2 year old girl had jaw ripped off by dog.

This news story absolutely blew my mind!

Here's the link if you haven't already read it: 2 Year Old Girl Mauled by Dog

Basically in a nutshell, this young 2 year old girl was playing with toys and the drawers in her bedroom (apparently with the dog in there) and the father was there supervising. He turned away from "2 seconds", heard a growl and when he turned back the dog was mauling the young girls face. The father beat the dog off of his daughter, took her to the neighbors, went back and stabbed the dog with a knife.

Alright here is what I have to say on the subject.

Let me say it right now, I feel really sorry for the poor girl (Taylor), the poor child wasn't even screaming when the dog was taken off of her, which goes to show how traumatic this experience must have been, and will most likely leave emotional scars on her for the rest of her life. I honestly hope she gets better.

Now here are some things that seriously bugged me. I completely understand a desperate father's attempts at trying to save his daughter by punching and beating the dog, its a moment where one doesn't really think and time is of the essence. I don't judge the father for that whatsoever. But the fact that, after he took his daughter to the neighbors, that he left her there and went back to stab the dog is outrageous! Should have something been done about the dog? Yes. But stabbing the dog? No. The last act was purely out of revenge, not self defense seeing how no one else was in danger, and would justly fall into the category of animal abuse.

To make matters worse, (probably still acting out with revenge on his mind) he orders his Alsatian (German Shepherd Dog) to be put to sleep because its a "dangerous breed". And said he'd like to campaign for all "dangerous dogs" to be made illegal. Once again, I don't want to seem insensitive to the father's feelings in that wanting to protect his family is priority number one, but euthanizing the dog was not the way to go, especially considering that it didn't have anything to do with this. The dog could have been re homed if there was no previous aggressive tendencies.

In all honesty, this is a classic example of how mistakes on the part of the owner must be paid by the child and the dog.

The father and owner of this dog made several grave mistakes:

1. Leaving a child and dog unattended, yes even for '2 seconds' (which I find hard to believe). Any dog with teeth, can bite. And a child not knowing how to interact with a dog can easily and quickly make even the gentlest dog snap/bite.

2. Keeping a dog with a history of biting. The report from the link above said that the Grandmother of Taylor (the 2 year old girl) stated that the dog had bitten her brother 2 weeks prior to the incident. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, you can't just ignore this, its a serious problem. While I don't agree 100% with the grandmother's asking to put down the dog back then, this could have been solved with a phone call to a behaviorist or by giving the dog up to a shelter/rescue.

3. Having a child in the same house as two male dogs and a female dog in season. Intact dogs that are around females in heat tend to be unpredictable and maybe in some cases aggressive (if there is competition). Why was there intact dogs, a small child, and a female dog in heat under the same roof? I have no idea but my best guess a backyard breeder with little insight to dog breeding and behavior.

4. This is pure conjecture, but generally true. Resource guarding, meaning the dog growls or snaps because someone takes food or possessions away, doesn't appear overnight. The owner should have taken measure to train the dog not to resource guard, and if there were cases before of resource guarding (we'll never know) then the dog shouldn't have had access to toys when around other dogs and especially little kids that will take stuff like that away!

5. Another of my observations but also conjecture is that the dog went almost directly to mauling. A normal dog doesn't usually do this. First the dog may growl, then snap and as a last resort bite. The only way a dog goes straight to biting is if the dog has been scolded in the past for growling. Because of the negative connection to the action they skip it and go straight for the bite. Now I believe the report said that the father heard a growl, but either the negative association to growling made this stage incredibly short (because he was only turned away from 2 seconds) which is no better than a dog that goes directly to biting or he was actually turned away for a longer period of time. If Mr. Leadbeater ever punished the dog for growling (instead of correcting the root of the behavior) he inadvertently caused this problem....however once again we'll probably never know this for sure.

Anyway, in conclusion, all I can say is that this is a typical case in which people in the general public will blame the dog breed, as Mr. Leadbeater did, and when we look deeper into this the one at fault is quite obvious. All I can hope is that the child will recover and that people will see this incident for what it is, bad decisions on part of the owners.