Guns and Guts

Absolutely Horrifying

January 19th, 2009

Last week a three year old girl was killed by a Rottweiler in Fort Worth. The poor little baby girl, Brooklynn Milburn, managed to crawl through a very small hole in the fence into the neighbor’s backyard, where the dog attacked and killed her.

Story

The story hits close to him for two reasons. First, the parent of the girl is a co-worker of the wife of a co-worker of my best friend. Not much of a connection certainly, but finding out where the guy works and seeing the email sent out by his HR department to his company made it a bit more real than just reading the story.

Additionally, my little angel, Brooke Lynn has a very similar name. I cannot imagine the thought of losing her in such a way. My heart would never heal. My prayers are going out to this family, and if you are so inclined, I ask that you pray for them as well. Little Brooklyn Milburn was such a beautiful child. It is such a horrible tragedy when they are taken so young.

I was disgusted to see the comments left on the story at the link above. So many human beings have lost their minds it seems. To many people, bend over backwards to defend their favorite breed of dog when something like this happens. Others apparently value a dog’s life over that of an innocent little child’s. There are several responses there bemoaning the fact that dog was put down, while barely acknowledging that a family has lost their most precious thing in the world, their baby girl.

I can understand advocates of these breeds reacting in this way to a certain extent. There is a slight correlation in our fight for gun rights. Of course a gun is an inanimate object, while a dog is not. A gun cannot think for itself. The dog made the decision to attack this child. Furthermore, there is no Constitutional amendment protecting an individual’s right to own such a dog.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not calling for government control or regulations regarding large dogs. I don’t think we need to band them or anything of the sort. Free societies come with certain dangers, and responsibilities.

Clearly this case is just an overwhelming tragedy, with no one really to blame. The dog did not escape the back yard, and the hole in the fence appeared to not be a concern. This is a tragedy for both the dog’s owner and the family of the little girl. They will both blame themselves for the death of this child, and will need some real help in coping with these feelings.

This is a blog, where I discuss my feelings on issues however, and this event brings up a lot of conflicted thoughts that have been going through my mind for a few years now. The following discussion should not be seen as related to this story, as I don’t see any blame in this instance, on the part of the parents or the dog’s owner.

Certain large breed dogs, regardless of claims to the contrary, do have more frequent issues with interacting with humans than others. People, trying to justify their ownership of certain breeds, will deny this fact, but it remains true.

Breeds such as Rottweilers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Pit Bull Terriers, attack humans more often than other breeds, with often devastating effect. Whether this is a function of their genetics, their popularity, or just their size and strength does not really matter.

I am not saying these breeds are crazed beasts with blood on their minds constantly. They are capable of doing severe damage however, and that is probably the main reasons negative encounters with them are reported more often than other breeds. More damage is done.

So, knowing these facts owners of large breed dogs have more responsibility than owners of smaller breeds. The owner is responsible to protect their dogs from perceived threats, and to protect these perceived threats from their dog. If a dog escapes from a fence and kills a child, the owner of the pet is responsible.

This is where government involvement is welcome in my opinion. If you own a large breed dog, and it does some damage, fatal or otherwise, because you were negligent, you should be held responsible. I think laws need to be toughened up for owners of these dogs. If your dog kills a kid, because you failed to control it, you need to go to jail for a while. This obviously depends on the severity of the attack of course.

We need to find a way to make owners of these dogs more responsible. If they know that a lengthy jail sentence could result from them having a shoddy fence, maybe they will think about buying that pit bull puppy at the flea market. Maybe, they will strengthen the fence first and make sure it can reliably contain the dog, and prevent others from entering the dog’s yard.

I am a dog lover. This topic is hard for me to sort out honestly, so I don’t know where the lines should be drawn necessarily. What do you think?

Update: Chris Byrne reminds us in the comments that cockers and golden retrievers bite more than the breeds I was discussing. He is correct based on the published studies. I should have been more clear in stating my position. The large breeds do more damage, than smaller breeds, and therefore, cause more serious problems, whether it be injuries requiring medical attention or death.

The Texas Department of Health Services provide stats on reported “Severe” dog bites. The summaries can be viewed here.

Their 2002 report has Pit Bulls (probably Staffordshires included here), Chows, Rottweilers, German Shepherds, and Labradors making up for about 55% of the incidents. A pit bull variant was involved in 72 of the 546 reported instances, and the Chows and Rottweilers were involved in 39 and 38 attacks respectively. The Labs and Shepards each were at about 25 attacks.

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