Another example of reporting only half the facts

The latest news comes from Houston Texas. According to the local newspaper, an infant was killed by the “family” dog. No, it was not a “pit bull” but a mutant Rottweiler weighing 150 pounds. Apparently the newspaper reports the “family” dog- mind you it lived strictly outdoors in a pack of 8 other dogs- broke through the barricade put together by the mom to keep them outside ( a washer and marble slab). The dog mauled the child while the mother was bathing the dog’s father- another mutant Rottweiler weighing 200 pounds. None of the dogs had been in the house when the mother came out to check why there was barking inside the house, just the poor lifeless infant.

Of course I feel the need to rant about this.There are alot of things wrong with this picture. Lets break them down shall we?

First of all, Rottweilers do not weigh 150-200 pounds-this would only be possible if the dog had a mix of Mastiff in him. If these dogs were 150-200 pounds and truly pure Rottweiler, they must have been grossly over weight ( and therefore unable to move as quickly as the accused did). The media loves to label dogs or over inflate facts to draw a reader in, of course a 150-200 pound dog sounds more scary than the real size. It is a true monster then. According to the paper the other dogs were all mixes- no mention of whether these dogs were spayed or neutered (a very important fact, as all the fatalities in Texas have been unaltered dogs ).

Second, if you have a pack of nine dogs living outside you do not have “family” dogs but a pack of unsocialized resident dogs. Dogs that live completely outside with no human interaction or conditioning to human quarters & affection, will make their own pack; they are dogs! This means they follow pack mentality and follow canine rules not human rules. A resident pack does not see humans as part of the pack but rather, outsiders. It is upsetting that people can sit back and assume that these dogs can behave like a true family dog when they were never given the love, training and socialization a true family dog would get. A dog that has had the chance to live indoors with human interaction, will not react like this because they are shown affection and taught how to interact with humans. If you walked into a feral pack of dogs you would get bit or attacked, that is what this pack was; they lived outside and were left to themselves, a feral pack. The media needs to understand that these dogs can not be called “family dogs”, there has never been a fatality by a true “family” dog, ever.

Third, the report states the mom was bathing one of the dogs in the bathroom and heard barking in the house. It also states she went to check on what the barking was and found the lifeless body of her infant and no dogs in the house. Now I am not a detective, but I do have some common sense. Lets use it here: the baby’s skull was crushed and the hands were torn apart. I can’t even imagine seeing this and I feel terribly for the child, but a few questions arise from my curious side. A dog attack is very vocal, whether it is on a child or small animal. When a dog reaches a heightened level of excitement either in play or a kill, they can not turn off and very loud vocalization is present. All owners that play tug of war can attest to this. It would take at least 2 minutes to do this type of damage to an infant, I can almost certainly imagine the mom heard more than just “barking”.

I would imagine the poor child was crying, quite possibly screaming during the incident. I am a mom and for all other moms out there: if your child was screaming and crying, AND you heard dogs “barking” in your house that dogs were NEVER allowed to enter, would it take you more than 1.5 minutes to investigate? If there were no dogs in the house by the time she discovered the body, it must have taken her longer than that to go and check on her child.

Again let’s do the math, two minutes for a full-out fatal attack involving 3 areas of the body and we must assume the dogs left immediately after the kill (highly improbable-a dog will not just hunt out a child, kill it and flee immediately) at least another 30-45 seconds to exit unless the child was right near the back door. This is almost 3 minutes. Sit down and time out 3 minutes, it is a very long time especially if you hear your child screaming. That is ridiculous to think it really happened this quickly. Also just a thought here, but how if “no dogs were inside at the time”, do we know for sure which dog was the attacker?

People all over will blame the dog for this incident, this is human nature isn’t it? We couldn’t possibly place blame on a mother that just lost her child, even if it was her actions that lead to the death of the infant. What I want to know is are they going to criminally investigate the mom here? With all the facts, there was clearly child endangerment and neglect. Where is our legal system? How can we keep blaming dogs instead of the lack of responsibilty by a parent/dog owner? When is the media going to look at the facts in a case and report everything? If we gave more attention to the lack of responsible owners/parents maybe we would be able to make a real difference here.