Four years ago, Robert Jacks and his wife, Patricia Thiel, rescued a stray dog.
The Labrador-pit bullterrier mix was about 2 years old and had wandered onto the golf course where Jacks works. It was afraid of people. They couple figured it had been abused.
The two dog lovers named it Jake and worked to rehabilitate it. It became part of the family and often would sleep on the couple's bed.
But on Thursday afternoon, something went wrong.
Authorities say Jake fiercely attacked Thiel, a 39-year-old nurse at All Children's Hospital, shortly after 2 p.m., in their fenced-in back yard in Lakewood Estates.
A neighbor coming to Thiel's aid shot and killed the 100-pound dog.
When it was over, Thiel was in critical condition with wounds to her arms, head and neck. Doctors were in surgery late Thursday night working to save her right arm.
Her husband, the golf course superintendent at the St. Petersburg Country Club, spent the night at Tampa General Hospital, trying to fathom why Jake had turned on his wife.
"He was a sweet dog. We don't know what happened," the 43-year-old said. "I'm in shock. It's sad all the way around."
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
I don’t know the details, but I heard a blurb on the news this afternoon that she had taken a turn for the worse. I was out of the car before they came back with the actual story.
I have owned several pits and they are a great breed of dog.
parsy, who wonders what else was at play here
huh? I have never heard of a sweet dog trying to eat someone's arm off.
I’ve known a lot of pits and their owners, and I don’t care what anyone says, they are far too unpredictable. Some, usually the females, were sweet and gentle. Some were great dogs until something set them off one day. Others were nasty to begin with.
I have, over the last several years, adopted 2 dogs from shelters that were pit mixes.
Both were great dogs, lived in the house, slept with us at night, were around my young daughter, and they both turned. One, right after she had puppies, turned violent and attacked my other dog, a puppy, nearly killing it, and then coming after me. I had to lock her up for 2 weeks, until she returned to normal. I don’t know if it was hormones or what, but it could have easily been by daughter.
Another one, a lab/pit mix, was sweet, slept at the foot of our bed, rode in the car with us, even on cross country trips, and never gave me any problems. Until, one day, in our back yard, for no reason, she bared her teeth at my wife and daughter, and if she hadn’t been on a lead, would have attacked them. I took her to the humane shelter that day, because I couldn’t bring myself to shoot her.
I’ll never own, or trust, another one.
OMG, Chet99 posted another anti-pitbull story. Yawn.
Interestingly, this was a lab/pit bull mix. They had two other dogs there that were pit bulls that didn’t attack the woman. If she was trying to break up a dogfight, chances are the pit bulls would not be the most likely to bite her. Contrary to popular belief, that breed was never made for guarding or human aggression. Dogs that attack people are not representative of the pit bull breed.
So what?
"And now for something completely different....."
A Pitbull thread from Chet99!
I live in the area and have been getting regular emails on her condition. The last one was at 5:09 this afternoon and read:
Patty Thiel is doing better today and can move her fingers. This is very encouraging. She will undergo a third operation tomorrow...The dog that ran off was the victim of the fight Patty tried to break up; he was found by Animal Control with severe puncture wounds in his rear legs but he’s home now. He’s in pain but he is recovering. Robert hopes to bail the other 3 dogs out of impound tomorrow; he says they are very stressed and losing weight and he wants them safely back home.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101997_pf.html
I'm not saying that it makes it okay, but pit bulls were not bred to be unstoppable killing machines. They were bred to acquiesce to their master's will. Quite a bit of time goes into training a fighting dog.
It was the lab part of the dog that did that damage...pits don’t attack......
“He was a sweet dog. We don’t know what happened,”
Huh. Never heard that before.
Well, I would disagree. I have seen to many dogs from the pit that are dead or nearly dead and have to be put down to believe this article.
People who breed dogs to fight in a pit, have zero concern over their dogs.
There is great time put in training these dogs, like breaking the legs of cats and throwing them in the pits, or puppies or other small dogs.
The stakes are high and there is much money to be made if the other dog dies.
I’m not defending dog fighting, just pointing out that historically the dogs were bred to do whatever they were trained to do, not to kill everything in sight. They’re extremely malleable.
Obviously because of their historical function, fighting dogs are better equipped to cause damage than other breeds, so when redirected aggression lands on a human, the results are devastating. That being said, it doesn’t mean that every time a pit bull attacks it ‘just snapped’, anymore than a chihuahua can ‘snap’.
My best friend rescued a pit bull-lab mix 10 years ago, and it has NEVER ATTACKED HIM OR ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING! I wonder when chet will post a thread about that?
I had a rescue dog I’m fostering bite me in the face this weekend while we were playing in the yard. Regardless of whether it was intentional or over stimulation, this 10 month old pup will be euthanize tomorrow (not my choice). There is no way a dog who has drawn blood should ever be adopted out. Its a very sad reality with rescued dogs, whether through an organization or rescued from the streets. There’s simply no way of knowing what the past history has been or what untapped triggers there may be.
Yeah, ‘bout then.
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