I am still quite confused over this whole thing. . .
I agree with the majority that the mother was completely negligent in the situation. But I do agree with Guin and WhyNot in that I quoted a CNN article, but there might be more to the story than we’re seeing. Can any SF Dopers shed any light?
On the initial facts, I still lay blame on the mother. And I pray for her son, even though he’s somewhere more comfortable.
Tripler
:: sighs ::
Thanks for the correction re. the Presa Canarios, another futile waste product of selective breeding. I should probably apologize to the pit bull owners out there (after all, I wouldn’t want Pit Bull Nation to get angry with me), but I just can’t bring myself to be that magnanimous right now, seeing as how these kinds of incidents keep happening with the dismal regularity of, say, Chinese Water Torture.
As for that shit stain of a mother, she should be bound hand and foot, ceremoniously smeared in jus de Alpo, and tossed into a pit full of feral, starving dogs.
The link that I gave in post #13, to the San Francisco Chronicle’s update on the case earlier today, has a sidebar with further links to all of the articles they’ve had since the boy’s death on June 3rd, as well as reader’s comments. The Chronicle probably has as good a lead on the story as anyone outside of the police investigation itself.
I do agree, however, that there’s something fishy about sending the 9-year-old brother out to the corner store to get food for the 12-year-old in the basement. Was he expected to brave the dogs to supply Nicky with food (or was there a basement window?). I expect something unusual will come out about this.
Except that no matter how vicious chihuahua’s are bred they couldn’t kill people. :smack:
They can annoy you to death.
I find the story very strange. I have known a good share of pit bull owners (they were popular where I grew up) and I have *never * heard of a pit mauling a family member. Neighbors dogs, neighbors, passers-by, cops? Sure. But never a family member.
It does happen.
People need to really look into what breed of dog they are getting before they get one.
I know I am going to step on toes with this, but here I go anyway on my views of dog maulings.
There’s a subset of people out there (I just call them scumbags - I deal with these sorts on a near-daily basis) that want to get a pit bull because they’re intimidating and it helps bolster their weakass sense of manhood or whatever. Scumbag owner is 1. Unresponsible with the dog - not having it properly contained and socialized and 2. doesn’t take the breeds characteristics into account when buying it; they just want a pitbull because they’re “cool”. The dog is often neglected and left to fend for itself and sometimes mistreated. Watch “Animals Cops” on Animal Planet sometime and see how often this exact scenario comes up. Then add to the blatant misuse of the dog’s purpose the refusal of many owners to alter their animals. It’s fucking sickening. This woman is negligent as fuck - for getting dogs that aren’t well-suited as family dogs, for not altering them, and sure as fuck for putting her son in the basement - in and of itself not bad, but I have to wonder why the dogs had the run of the house and the child was barred into his basement play room with a fucking shovel wedged against the door. She’s guilty of negligence of both her son and the dogs. The answer isn’t to ban the dogs, it’s to ban stupid fucking people from having them in the first place (I know that can never be legislated but I can dream, right?)
Sorry can you tell this is one of my hot-button issues?
:smack: Sorry spooje, you said a pit bull, but the article I linked had to do with a mastiff. Nonetheless, I am sure it has happened before across the whole spectrum of breeds.
We have that technology now. It’s called…locking the prisoner in a room with an enraged/hungry animal. (Granted, it only allows the subject to go through the experience once…)
Reminds me of a conversation I overheard in the laudromat: Yeah, my pit bull attacked a child in the park. And then some nutjob shot a gun at my prize dog and blinded him. He din’t have to do that. I’m suing the guy for blinding my dog.
What is it with dogs and their owners?
:dubious:
Very intriguing.
That’s amazingly nervy. Hey my ill trained animal attacked a small human being . . . but there was no need to actually y’know defend the poor kid. :rolleyes:
I hope the laundromat pit bull owner never sees a penny. And then I hope the kid’s parents countersue him for damages.
And they don’t spay or neuter their dogs.
As The Sausage Creature and Padeye have pointed out- PitBulls can be gentle loving doggies. However, nowadays, they are purposely sought out as mean guard dogs, and trained to be mean attack animals. You can find crude hand-lettered ads for them just about everywhere in local black communities. (Since a lot of rap videos show rappers with these dogs- strainingand slavering on the end of chokechains and chain leashs- this breed has become common in the poorer black communitys as guard dogs. They are menat to “impress”.)
It’s not the breed- it’s the people who buy the breed for this purpose- to be mean attack dog, and train them so.
What I think is that the sale of Pitbulls and PitBull-like breeds should be legislated as only through a registered Breeder. There are too many “back yard tuff dog” breeders for PitBulls, and they’re the one causing the problems.
Makes me glad my taste in dogs-though I’m always sure to create a warm and loving environment for them-run in the Labrador Retreiver breeds…
I wonder if there’s a way to regulate ownership of Pitbulls and other like breeds-not to ban anyone from owning one outright, but maybe you have to have a special license to do so.
There’s some video of Faibish from a television news segment. Mostly, she’s just showing pictures of her son. She says “I just want people to know that he was a real human being.” I wonder why she thinks she’s in a position to remind anyone of that, after locking him in the goddamn basement.
Her only comment on the mauling itself is “I don’t want people to make this a dog thing. It was an accident. It was something that happened, and I think God has a plan for everybody and it was time for Nicky to go. I have a lot of guilt, but I have to realize that, you know, he was destined to go at this time.”
“God did it!” Great defense, lady. It was Divine Providence that he was born to a negligent mother.
Hmm, that might work along with “can be bought only from certified breeders”. Good idea.
Reason # 1,483 why I fucking hate people. We had a case locally a year or two back where some waste of fucking oxygen locked her 3 year old son inside her Rottweiler’s dog pen while she went back inside to sit on her ass and watch Springer or Oprah or whatever shitwitted show the local trailer trash watch while they’re sitting around waiting for the welfare check to show up. That baby was in pieces when she finally came back outside.
Forget licensing people to own certain types of dogs; I’m beginning to think we should license people to have kids.
As a sidenote, ever notice how the kind of people who like to have big tuff guard dogs chained up outside don’t look like they’d have a damn thing worth stealing?
I think we need to keep this in mind before we jump all over some of the mother’s statements. For instance, the statement about it “being his time to go” strikes me as trying to come to grips with his death, not a dismissal of his life. Also, the “typical Nicky” response sounds like she misses her mischeivious child. I wouldn’t take that to mean that she was actually thinking ‘he’ll escape, as usual’ when she locked him in. (She obviously wasn’t thinking at all…) The sound bites that we’re getting are from a very distraught woman and they are filtered through the media. I wouldn’t string her up based on any of those comments.
However, I do think the story sounds a bit fishy. If she’s so worried about the dog, even for a day, she should get the dog out of the house, not lock up her 12-year old.