Dog mauls 3 week old

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by pshsx1

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

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.

[pshsx1]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

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.

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.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by pshsx1

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.

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.

[AGDee]

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.