This is the first story of my series examining different incidents of dog attacks
Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read this story, so I can't cite anything. But I remember what I read, and my memory is good on this.
It was about a family that adopted a dog, a pitbull, from a shelter. On his first day with them, the dog bit the teenage son of the family so badly that the kid had to go to the hospital. Now, unfortunately, I don't know any more details other than described above. But even here, we can learn something.
Now I resolved that my posts wouldn't be about breed, nor about people's attitudes regarding breed. But in this case, it's important to mention how it was treated, because this particular blog is about the knee-jerk human reaction to such an incident. Anyway, that the article I read about it was painting it as shocking, and as a shocking example of "typical" pitbull viciousness.
I think that for many human beings, this story has shock value. It's always shocking when a dog attacks a good person; it's always shocking when a dog attacks his own owner, but this story might sound worse to us. This is because we see it as the following: A family lovingly rescues a dog, and the dog rewards them by attacking one of them.
But let's look at it from the dog's perspective. This family was a bunch of strangers to the dog. They were not his pack, they were strangers. He didn't know about adoption; he didn't know about the love that leads a human to adopt. He was in a new place (scary to many dogs); he had been living in a high stress environment (shelters are stressful and scary to the dog), he had no pack (he didn't know that this family wanted to be his new pack), he had no friend or owner that he was bonded to, and now he was in a new place with strangers. Most dogs are friendly, and most pitbulls are friendly to strangers, but this described situation is still very scary to any dog.
Now I don't know all the details of the incident, and I don't know what specific events/actions led to the attack/bite. But when we look at the situation (what we do know of it) from a dog's perspective the incident is neither nonsensical nor surprising.
Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read this story, so I can't cite anything. But I remember what I read, and my memory is good on this.
It was about a family that adopted a dog, a pitbull, from a shelter. On his first day with them, the dog bit the teenage son of the family so badly that the kid had to go to the hospital. Now, unfortunately, I don't know any more details other than described above. But even here, we can learn something.
Now I resolved that my posts wouldn't be about breed, nor about people's attitudes regarding breed. But in this case, it's important to mention how it was treated, because this particular blog is about the knee-jerk human reaction to such an incident. Anyway, that the article I read about it was painting it as shocking, and as a shocking example of "typical" pitbull viciousness.
I think that for many human beings, this story has shock value. It's always shocking when a dog attacks a good person; it's always shocking when a dog attacks his own owner, but this story might sound worse to us. This is because we see it as the following: A family lovingly rescues a dog, and the dog rewards them by attacking one of them.
But let's look at it from the dog's perspective. This family was a bunch of strangers to the dog. They were not his pack, they were strangers. He didn't know about adoption; he didn't know about the love that leads a human to adopt. He was in a new place (scary to many dogs); he had been living in a high stress environment (shelters are stressful and scary to the dog), he had no pack (he didn't know that this family wanted to be his new pack), he had no friend or owner that he was bonded to, and now he was in a new place with strangers. Most dogs are friendly, and most pitbulls are friendly to strangers, but this described situation is still very scary to any dog.
Now I don't know all the details of the incident, and I don't know what specific events/actions led to the attack/bite. But when we look at the situation (what we do know of it) from a dog's perspective the incident is neither nonsensical nor surprising.
