Posted on 04/22/2016 9:23:33 PM PDT by artichokegrower
A 3-day-old baby was fatally mauled by a pet dog in front of the child's parents at their Mira Mesa home Thursday night, San Diego police said Friday.
The parents were in bed, watching TV, with their newborn son and pit bull-mix dog when the mother coughed, startling the dog, child abuse unit Sgt. Tu Nguyen said.
The dog reacted by biting the baby, he said. The parents pulled the animal off and raced the child to a hospital, where he was declared dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Adding to the choir, I agree, this dog should never have been left unleashed, unsupervised, able to get that close to the baby. Some owners forget how sensitive dog’s sense of smell is. Newborn babies have a marked scent, one that is at times sweet, other times raw from the animal’s perspective.
This may have been the first time this dog has ever smelled or heard or viewed the delicate movements of an infant. Such puppies or young adult dogs don’t always know what is ‘normal’, so they stay on trigger edge. The dog may have been listening to how the baby was breathing and shifting the blankets around, when suddenly, the owner coughs loudly, creating a sharp break, a distracting sensory overload, where the dog doesn’t know what to react to first.
Exactly, but 3 days, it may not see the baby as part of the pack yet.
Exactly. We have a 7 month old, cat not a dog in the house and we still don’t let the cat near the baby alone
No one should allow *any* dog that close to a newly arrived baby.
The sounds and smells, much more obvious to a dog, can overwhelm the nicest dog in the world.
Which is why they give lists out on how to prepare the animal and how long to wait to introduce (like boarding the animal if needed). Animals are always unknown quantities.
“It is the type of dog you need if you have small children”
Fits in well with my policy of: “Never have a pet or girlfriend whose ass you cannot kick if necessary.”
Indeed, they are.
My reptile forums regularly break out in flame wars over photos of people draping their snakes/lizards over their dogs or allowing them to “cuddle” with cats.
The cat/dog owners always get butt hurt over the admonitions but facts are facts.
In less than a second, Fluffy or Fido can fatally injure your beloved reptile.
Why risk it?
When I was teen, the first thing I taught my Dobes was respect and gentleness for kids.
The breed is inexplicably crazy for children anyway but more is better.
[I suspect the Beauceron/herding dog influence accounts for it]
Around kids, my great concern is being yanked off my feet because the Dobes spotted a kid across the store and want to fly me like a kite so they can go worship it.
:-\
Well.
Some special snowflake did not like the photo of the actual dog and its *obvious* genetics.
Didn’t fit the narrative.
Maybe I’ll be ZOTed for even mentioning it.
Moot at this point but another article says the dog Great Dane/Terrier mix.
I agree and mentioned the same in my PULLED POST that showed the dog in question.
Right!? What happened to the pic of dog??
Uh oh.
There goes the narrative.
If I had a nickel for every pit bull/pit bull mix that killed someone, I’d have a hell of lot more nickels than doing that for any other breed.
I had the audacity to say that it was NOT a pit bull mix and lo and behold, I was right.
How evil of me.
And when t here's a new arrival in a family, the dog has to "learn" that fact.
It was a very tragic mistake for this family to take such a risk, regardless of the breed...
Babies sound like puppies squealing to maternally inclined dogs and possibly competing pups to non-maternal [or male] dogs.
Their hearing and sense of smell is hundreds of times more sensitive than ours.
Babies are sensory overload to all dogs, but most people have the sense to not shove the family dog and baby together, right off the bat.
At 3 days old, the kid had *just* come home from the hospital to a dog who had lived there for years.
It was madness.
Poor kid.
In a perfect world, they’d be charged for the baby’s death.
Here’s my source:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-ln-me-newborn-baby-mauled-to-death-by-family-dog-20160422-story.html
Says Great Dane/Terrier..Hmmm
& dog does look like a mix but who knows.
Nah, irt was obviously negligent, but not criminal. It would serve no purpose to incarcerate anyone for this.
They could never be punished any more that what they'll have to endure for the rest of their lives.
And I assume the dog has been humanely destroyed...
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