Poor dog mauls boy, please don't kill it :(

[civver_764]

It is, of course, not the dog's fault. But the owner's. Yet the question remains what to do with the dog.

That's not a question that needs to be asked. Just let the dog be. The world's dangerous and out of our control. All killing the dog is is an attempt to feel better about what happened.

 

[Borachio]

The alternative to killing the dog is finding it a home without any children around. Or radically resocializing it.

Neither of these may be realistic options.

Or is it your view that the dog should be allowed total emancipation and sent to forage for itself in the great wide world?

This is an attractive position in some ways. Radically speaking, the ownership of animals is altogether questionable.

Yet the relationship between man and dog is of very great antiquity, indeed. Predating all sorts of other developments.

 

[civver_764]

The alternative to killing the dog is finding it a home without any children around. Or radically resocializing it.

It's a fallacy to think that anything needs to be done at all. This isn't a sign that the dog is "psycho" or that something is wrong with it, it just means that circumstances led to the dog biting the 4 year old kid.

Or is it your view that the dog should be allowed total emancipation and sent to forage for itself in the great wide world?

I just think that we should avoid killing living beings as much as possible. You will probably find me advocating for more animal freedom in most cases though.

 

[Kyriakos]

The alternative to killing the dog is finding it a home without any children around. Or radically resocializing it.

Neither of these may be realistic options.

Or is it your view that the dog should be allowed total emancipation and sent to forage for itself in the great wide world?

This is an attractive position in some ways. Radically speaking, the ownership of animals is altogether questionable.

Yet the relationship between man and dog is of very great antiquity, indeed. Predating all sorts of other developments.

Even Odysseus had a dog (which supposedly recognised him when he returned to Ithaka).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(dog)

It's a fallacy to think that anything needs to be done at all. This isn't a sign that the dog is "psycho" or that something is wrong with it, it just means that circumstances led to the dog biting the 4 year old kid.

I just think that we should avoid killing living beings as much as possible. You will probably find me advocating for more animal freedom in most cases though.

And other circumstances led it before that to kill another dog.

 

[civver_764]

And other circumstances led it before that to kill another dog.

S**t happens.

The more people try to assign responsibility to people/animals the more I realize that the concept of responsibility is an illusory one.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Justice has no part here cause obviously the dog is not aware of how his mauling action is seen by humans.
I spoke of granting the child/victim some very much needed peace of mind now. I mean if i was related to that child i would be thinking of killing that dog myself, not out of rage for the dog itself (cause it is just a dog), but out of the sense that the kid might in the long run be helped by knowing others see him as a victim and not as a 4-year old who messed with the wrong dog/etc.

That's a terrible argument. It puts the dog in a position less than even an inanimate object. When he was a boy, my brother hurt his eye pretty badly by a collision with a wall. We didn't demand the school knock down the wall so that he would know others see him as a victim of circumstance, and not as a 4-year old who messed with the wrong wall.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

There is a difference between an inherently safe wall, and a potentially dangerous dog. Just like the case with the high school senior suing her parents, people are jumping to conclusions based on a short article.

 

[civver_764]

There is a difference between an inherently safe wall, and a potentially dangerous dog. Just like the case with the high school senior suing her parents, people are jumping to conclusions based on a short article.

The universe as a whole is potentially dangerous for life as we know it. That's just the way it is and you can't do anything about it.

 

[ParkCungHee]

There is a difference between an inherently safe wall, and a potentially dangerous dog.

If the wall was inherently safe, why'd it try to put his eye out like that?

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Hey, you're talking to the dog lover (and pit bull owner) here - either it's too early in the morning for me to get your sense of humor, or you haven't read my earlier posts here. But if that dog is proven likely to bite again, and there are no resources availabe to rehabilitate it, it may have to be put down.

Unfortunately, while we have standards as to who can drive, we don't have standards for who can drink, have kids, or a dog.

 

[Borachio]

The universe as a whole is potentially dangerous for life as we know it. That's just the way it is and you can't do anything about it.

Right. Which is why I regularly eat razor blade sandwiches, go bungie jumping with a frayed rope, and break dance blindfolded in the middle of the motorway. I just can't do anything about it.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Hey, you're talking to the dog lover (and pit bull owner) here - either it's too early in the morning for me to get your sense of humor, or you haven't read my earlier posts here. But if that dog is proven likely to bite again, and there are no resources availabe to rehabilitate it, it may have to be put down.

Maybe, but I don't know if that's been proven, and even if it was, Kyriakos wasn't arguing that the dog might bite someone in the future (for the record, I busted my shin at a later date on that wall) but that the dog needs to be put down in retribution because "the kid might in the long run be helped by knowing others see him as a victim and not as a 4-year old who messed with the wrong dog/etc."

 

[NovaKart]

Maybe they could medicate the dog, I wonder what dosage would be good for a pit bull.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_thi...pressant_medication.html?wpisrc=hpsponsoredd2

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I sat in line at the drive-through of our neighborhood CVS pharmacy. I was running late, the line wasn’t moving, and I needed to pick up only one prescription: my dog’s Prozac.

I was the third car in line, and the car at the front seemed to be camped out at the window, clearly negotiating something as complex as tax reform rather than just dropping off a prescription. I glanced at the clock. I was in danger of being late to pick up my daughter from her pop star class. It was a great moment for a minor mid-life crisis. This is ridiculous, I thought. Pop star class! Doggie antidepressants! What am I doing with my life? I have multiple degrees! But it was supposed to snow again the next day. I considered being cooped up with a six-year-old and my dog without his mood stabilizer. I started madly texting the other moms from the class to see if any of them could stay with my daughter if I was late. Then, as I kept waiting, I consoled myself with the idea that there were quite a few pet owners out there who could relate to me.

Nicholas Dodson of Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine is an expert in behavioral pharmacology who helped pioneer the technique of giving human behavioral medications to dogs. Vets first began prescribing Prozac for dogs around 1990, he says, and it’s likely a more common practice today than it was even 10 years ago. In 2012 alone, an estimated 2.8 million dog owners gave their dogs calming or anxiety medicines, according to the National Pet Owners Survey of the American Pet Products Association.

The first time I dropped off the dog’s prescription, the technician had been completely unfazed. Clearly she’d had non-human patients before.

“Patient’s name?” she asked.

“Um, Nino Horowitz, but he’s a dog.”

“Date of birth?”

“Well, he’s a dog. We’re not exactly sure—”

“Date of birth please?”

“Um, just put November 1, 2005.”

“Weight?”

“Really? He’s about 80 lbs.”

“Insurance?”

“He’s a dog!”

“Does he have insurance, please?” (Now I was second-guessing myself. Was he supposed to have insurance? Was I a delinquent pet owner? Was there some provision in Obamacare I wasn’t aware of that said even pets must have coverage?)

“No,” I mumbled. “He doesn’t have insurance.”

“The prescription will be ready in an hour.” She slid the glass window firmly shut.

We’d put the dog on Prozac just recently. He was eight years old, a mutt. He looked like a lab but was white with brown ears. The friend of a former co-worker found him in a box on the side of a road one freezing December night when he was about four weeks old. We adopted him when he was 11 weeks. He had anxiety issues from day one, which manifested themselves in excessive chewing, incessant barking, and a serious dislike of most other dogs.

We tried everything: obedience classes, behavioral therapists, hard-core training with former K-9 cops. We watched The Dog Whisperer obsessively. We bought him a doggie backpack, loaded its pockets with pickle jars for extra weight (as recommended by Cesar Millan), and walked him for miles. We invested in more than three types of collars (one costing $500) and even a Thunder Shirt (as seen on TV!). Nothing helped at all. The final straw was when he chewed through the plastic floor of his crate, and then not one but two doors, in an effort to escape when he was left alone for more than a couple of hours. After he’d yacked up pieces of door onto the carpet, we decided to finally try Prozac. It had always seemed somewhat ridiculous to us. But my father, a psychologist, had been hinting at it for years. It worked much better than anything we’d tried before.

Finally it was my turn at the CVS drive-through window. I groaned but dropped the $70 for his Prozac (generic).

The next morning, it was indeed snowing. My daughter’s school was closed. I sat down for a moment to check my email. The dog sat down in front of me, staring at me intently with his brown eyes. I tried to ignore him. He poked me in the knee with his big black nose. I focused on my email. He nosed me again. I tried not to look at him. He nosed me another time.

Then he walked over to our bookshelf. Sitting on it was the orange prescription bottle with his Prozac in it. He sat down, barked sharply, barked again. I recognized this behavior. He did this when he wanted a treat. My dog was begging for his meds.

The article continues a bit further in the link.

 

[kramerfan86]

This dog had also killed another dog that had wandered into the yard a few months ago. This is not a nice dog that had a bad moment, its a bad dog. if it lives its only a matter of time before another dog or another person gets hurt again by it

 

[JollyRoger]

Has anyone considered the possibility of slaughtering all the local 4 year olds so that the dog won't suffer theft from one again?

 

[Kyriakos]

Has anyone considered the possibility of slaughtering all the local 4 year olds so that the dog won't suffer theft from one again?

I contacted the local municipality chief official, named Herod, but he mumbled something about another condition to be met for that?

 

[Farm Boy]

I think that actually bounced through, yes, with the bit about dogs and stand your ground.

Ultimately, it might be more sensible to frame their responsibility as "due to negligence" rather than "with intent", but these are small details.

That's a pretty fundamental difference though.

 

[NovaKart]

From reading the comments section on that article, it's actually far more common for people to give their pet prozac than I had ever expected.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Yes - just like children - for many it is easier to just medicate rather than deal with issues - IMHO in many cases it is poor parenting and poor dog ownership.

 

[civver_764]

Right. Which is why I regularly eat razor blade sandwiches, go bungie jumping with a frayed rope, and break dance blindfolded in the middle of the motorway. I just can't do anything about it.

But you're not going to shoot me because I might shoot you at some point in the future. Yes we all refrain from doing things that will certainly do us no good, but we can't eliminate the danger in lives completely.