Reptile & Amphibian Forums

old boy. Just a horrific story.

http://www.wsmv.com/news/13746954/detail.html

We have a 2.5 year old Sibe who is the joy of our life. We are blessed in that my wife is 10 weeks pregnant and Bella will become a big sister in February! Bella is fantastic with children, but how do we know if something like this could ever happen? Are there any signs? Or is this just a mere accident and/or an incident in which a pack mentality took over these two Sibes?

first off..congrats on your wife's pregnancy!! how exciting for all of you!!
that is truely an aweful story!! I have 2 boys..one is 5 and one is 18 months. My sibe is 6 months old. I NEVER leave her alone with them, which she is wonderful with them and loves to be with them..especially my 18 month old, That's her baby..LOL but even then, you just never know if something could happen or if the child could do something to set the dog off or vice versa.. but it really ticks me off when people just leave their children alone with dogs they don't even know!! to me..if I'm at someone's house with my kids,I don't care if they tell me their dog is the best in the world..I'd never leave my children alone with it!! and when we have friends over that have children..Sierra is always kept kenneled. maybe I'm just a very over-protective mommy! sad story!

Congratulations on your little one! My daughter is two years old, and we have a three year old male Sibe, two four year old female Lab mixes, and an 18 month old Chow mix. The Labs we've had since they were pups, so obviously they were here before the baby. Honestly, it is better to be safe than sorry. My dogs are fantastic with my child, don't get me wrong, but I always keep an eye on their interactions with her. There isn't one of them that isn't bigger than she is, and it's just safer. My motto is, if it has teeth, it can bite. You never know what your child might do to set the dog off, especially as little ones don't have any idea that they are irritating the dog. To them, it's just fun.

Also, to prevent jealousy, I did incorporate the dogs into everything we did with the baby. I didn't want them to feel that they were being left out of things because of this new little creature. It helped a lot.

Into dog bite fatalities in North America. There was a website with hundreds of articles from newspapers, with every documented instance of a "husky" involved. In a 20 year period of time there were 6 total. 4 were Alaskan huskies (mixed breeds), 4 were in Alaska and Northern Canada, 2 were in the lower 48. Of those 2 one was identified as a "husky" but the picture looked like a definite mixed breed with husky in it, one was just identified as a husky. According to the CDC for their uses, the definition of "husky" encompasses about 8 or more breeds of dog, Siberian husky, Alaskan husky, Norwegian elkhound, Canadian inuit dog, Greenland dog, and a few other breeds, but not to include the Alaskan malamute which has its own listing.
All fatalities involved children from the age of 1-4 years old and 4 were dogs used purely for sled dogs only, socialized with the musher and noone else.
This throws a wrench into everything, but every article I read on this event it was "assumed" by the dogs owner that one or both dogs "may" have done it, nothing proven or definite.
Its too convenient to me, why wasnt the room a mess, the playpen flipped over, the baby on the floor, where are all the bitemarks, the blood should be everywhere, and on the dogs or one of them. The dogs would have shown some indication before and after such an event, there was no noise, none from the baby or the dogs.
From my experience with a baby that died from "mysterious causes", there should have been a criminal investigation done regardless, and the owners not had access to the dogs for a few days until DNA testing, and an autopsy was done.
Just by reading the description of the injuries it seems as if this was caused by something else.
Its truely sad for the baby and the dogs.
It seems to me that an investigation was avoided by the owner of the dogs voluntarily having the dogs put down. I believe this was an option offered by the DA, sad, truely sad event.
Irresponible non the less, even if it were a clearcut case of dogs mauling the kid, it was irresponsible to leave any child alone with any dog. After all, there is a 4.5 lb pomeranian credited with an infants death according to the CDC.

I have been looking for this information since yesterday when I stumbled across the CDC list. You could of knocked me over with a feather when I saw Husky on the top ten list. In the report I saw that most of the Husky attacks were in Alaska where the dogs ran wild and had little human contact and were almost feral. The reason they had to include them on this list is that they qualified by being owned by someone. I had tried to find the detailed information and wasn't having any luck til I saw your post.
I believe any dog can be aggressive under different cicumstances,
but I also believe so many of these tragedies could have been avoided by adults being more responsible. So many of these cases, I'm going "where was the adult"? And for heavens sake tell me how a pomeranian could be credited for a death. I just want to cry when I hear of anything happening to a child.
It just bothers me the way people can take information and shape it in to however it serves their purpose. I also get angry at the way people make dogs mean and then let them run loose or have them on a chain where a child can wonder up to them. My dogs are in a fenced yard and the gates are locked from the inside. I have poms, a collie and now a husky, but I still won't take a chance on a neighbors child wondering into the yard. I also have a 6 year old grandson, and will not leave him alone with the collie or husky, if for no other reason they could simple knock him down while playing and he would get hurt.
To me that is just common sense.