Posted on 02/10/2011 6:59:10 PM PST by DogByte6RER
SAN DIEGO -- Two small dogs have been quarantined after one of them chewed a couple of toes off of their elderly owner early Thursday, investigators said.
Police received an emergency call just before 5:30 a.m. from the man's caretaker. The caller said he found the victim lying in bed amid blood-soaked sheets at their home in the 200 block of West California Street in Mission Hills. The caretaker then discovered that his roommate was missing three left toes and that one of the men's two small dogs had blood on its snout, SDPD spokeswoman Andra Brown said.
Paramedics took the man, who seemed confused about how he had suffered the injuries, to a hospital. The victim -- whose right leg and one of the toes on his left foot had been previously amputated -- suffers from neuropathy, a type of nerve damage that has left him with no feeling in his remaining foot, the roommate told police.
Police filed a bite report with San Diego County Animal Control. After speaking with the caretaker, Animal Control officers placed the two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels under quarantine at the house, department spokesman Dan DeSousa said. The dog's owners did not want the animals destroyed, so they are being monitored to see if either develops signs of rabies, DeSousa said.
DeSousa said he had never heard of a case where dogs had gnawed off someone's toes before, but he said fatal dog attacks are relatively common.
"Accidents happen all the time, and in most cases we'll never know why, because we can't talk to the dogs," DeSousa said.
Adult protective services caseworkers will look into the living arrangements at the home and decide whether an intervention is necessary, Brown said.
(Excerpt) Read more at fox5sandiego.com ...
I agree... little dogs also love to preen their owners.
Everytime my husband walks through the door, our small 10# dog starts preening his feet as soon as he sits down. The dog does not care if my husband is wearing shoes, just socks or bare feet. It goes on for about 10 minutes or more.
The dog nibbles with it’s small front teeth, as if it is cleaning and preening my husbands feet.
This happened a few months ago where a man had complications in his feet from diabetes. His dog gnawed some of his toes off also.
The nibbling that dogs do on their owners is a sign of love an affection. I think they think they are nibbling fleas.
That was my first thought.
Horrified —> sudden burst of laughter = near heart attack, thank you very much.
Taste like Vienna sausages.
“Little dogs have a bad habit of preening their owners.
Maybe the little dog was just preening it’s owner of rotting flesh.”
I was thinking more like debriding it’s owner of rotten flesh. The elderly often have poor circulation in their toes which leads to open sores on the toes or necrosis of the toes. Dogs will tend to wounds by washing to clean the wound and biting to debride it. A dog’s form of nursing care is not the best kind for a person. God bless the poor man. A dear elderly family member of mine recently passed due to complications stemming from circulation problems with his toes.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem the nature of dogs unless there was an issue.
I wonder why the elderly man didn’t realize; as the caretaker/roommate “discovered” bloody sheets, blood on the dogs muzzle at 5:30 am.
Obviously the caretaker didn’t get the story from the elderly man— he never said he heard a scream or was told what happened, he deduced what happened.
Is the owner paralyzed? Was he medicated so strongly that he didn’t feel it? The victim/owner is cognizant enough to declare he didn’t want his dogs destroyed.
I wonder more about the caretaker...
It is a sad story all around.
His feet were likely numb from some variety of neuropathy, diabetic probably. He was bedridden for a reason. Circulatory disease, toes were likely in bad shape. As someone pointed out earlier, the dog didn’t chew off healthy tissue and it isn’t likely that it was trying to hurt the man. Sad story. It took some time to do that, where were his caretakers?
Maybe the dog got confused because just the previous eventing, the old man gave him some baked goods...
They would just scratch your eyes out
It’s right there in the excerpt.
Don’t give dogs too much credit.
It’s not philanthropy (”sensing something wrong”).
It’d be simply something they’d want to eat (”hey, this smells yummy”).
I was remembering that too.
That it is, I flat out skimmed right over that line. Thanks...
/smacks forehead
He was parked in a toe-away zone.
The dog was responding the the chemical scent of dieing flesh and probibly thought the the victim was being attacked by something in the toe.
I have seen other reports where one’s dog alerts to something wrong in the individual and barks at it.
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