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5-year-old dies after pack of dogs attacks
CNN ^ | Nov. 16, 2010 | Rick Martin

Posted on 11/19/2010 10:08:05 AM PST by solosmoke

Authorities in Alabama are investigating the death of a 5-year-old boy who was attacked in his yard by a pack of up to a dozen dogs....

The child was home with a babysitter in Phenix City, Alabama, Monday afternoon when he darted outside into the fenced yard and was attacked, Taylor said.

Animal control investigators determined 12 dogs were involved, but it was not clear how many of them bit the boy.

One of the dogs involved belonged to the boy's family, Taylor said. The 11 others belonged to neighbors and apparently slipped under the fence, he said.

Taylor said the dogs were from mixed breeds, and none of them were pit bulls.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Pets/Animals
KEYWORDS: dog; irresponsibleowner; pitbull
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Prayers go out to the family. Hopefully the owners of the dogs involved will think twice about letting them run loose, and the babysitter...I can't say what I think of the babysitter.
1 posted on 11/19/2010 10:08:09 AM PST by solosmoke
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To: solosmoke

Where’s Michael Vick when you need him?


2 posted on 11/19/2010 10:09:59 AM PST by Callahan
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To: solosmoke

put the owner in jail


3 posted on 11/19/2010 10:10:12 AM PST by factmart
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To: solosmoke

Ummmmm, 11 dogs slipping under a fence, into a fenced-in yard? This sounds sad and weird.


4 posted on 11/19/2010 10:11:15 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: solosmoke
Just following the irresponsible but extremely common dog owner tradition of letting their dogs run loose all day (and night). A person I knew slightly got into trouble when he found a pack of 20 or so had killed two calves and eaten one of them - He got his AK and killed about 3/4 of them before they could get away. The dog owning neighbors were up in arms because he killed their darling warling precious wecoious puppie wuppies. I believe he had to go to trial and was found not guilty, but he had to hire a lawyer etc - not cheap. Plus I heard that he never got the dog owners to pay for the lost cattle.
5 posted on 11/19/2010 10:20:26 AM PST by from occupied ga (Your most dangerous enemy is your own government,)
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To: solosmoke
Sad indeed. This can happen. The nitwit who lives behind me now has 10 dogs. Pit Bulls,German Shepherds,Akitas,Mixed breeds. A pack of dogs. Dog packs kill. I had to buy fencing for my back yard. My daughter brings over her Scotty dog and I still have to watch him. I have seen a few dogs slip under his fence into the cow pasture next door. If one does get in my yard I will shoot it. Period. I haven’t even mentioned the barking......
6 posted on 11/19/2010 10:21:15 AM PST by 4yearlurker (Well,so far Hope & Change SUCKS!!!!!)
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To: ClearCase_guy

Some fence, huh? I like dogs but if any dog I owned did that,he`d suffer an acute case of impact based, cranial lead poisoning. A family dog is supposed to be loyal and fight to protect his family, not help to kill one of them. As a kid, I had a Beagle/Cocker Spaniel mix, she was only about 30 lbs but that dog would have fought to the death to protect any of us


7 posted on 11/19/2010 10:23:31 AM PST by nomad
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To: from occupied ga

“He got his AK and killed about 3/4 of them before they could get away”

An AK 47? Cool , I wish dogs would make my day like that!


8 posted on 11/19/2010 10:24:06 AM PST by Democrat_media (Why is no government creating a product we can hold in our hands like a cell phone..?)
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To: ClearCase_guy
The 11 others belonged to neighbors and apparently slipped under the fence, he said.

Obviously, illegal alien dogs.

9 posted on 11/19/2010 10:26:08 AM PST by Puppage (You may disagree with what I have to say, but I shall defend to your death my right to say it)
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To: from occupied ga
Even when the dog is nice, it can cause trouble. We have a problem with a rottie down the road. It is a sweet dog. However, it like to play and tease my horses. It's becoming a real pain and even a danger when I'm out riding.
10 posted on 11/19/2010 10:27:43 AM PST by kara37
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To: kara37

Anyone hear anything about a police officer being bitten in the groin??


11 posted on 11/19/2010 10:33:26 AM PST by Gadsden1st
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To: from occupied ga

Here in Massachusetts, under MA General Law you can kill a dog if it is going after your livestock. I know cause I have chickens and I looked up and read the law.

And this is in Massachusetts!


12 posted on 11/19/2010 10:33:26 AM PST by Peter from Rutland
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To: nomad

A family dog
I totally agree but will add, they are not only family dogs, they are first and foremost animals as are we. One concern I have with the way things are headed, if it gets extremely dire, is that people after 2-3 days of no food will probably do about the same thing.


13 posted on 11/19/2010 10:34:06 AM PST by Jolla
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To: from occupied ga
I do not understand the concept of dogs running lose. My dog is in a fenced yard (nothing can crawl under the fence) or is out with me, on a leash. Period.

When I see a dog running lose, I think vile thoughts. I've posted those thoughts before and been attacked by about 200 posts (some people think that my property is actually not mine, but rather, belongs to other people and their pets). I'll just stop here before I get into trouble.

14 posted on 11/19/2010 10:35:33 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: 4yearlurker
Conibear traps will solve the problem. Just remeber the other two s’s. http://www.bugspray.com/professional/conniebear.html
15 posted on 11/19/2010 10:36:04 AM PST by org.whodat
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To: solosmoke

It is hard to put out of mind the images of furry domesticated dogs...

I moved to Yokosuka, Japan when I was eight years old...there were packs of wild dogs living in the tunnels there that the Japanese had burrowed out in WWII, composed of dogs who had gone feral when their owners rotated back to the states and left them behind.

The caves were all supposed to be boarded up, but they weren’t. (I know this, because my older brother and I found several and went exploring in them...nine year olds will do that.) In one, we were pretty far in, and had a handheld spotlight connected to a cigarette lighter connecter to a big battery you hung on your shoulder. It was really bright, but I dropped it and it went out. Let me tell you...that was the blackest of the black. I picked the light up and it wouldn’t come on, and I assure you, my heart rate immediately began to increase. Even a dummy like me knew this wasn’t a good thing. No backup light...no matches, no nothing. And we were pretty far into that tunnel through multiple twists and turns. The two of eventually figured out that the cigarette lighter connecter had pulled out of the battery, so we plugged it in and found our way out. But that scared the crap out of both of us, and we never went back in one of those again. (At least I didn’t, but I doubt my brother did, either)

One day, I was riding my younger brother’s bike (a little POS Stingray with a standard coaster brake) through a remote part of the base, mostly composed of vegetation covered lumpy high hills honeycombed with caves. Coming out maybe 100 yards at the most from the hills on both sides was chain link and barbed wire. Inside the chain link fences were military hardware of all kinds. Anchor chains, gun barrels for everything up to 16” guns, shells and bombs piled up, landing craft, weird gray things with wires coming out of them (probably motors or generators) and so on.

So I am pedaling down this deserted road between these vast expanses of chain link fence (it seemed vast to a nine year old) and all of a sudden, a pack of dogs comes running down one of the hills after me. I had never seen a group of dogs like this. It seemed like a hundred dogs, but in retrospect, I don’t think it was more than fifteen or twenty.

But still.

So I began to pedal for all I was worth, standing on the pedals and pushing each pedal with as much force as I could muster. I looked back, and they weren’t gaining on me.

They were nearly on top of me.

At that point...the chain came off the sprockets. It was an annoying problem, and even though we operated constantly on that bike, the chain annoyingly continued to come off when you really put the pedals to the metal. I don’t think “annyoing” was the word that appeared in my head when that chain came off.

And then the dogs were all around me, snapping at my legs. I hoisted my legs up on the handlebars, and the dogs began leaping and snapping at me. To make matters worse, I was rapidly losing speed, and the bike began to meander from side to side. Probably another five seconds, and I was going to run out of forward speed, and the momentum that would keep me upright.

Out of the blue, and with no precognition, I suddenly veered to one of those chain link fences and grabbed onto it as I came up next to it. The bike kept going as I scrambled to dig my toes in and climb, which I did before the dogs figured out what I was doing. I climbed as fast as I could to the top of the barbed wire and swung one leg over.

To this day, I am not sure why I didn’t just climb down the other side and stand there, but I think that perhaps I thought I would really be breaking regulations if I was found standing inside the barbed wire fence by the Shore Patrol. So, I swung my legs under the bottom strand of the barbed wire, and rested my armpits on the top strand.

The dogs leaped, barked and milled around for an eternity, but I think it must have been only about 15 minutes. Eventually, they figured I wasn’t coming down, and all ran off and disappeared into the hill. I waited another half hour or so, then came down. I put that chain back on the sprocket pretty quick, but I think it took twice as long because I only spent a quarter of the time actually doing it, and the rest of the time looking all around me expecting them to run back down and have at me.

A year or so before that when I was back in the states, a friend of mine and I used to taunt another friend’s dog (a BIG Wiemaraner) by running through his back yard and leaping over the fence on the other side of the yard. The two of us would go to opposite sides of the yard, and whichever one of us was left alone, we had to jump and run. Invariably, the dog would see what was going on, and run at top speed after the one running through the yard, just missing our legs as we clambered up the fence and disappeared over the side. He would then see our faces appear to look back over at him, and he would leap snapping at us. Our hearts were pounding, and we would laugh, then climb back up on the fence and tightrope walk the length of the fence with our arms extended in both directions. The dog would leap and snap at us, and when we lost our balance, we always made sure to bail out to the OUTSIDE of the fence. Occasionally, if our other friend was home, he would open the bathroom window and encourage us to run over and jump in the open window. That was really challenging because you had to time it and leap for the window, while you could just hit the fence and climb.

On one of these bathroom jumping sessions, the dog caught me. I didn’t time the leap right, and was trying to use my sneaker to get a purchase on the side of the house, and he grabbed my pants around the ankle and dragged me into the yard. He shredded my pants and ripped my sneaker off, which I had to go back in the yard to reclaim. I had several wounds from his teeth, but they were furrows, not puncture wounds. When he grabbed my pants leg and began to shake and snarl, I remember looking into those green eyes below the gray head with the bump on it. And that dog looked seriously like a wild animal. His green eyes looked fierce and crazy, and that scared the beejesus out of me. I think my other friend jumped in the yard and the dog ran after him, so I was able to jump in the window. I wasn’t really hurt, just scratched up.

But when those dogs came running out of the jungle after me, there was something completely frightening about a whole group of them. When that Weimaraner grabbed me, I remember laughing hysterically while the kid who owned the dog was trying to help me in the window. When that pack ran after me, I was scared shitless.


16 posted on 11/19/2010 10:38:25 AM PST by rlmorel (TSA's new motto: "You don't get on, Until we get off.")
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To: Gadsden1st
Yep...the first 7 times it didn't register but I figured it out on the 8th.
17 posted on 11/19/2010 10:48:49 AM PST by JPG (The GOP leadership is on probation. No second chances. Don't blow it.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
I do not understand the concept of dogs running lose.

Pretty simple It's your pet, and that gives you the right to let it roam as it pleases destroying other peoples' property as it pleases. In reality, like you, I don't understand the mindset, but in rural georgia it's the rule rather than the exception.

18 posted on 11/19/2010 10:49:32 AM PST by from occupied ga (Your most dangerous enemy is your own government,)
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To: org.whodat

Thanks for the link! It pi$$e$ me off that I have to spend money just to feel safe and enjoy my yard I’ve had for 20 years.


19 posted on 11/19/2010 10:53:03 AM PST by 4yearlurker (Well,so far Hope & Change SUCKS!!!!!)
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To: solosmoke
How sad. Im tired of hearing of dogs killing children.
I would take great pleasure in beating every one of those doges to death with a baseball bat. Those mutts would wish I were Vick before I was done with them, he was humane, I wouldn't be.
20 posted on 11/19/2010 10:55:07 AM PST by ßuddaßudd (7 days - 7 ways Guero >>> with a floating, shifting, ever changing persona.....)
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