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18 thoughts on “2012 Dog Bite Fatality: Oklahoma Woman Killed by Pit Bull in Her Home

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  1. The article from Fox 25 has horrible reporting, very little detail, except that which appears to be sympathetic to the dogs. How can anyone say for certain the dog attacked because of the storm — the only witness is dead! Who made this claim that the dogs didn't like storms? The granddaughter? It wasn't the neighbors — if they could hear it when the dogs fought, then they certainly would have heard them going crazy over storms before. It just really sickens me when the owners make excuses for their pits even after a family member is killed. How many owners/family members have been killed this September? I know it's large. So scary. The other article has much more graphic detail, and witness statements, but still blames the storm.

  2. Just another CRATE AND ROTATE story with a dash of thunder and No-Kill:

    "After he healed, Jonah was as strong as a mule. He could pull a car up a hill … Jonah was great with people and children, but had little tolerance for other male dogs … Once Rocky [his other dog] ended up with a broken jaw … one bite was all it took … So for five years, Jonah lived in half of my house, and Rocky lived in the other half. I can't explain to you how complicated this made my life … Jonah was terrified of lightning. Any time the thunder rolled, I would go into the other room and find him in the bottom of the utility storage cabinet, with cans of wd-40 and paint knocked over and fallen on his head. He would push aside car wash buckets, paint-brushes and anything else that was in his way to burrow down into a dark space to get away from the noise and the flashes."

    Tightly wound with dog-aggression and still with balls, Jonah acted fairly normally in his fear of thunder and lightening by trying to get away from it (not attacking and killing his owner). Side tracking here, but this story of a No-Killer gets better:

    When he decided he needed to get out of the fence, he could do it. It took me a while to figure out how he did it, but once I did, I was amazed … He would then grasp that metal ribbon in his pink gums and work it back and forth, back and forth until eventually it would snap. He would then take his soft, black, wet nose, and jam it as hard as he could into the wiry hole made by the broken piece of chain link. He continued to push his face into this hole, working his head back and forth, as the hole grew larger and larger. Once the hole was big enough for him to get his entire snout in, he knew that he had won. He worked, eyes squeezed shut, pushing with his back feet, as hard as he could, until finally, bleeding and torn, he would jam his entire alligator head out of that tiny hole.
    —-
    http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Saints/Authors/Stories/JonahsStory.htm

  3. When I was growing up, my family had small dogs. One was quite afraid of loud noises. But he never, ever tried to attack anyone. He just found a place to hide.

  4. Classic Crate and Rotate Mishap…

    A threat to themselves, their families and their community these Nutters are.

    25 Pit Bull DBRFs in the US over the past 362 days..

  5. Wow, these DBRF's are racking up FAST… I think September may be a recordbreaking month!

    YQN: I hear what you are saying. I had a Gordon Setter as a kid and he would hide under the bed or in the closet upon hearing any loud noise (what a wimp!).

  6. Wow. She starts to recover from a heart transplant..and then dies like this. Awful. I get the chills just thinking of being in that apartment with that dog trying to break out of its crate.

    I'm with you, Opalina: that article is poorly written and uninformative. Crap journalism like that drives me nuts. There are tons of unemployed and underemployed journalists out there, even in OKC, and yet confusing articles like this are published.

    And yeah, it sounds like the writer is scrounging to excuse the dog's behavior, or at least blame it on something external to the dog.

    "“Pit bulls need to be in the right setting; they can’t be kept in a cramped little bitty apartment,” neighbor Kenny Reeves said."

    What does that have to do with anything?

  7. I really hate that our blog owner is having to deal with new stories so often.

    I actually blinked a few times tonight when I checked in on the blog and thought, not another one.

    This poor woman to have gone through a heart transplant only to be subjected to a "horrific death".

    How anyone can make an excuse for any dog that does something like this is beyond explanation.

    What a very sad week this has been with new victims, who were put into this situation with dogs who were known to be dangerous not just with the inherent danger of the breed but what they as individuals had done in the past.
    I feel criminal charges are called for in these cases.

  8. If one is to poke around in the extensive Bibliography section of DBO, The first CDC DBRF study done in 1977 is laying there.

    It shows that in 1974 there were just 5 DBRFs and in 1975 there were 6. None of the dogs involved belonged to the family.

    Now we routinely exceed those annual totals in a single month. We've also had months with 5 Pit Bull DBRFs.

    The Dog Lobby has some Splainin' to do…

  9. Gary Wilkes is the first sensible behaviorist I have ever read/heard.

    Well said.

    Now can we get this kind of thing out there and have the media run with it……….

    That kind of thing WOULD make a difference.

    I am looking forward to reading other posts by Mr. Wilkes.

    Thank you so much for posting this.

  10. When discussing a house pet, here is no difference between "it killed someone for no reason" and "it killed someone because it was scared of thunder."

  11. I agree Snack. Any animal that is driven to attack due to a relatively common loud noise has no place in any community.

    Moreover, I don't think these people actually hear or understand what they are saying: "Yup, poor pittie was scared by [insert common loud noise], so there's nothing wrong here!".

    To me, what they are ACTUALLY asserting is that NO pit bull or pit bull owner can be trusted! Something I agree with whole-heartedly!

  12. Let's set the record straight, shall we? I'm not an animal behaviorist, but I have had many years of experience with dogs. What I'm about to say cannot be substantiated with a degree to back me up, but I think it will make a ton of sense.

    The pit bull broke out of its cage, not because a noise startled it, not because it realized its time in the cage was over, and the next pit bull's turn was up, not because someone fell off a ladder, not because it was neutered yesterday, but because there was a stranger in the house.

    This is just another example of a pit bull's relentless attempt to get to its prey. The fact that pit bulls climb fences, and jump out of windows, proves that nothing will stop them. These are not normal dogs, and trying to make up stories to explain why they killed your grandmother, shows how sick the owners of these dogs are. Don't ever try and normalize a pit bull. This is why the body count of humans is going up. These are not isolated incidents. They will continue until BSL becomes the norm, and not the rule.

    "Punish the deed, not the breed" Really? How do you punish a pit bull for its deed? The deed it committed is what it was bred for. Hence the need to regulate the entire breed.

  13. If most dog breeds are as dangerous and unpredictable as nutters would like us to think, then dogs would not be popular pets and most people would be scared to death of them all. Nutters have to push other breeds down in order to elevate their breed of obsession.

  14. bitbypit, I wasn't using, "there was a stranger in the house" as an excuse. That, to me, is a natural tendency of pit bulls. To attack a stranger for no reason. If I came across as trying to excuse away the dog's behavior, I wasn't trying to.

  15. Now here is a twist — Newsok.com updated their article. Forget the B.S. about the victim being away from the home since May; apparently she had only been away for a FEW DAYS:

    "Family members told police the dog was known for becoming agitated by thunderstorms and may have not recognized Davis, who had been in the hospital for a few days before returning home Wednesday, Nelson said."

    http://newsok.com/pit-bull-terrier-attacks-kills-60-year-old-oklahoma-city-woman-in-apartment/article/3713509

    Major lying Nutter family alert!

  16. All this excuse idiocy is just a smokescreen trying to obscure the bloody elephant standing in the room:

    Due to horrific and negative breed stewardship, Pit Bull breeders are selling MANKILLERS!

  17. Thank you to both Gary Wilkes and Alexandra Semyonova for your insights.

    If any kind of excitement, good or bad, can trigger the attacking behavior, that animal is not safe as a house pet.

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