3-Year-Old Mauled By Backyard Bred "Pit Bulls"

[gwynethfar]

Except they weren't Pit Bulls.Long story short: Family backyard breeds American Bulldogs and keeps them chained to a tree at all times. Their three-year-old was left untended and wandered into the dog's pen. The station that reports the tragedy (that has nothing to do with "vicious dogs" and everything to do with bad parenting and irresponsible

Comments

[stormslegacy]

Looking at their website (had to internet archive it) it doesn't look like they were bybs. She was a rescue coordinator and stopped selling puppies to the public a while ago, in fact her "available puppies" page leads to her foster network and her dogs are titled working dogs. I think there's a lot more to the story.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080210182028/www.dreambulldogranch.com/index.html

[stormslegacy]

But how were they treated? I mean, there's nothing saying they were always tied up outside or anything else about their care. They had a dog in the house too. I'm not saying that I disagree--I mean, IF the dogs were left out 24-7 without human contact I would agree, but there is no evidence of that...her dogs had various awards as working dogs and one starred in a couple movies--I highly doubt that's the mark of an unsocialized monster.

[gwynethfar]

One thing I can't tell from the article is whether or not the dogs were always tied up to a tree, or just when she was cleaning the kennel. It says they were chained, but that the little girl was in their pen... so, were the dogs still chained in the kennel?

On their website, it says that their studs are well socialized, but it doesn't say the same for their dams. And while they're not breeding for public sale, they're obviously still breeding if they have such a large community of studs and dams.

WTF is going on with that article? It really does make them sound like backyard breeders with just four dogs and rinky dink operation, when their website paints a completely different picture.

[stormslegacy]

It does say some of their studs are owned by others, and they only had 5 dogs total at the time of the seizure, so I'm not sure. The website is the newest I could get from the internet archive and was last recached in 2008, so there's a 2 year span between the site and now.

I'm wondering if they were just tied up while they were cleaning? It does say that the kid snuck into the pen that they were kept in and part of the investigation was into whether or not the door was closed--this I got from other articles googled.

I personally think this may have just been a tragedy. Not sure though, but i don't want to villify without facts. I also think the chain might have also contributed, because a number of articles say the child got wrapped up in the chain. All this could happen in a moment, so one can't even say it was terrible parenting--I don't know any mother of a toddler that can watch 24-7. You wouldn't be able to live!

[gwynethfar]

Maybe you should have written the newspaper article. I'm 100% serious.

My only question is why a dog would be chained while in a pen.

[stormslegacy]

*blush* heh thanks. I was wondering if maybe they chained up the dogs so they wouldn't bother them as they cleaned the pen, it said that's what she was doing and went into the house (I think to go to the bathroom?) when the mauling happened. That's what makes most sense.

I had a biology professor in college who wrote across the chalkboard in his office "Question everything you read." I feel those are words to live by, within reason.