Dog mauls 3 week old
 

A newborn baby picked up and dragged out of his crib by his family's dog remains in critical condition.

Thursday morning, officials at Kentucky Children's Hospital said Alexander James Smith had been upgraded to serious condition. But they later said that was a mistake.

At a home along Beaumont Road, just outside Nicholasville, investigators say the newborn was hauled off by the neck by his family dog.

The family of 3-day-old Alexander James Smith have asked for a member of the public to adopt the dog, Dakota. Michael Smith, AJ's father, says the dog will not be returning to their home.

Smith told reporters on Tuesday that a nurse told the family little AJ will make it. He has multiple injuries, including a cracked skull and ribs and a punctured lung.

Michael Smith told 27 NEWSFIRST they had just laid AJ down to sleep in his crib for a nap, and within minutes it got quiet in the house. He said they went into the room where AJ was supposed to be sleeping and found that he was gone.

Micheal Smith said he and his wife searched for ten minutes outside before finding Dakota, the family dog, had a hold of AJ. According to the family, AJ was in bad shape, but they don't believe Dakota meant to hurt him. They say Dakota, a Native American Indian dog, has been with the family for four years, and they had recently been working to get him comfortable with the new addition to their home.

The Jessamine County Sheriff's Department is investigating the incident.


link

so what do you do...put the dog down or give it a pass?

Poor baby. :(

I'd just send the dog away. Dogs can get jealous of babies and new additions to the family. I blame the parents. I don't believe in having unattended animals around kids under a certain age.

Michael Smith told 27 NEWSFIRST they had just laid AJ down to sleep in his crib for a nap, and within minutes it got quiet in the house. He said they went into the room where AJ was supposed to be sleeping and found that he was gone.

The dog managed to get the baby out of the crib?

agreed...I cant believe this one guy today who actually tried to compare this incident to Vick...

But moving on...yes..animals can be very unpredictable about newborns and I have no idea of what they were trying to do to help the dog adjust but it just doesn't work that way.

here is something else to consider:

Mr Michael Smith initially headed to the backyard, knowing that Dakota, a mixed breed with wolves in its ancestry, had a reputation for stealing household items like cups and wallets and depositing them there. He spent 10 minutes looking among the trees and bushes in the two-acre fenced backyard before finding the dog and child about 200 yards (metres) behind the house.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking...ry_406376.html

Yes.

I have mixed feelings about criminal charges against the parents in cases like this, but it bugs me when people want to blame animals for being animals.

If the dog is unsafe generally, then put it down. If, like the relatively recent case in Florida, your snake can't be kept in it's cage because it's too big and powerful, you probably need to get rid of the snake by giving it to someone prepared to keep it safely or get a much more powerful cage yourself. (I don't get snake ownership, so I won't face this particular problem.)

But no one should be particularly surprised or outraged at the animals when they regard prey-sized humans as prey.

ETA: actually this case is weirder according to the parents. They seem to think the dog regarded the baby like a puppy.

they ought to tie the parents down, strategically place pork chops all over their bodies and let "dakota" have at it. idiot parents!!

Not blaming the dog here...dogs are dogs. The parents should have shut the door to the room with the baby in it and not left it open to the dog in the first place. I personally feel that children under the age of 10 should not be left alone with dogs in general. Partially because you never know what may happen, and also because children are pretty excitable and that can affect animals.

lol @ the bold. Yes, I agree, the parents should have been more responsible, because some animals are genetically more aggressive than others, and many can be extremely violent for no apparent reason.

I think the under 10 standard is too strict, but no dog should have unsupervised access to an infant for sure.

I think we anthropomorphize our pets so much that we forget they are really just animals.

True, but to some people they do make great companions, so they see them as more than just animals. It's just that a lot people who love their pets tend to think of them as being aggressive but not violent, and that is so far from the truth.

How sad :( I'd just get rid of the dog if this was his first truly violent act.

Oh, I love my dogs a kind of crazy amount and they get better treatment than a lot of people in the world, but I try really hard to remember they could hurt someone.

What kind of dogs do you have?

I think that's what they are trying to do.

Honestly, I'm not sure "truly violent" is the best description. How much of the injuries are a reflection of the dog's aggression and how much are a reflection of how fragile a three DAY old baby is?

Certainly, I'm not suggesting people let dogs drag babies around, but I'm not even sure that what the owners describe in the second linked article was aggressive behavior. The dog liked to take stuff from the house to the back yard. In this case, he took the baby. The problem, if you ask me, was that the dog had access to the baby.

oh, lord!
this story made my heart stop!
i couldn't imagine how i would have felt if this had happened to annalisse!

Yeah. I actually wasn't thinking it as violence when I first read it. Not sure what in my mind made me switch over to think it was. I just figured either the dog saw the baby as his property or just thought it'd be another fun item to add to the backyard collection.

But still, I couldn't live with that dog anymore no matter what his mindset was. It'd just be too heart breaking, I think.

This really is a sad story: I've heard a lot about it on our local news.

The baby was born three weeks prematurely and had just been released from the hospital. Because he was premature, the parents hadn't gotten the nursery ready yet. The parents had left the nursery door open because they didn't yet have a monitor. In fact, the dad had just put the baby down and was getting ready to go get a monitor when the mom discovered the crib was empty.

Poor AJ has multiple skull fractures, a punctured lung and more than one broken rib. The initial report was that Dakota had taken the baby out of the crib to play with him, but some people are now speculating that Dakota was just trying to mother him.

I don't blame the dog, and I don't think the parents do, either. After the story broke, several people - from across the country - volunteered to adopt Dakota. She has never demonstrated violent behavior before.

It's just so sad. I can't imagine what this poor family is going through.

I posted this before, but a couple of weeks ago there was a dog owner who hadn't brought his dog in to see a vet in 9 years, and the dog was 10 years old. Not only did it bother me that he didn't care about his dog's health, but the fact that he didn't even know he could be slapped with a $250.00 fine for not bringing his dog in to get his shots. I'm not sure what it is in other states, but it's $250.00 here. If you're too irresponsible to have a pet then don't have one at all. Seriously.

What was this guy like? I ask because I think some people have fundamentally different attitudes about animals and pets, and it's not simply irresponsibility exactly.

For example, I think, that sometimes farmers have more of a utilitarian attitude about animals and since they also might have a lot of land and little chance of contract between their animals and other people or pets, they don't really think about rules and laws that say suburban pet owners are kind of consumed with.

I think this is especially likely to be true of old people.

Oh, I agree about how it would be heartbreaking, and that's why I have mixed feelings about criminal charges against parents, even in cases worse than this one in terms of "what were you thinking?/maybe neglect." On some level, if you're a person with normal emotional development, living knowing that your baby was hurt because you were an idiot is probably worse than what the criminal justice system could dish out.

I'm also hesitant to blame dogs or the owners of dogs who attack people who enter other people's yards without the dog owners knowledge or permission. We had some cases in Georgia where unsupervised children got badly mauled by dogs that the kids essentially had no business fooling with. I tend to blame the person who should have been watching the kid more than the people who fenced in their dog.

And THIS is why you give away your dog when you have a baby... Some people just shouldn't be parents.

I don't think you have to give your dog away. But you have to be careful about the dog and the baby.

And all dogs are different. I know a good number of dogs who love their new baby companions. Of course, though, they're never left alone. It's like putting a blanket over a time bomb--stupid.

Exactly! It kills me that some people give their pets away just because the woman is pregnant or a new baby is coming (a lot of cats wind up in shelters this way)

You just don't leave an animal alone with the kid
These dumb assed parents should be banned from breeding :rolleyes:

Can't they give dogs like this some kind of meds to mellow it out or something? I've heard of some people doing that.

I'm not sure what he was like. I guess you could say he was in his fifties. He just kept complaining about the cost. We quoted him $655.00 just to look at the dog, and he freaked over that. I mean, if he would have been taking the dog in for regular check ups, he wouldn't see anything near that amount of money. I blame the owners most of the time, because it's not like the animal can take him/herself to the vet. I agree, people do have different attitudes about pets, it's when they have a "I don't care" attitude that bothers me. He just kept mentioning the cost. 9 times out of 10 he'll be back to have the dog put down. That dog was in terrible shape.



And this is why you shouldn't own a dog to begin with.

I've seen owners who think psychiatric drugs for dogs are borderline animal abuse, and I've also seen others who think it's the ultimate cure for behavior problems. It just seems to provoke a strong response from owners, regardless. Really, there isn't a "magic let's make it go away pill" for behavior problems in dogs. It's just that resolving a behavior problem requires behavior modification, not just only for the dog but for the owner too. I mean, there are certain psychiatric drugs that can help some dogs with some behavior problems, but there isn't a drug that can work a miracle cure on its own, and that's what a lot of owners don't understand.

In the end, as someone said before, a dog is doing what nature intended...therefore I disagree with medicating a dog for it to 'mellow out'.

I'm sorry for the dog. At my vet, they have you fill out paperwork when you first take in the dog that let's them get a feel for the kind of treatment options you'll be looking at. I think one of my choices for one question had the option of "my pet is member of the family and I would like to know about the best treatments, regardless of cost." But there were other options, and this guy apparently would have check whatever was at the other extreme.

There's no excuse for letting your animal get to the point when it is suffering because of lack of care, but I'd be wary of normalizing the "spare no expense" model of vet care too.
I'm not saying you are and you were there and I wasn't, but for some people $655 is more than a house payment or rent for the month, and they really need to think about whether the pet is the right thing to spend it on. But again, he could have been taking care of the dog all along for a lot less money.

It truly sounded to me that the dog treated the baby like a puppy. A dog doesn't carry it's prey by the neck, it carries it's puppies by the neck. A dog kills and eats it's prey right then and there. If that dog was trying to harm that baby, that baby wouldn't have lived.

I guess I have to disagree about being able to take care of the dog all along for less. My dog's annual visit costs me around $366. Her semi-annual is about $180. And yes, I take her and yes, I pay it, but it's definitely a lot more than $655 over the lifetime of the dog.

I ask for all the treatment options and try to make the best decision on what I can afford and what will help her out. For instance, I talked to the vet last year about her arthritis, because I could see a difference in how she gets up, etc. So the doctor gave me a month's worth of medicine and said "Try this for a month, if it helps her, we'll get her some refills". The final bill for that visit? $576. I was expecting around $366 and asked about the difference. Yes, the anti-inflammatory for the dog for one month was $210. I love my dog dearly, but I don't have an extra $210 in the budget every single month. I do wish that vet had discussed the cost of the meds with me so we could have explored alternatives. Next visit, I will have to ask again.

Yes. This. Until this incident, Dakota had shown no indications of behavioral problems at all. Everything I've read/heard about this story leads me to believe she's a really good dog.

Make sure you ask about Glucosamine. Our arthritic dog had been on Rimadyl for several months and showed a slight improvement over her non-Rimadyl days, but not as much as we would've hoped. Our vet suggested we try Glucosamine. After being on it for two months, our dog showed significant improvement. She now gets a dose daily and seems to be much more comfortable than she was while taking Rimadyl. Plus, Glucosamine is much more affordable than Rimadyl. Just thought I'd mention it so you could ask your vet if it's right for your dog.

My vet expenses are a lot more like yours, but I was going by what Cheerful said, "I mean, if he would have been taking the dog in for regular check ups, he wouldn't see anything near that amount of money."

I assumed it varied a lot by region. And I also suspect that we pay more to get the better products when we could be economizing more. For example, I do Frontline for flea control, and I'm sure I could be doing flea shampoo, sprays, etc, instead. If I had totally outdoor yard dogs like some people do in Georgia, maybe I wouldn't be worried about it at all.

Bingo.;)

eta: I read the rest of the posts. Remember guys, when I said we quoted him $655.00 that was NOT for the treatment itself. That was just for the blood work, xrays, test, etc.... We didn't even get to the cost of the treatment added on to the tests. He'll be in to put this dog down, if he hasn't already done it somewhere else. I know he will. I could just tell by his reaction to the cost. Vets are expensive, but in the long run, you do save more money for regular check ups and shots. I'm not even going to get into the possible cancer he may have had, or the tumors we felt on his body etc. This could have all been prevented if the owner wouldn't have waited 9 years to take a 10 year old dog to see a vet. I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.

I think it's good that he had the sense to go to the place that the dog was known to hide things.

This begs the question: if the owners knew this dog had a history of stealing household items and hiding them, why in the hell would they give the dog unrestricted access to the baby's room!?

I didn't get that either.

1) Why on earth would the parents give the dog access to the baby's room unsupervised?

2) How in the hell did the dog manage to get the baby out of the crib ?!?!

I would say it's fairly common knowledge that dogs / cats live to be 9-15 years. I don't think people should get a dog if they aren't up for the commitment.

I know plenty of people who had dogs/cats before kids, but they were smart enough to not let the animals around the babies/kids unsupervised and everyone grew up and turned out great.

Some people just shouldn't be pet owners if they are just planning to dump the animals somewhere else once they get knocked up.

:eek: lol lol :D texas princess, may I use this as my siggy? I hope you don't mind.:)

Dude, I was pretty much just posting what I've seen people I know do to their dogs. I'm actually indifferent about it.

You are my new hero! I am so borrowing this! :D

haha glad you liked it and yes, you can use it :p