Tuesday, July 29, 2008

This is horrifying!!

I just came across this article. Basically, a two-month-old baby was mauled to death by a dog while he was in a play swing in the backyard. The baby's parents were in the house at the time, and while the police aren't sure which of two dogs that were removed from the premises is the killer (a pug or a black lab puppy), the black lab was already euthanized. This news is disturbing to me for a few reasons:

1. The baby was left unsupervised in the yard. In a swing. A two. month. old. baby.
2. If the cops don't know which dog did it, why did they kill the lab puppy?
3. I love my dogs to death and trust them with kids. Savannah in particular is especially careful around kids and seems to understand that babies and toddlers need to be treated gently. She puts up with all the ear pulling, pinching, tailing grabbing, etc. beautifully. Besides the fact that the baby was left alone, what went wrong in this case? Are any readers who have kids and dogs concerned as well?

So sad.

1 comment:

Jenny said...

These things just kill me. It's so much worse now that I have a baby of my own!

It seems as though the baby was in an indoor swing--the article said the parents were in the house, but "not in the room." I can't imagine why a dog would do that though! I mean, a large dog someone had trained to be aggressive, maybe, but not a little dog or a puppy!

I do hope people realize that THIS IS WHAT CAN HAPPEN when you are not physically close to your child. The media is always going on about how much safer it is to have your baby in his own crib, and it seems like parenting from afar is applauded because it requires such restraint from the parents. There are so many gadgets for avoiding your baby: strollers, swings, bouncers, jumpers--and while I had most of those it's important to note that Fisher Price is not a good babysitter! Attachment parenting would've saved the boy's life. If he'd been carried by his mother in a sling the dogs couldn't have gotten to him.