"The family states that the dog was never aggressive in the past and at the time of the attack the child was supervised, which negates any endangerment concerns,"
If this does not say it all. This was not a gang banger, not someone that trained their dog to be aggressive. It was a family pet. It just happened.
I really don't see how anything other than raw emotionalism can defend having a dangerous dog in a home with children (and with my admitted emotionalism, a pit bull anywhere near a residential neighborhood).
There is nothing in the story that says the dog was raised right, as no one ever researches this anyways, taking the dog owner’s word for it that the dog was just a great family pet. In fact, they were in the yard with the dog and it appears the dog attacked when it saw the child pick something up, which is a glaring sign of food/toy aggression. Any person whose dog has food or toy aggression needs to have their head examined if they feel it is ok to let a child near the dog. If they were the responsible owners you seem to believe they are, they would never have taken the chance and either would have fixed the issue before this happened or euthanized the dog, or even kept it away from small children just to be safe.
You don’t have to be a gang-banger to have a dog that bites, but not paying attention to how the dog behaves is just as irresponsible and dangerous. They could have fixed the problem, but they either never bothered to do anything about it or they didn’t even know, which means they probably just threw food/toys at the dog and left it alone to eat/play.
I have a dog that had food aggresssion (German Shepherd) and it started showing up as a young pup. I nipped it in the bud early so that when he became a giant, hundred pound eating machine, I won’t have to worry about getting mauled if my ring slips off my finger and lands in his food. I will not ever trust any of my dogs fully when it comes to food and toys anyway, and I know that children will not have a chance to get bitten by my dog because I will take precautions to ensure they are never set up to fail.
Many dogs have food aggression. This is not a breed-specific issue, and loving your dog lots and lots will not fix it. If people are going to have dogs, they need to educate themselves on the breed that is right for them based on size, food, health, and behavior. They are not little furry people, and they need direction more than anything. People need to be more aware of dog behavior and less ignorant about the differences between emotion-driven people and pack-driven dogs.
Most dog attacks are not by dogs owned by criminals, but from uneducated, ignorant dog owners not doing the right thing to ensure the safety of their pets. This is a factor that ALL dog attacks share, not just the ones with pit bulls. But since the media only reports the two or three daily pit bull attacks out of 13 thousand other daily dog attacks, all you see is “pit bull” everywhere and think it must be an epidemic. What about all the thousands of others getting attacked and going to the hospital?
The media reports what makes money. Most people won’t read the whole paper, but pick and choose the stories that look interesting. The media is a business and they know how to market the news so that the maximum amount of people are reading it. They are not a public service, so defending them just keeps making more money while keeping the defenders ignorant of everything else happening in the world. Thank you for helping the media make money.