Posted on 08/09/2006 11:07:19 AM PDT by Abathar
SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco mother who lost her son to foster care because of the family's pit bulls will have to wait until next week to see if she will get her child back.
During a closed hearing Tuesday, a commissioner in the juvenile division of San Francisco Superior Court put off making a ruling on whether 7-year-old Andrew Louie will be allowed to return home.
The boy was taken from his mother, Valerie Louie, in December because social workers feared the family's pit bulls posed a threat to the child.
At the time, authorities had decided that Louie was not doing enough to protect her son from two of her dogs. San Francisco's child protection agency removed the boy from their home and placed him in foster care
Another hearing is scheduled for next week.
Tough call on this one for me, it will be interesting to see if the mom gives up the dogs for her son though...
They should remove the pit bulls if it's an issue, not the child.
Not to test the mother's love ... but just because pit bulls are dangerous.
Excellent point. I don't think they have any authority or moral right to remove either, but they have far less right to remove the child.
Some may have already forgotten the moron, perverted (dog sex movies) couple in San Freakcisco that turned their pit bulls loose on a lady -- the attack killed her. These types of people should be hung. They have NO BRAINS. They should not keep dangerous animals, or be allowed to keep such dangerous animals in a tightly packed city.
IMHO, total insanity of mindless, selfish people. Clinton votes for sure. What else out of San Freakcisco.
They probaby have more legal rights to yank a kid from his mom than they do to take the dogs. The state will guarantee paying for his foster care, but not the kennel bill I bet.
I mentioned several times that I have a neighbor who has a pit bull and a small child. No problems there. The dog is very sweet, the child is strictly supervised (never left alone with the dog) and she is being taught not to pull its tail or otherwise provoke. A number of dog breeds can be aggressive for genetic reasons, and some normally sweet dispositioned breeds can suddenly turn without warning. But I still think that pit bulls are getting a bad rap because of incidents where they were raised by drug dealers and unsavory types to be fighting dogs or to attack.
I think to take the child away in this situation is an extreme overreaction.
The child was later sexually abused in a foster home.
It's not a tough call at all. If Big Brother were to do anything they should have taken the dogs, not the child, and put the mother up on match.com to find a father, and helped her move out of San Francisco to a more healthy place to raise her child.
I live with a pit bull... its a doll... ain't never hurt anyone.
I would take a pit bull over a GS. I was attacked as a toddler, and I know I wasn't doing anything to the dog, because my father was watching us from several feet away.
How many kids in this country have pit bulls for pets? Do they all need to be taken away from their parents?
I hope there is more than meets the eye here.
I don't have a lot of faith in child protection types. I've seen families torn apart because of nosy "child experts" whose get all hot and bothered about stuff like homeschooling or smoking or such.
What a lot of people don't realize is once child protection gets involved in your life you lose control over your own family. They don't go away so fast. And you can't do anything like you used to anymore - god forbid if you spank your kid or don't "affirm their feelings" on everything.
By the way, if you are a kid, and told your pets are being destroyed because the state says you can't live with your Mom while they are there, how would you end up feeling?
Nanny-state alert.
A little china doll of a pit bull? No wonder it never hurt anyone.
remember the little kids from "our gang"?
Petey was a pit bull.
There is a void in the information we've been given on this story. Why were social workers involved in this woman's life in the first place? Did someone report this woman and her dogs to the social workers, or were they already involved for other reasons? Have the dogs attacked people before and proven themselves as being dangerous? And if so, why weren't the dogs removed rather than the child?
If these social workers have taken this child away only because they don't like the pit bulls, then they have overstepped their bounds and the child should be returned immediately.
As long as the blood lines are from Eastern Europe they may be OK, but American GSDs generally suck, bigtime. Even the German dogs are getting overbred.
I prefer these:
KNPV Dutch Shepherds are one serious dog. Thank goodness, they aren't pure bred: there's no breed standard and people don't care where the stripse go; they're bred purely for working ability as are most other Dutch and Belgian dogs.
And I have a cat with a very sweet disposition, but she's getting old and cranky (like her human) -- occasionally, she will bite.
So if I were a parent, should I have my child taken away because my cat "might" bite her?
It would be different if there were incidents of this woman's dog biting or otherwise attacking others, and she had done nothing to stop it or get rid of the dog. But I don't see that in the article posted.
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