Rhoda Marie Wagner, 60, was killed by three pit bulls she was dog sitting.
Woman Killed by Pit Bulls
Perry County, PA - A 60-year woman is dead after being mauled by three pit bulls she was dog sitting. A passerby reported a female lying in the front yard on July 28; the first media report of her death was not until August 4. Pennsylvania State Police are in charge of the investigation. At the time of the attack, Rhoda Marie Wagner was caring for her roommates three pit bulls when the dogs attacked her for an unknown reason. Wagner's Facebook page shows two of the pit bulls.
Wagner was alone when the attack occurred, according to state police, but had been caring for the pit bulls at her residence at 29 Henry Road in Miller Township for over a month. The dogs were running loose in the yard when Wagner's body was discovered. Though the dogs' owner was not identified by police, he or she surrendered the dogs to the Humane Society of Harrisburg Area and all three dogs have since been euthanized. No other information has been released by police.
“When emergency medical personnel and state troopers arrived on scene, it was apparent that the woman was deceased. The three dogs, all pit bull terriers, were subsequently captured and secured with the assistance of the Perry County Animal Response Team,” state police said in a statement.
Dog Sitting Deaths
This year there have been several high profile attacks involving a dog sitter killed by pit bulls, including 7-year old Jayden Henderson in North Carolina and 28-year old Rebecca McCurdy in Oklahoma. As we stated after Jayden's death, "Nearly every year, one or two deaths are added to our "dog sitting" pit bulls archives. We cannot stress how dangerous this endeavor is." Caring for not just one pit bull, but in this case three pit bulls, while the owner is away, is a high-risk activity.
According to Wagner's Facebook page, she also identified with the pit bull breed. She posted a meme on May 29 indicating that a pit bull most closely matched her personality. Because Wagner is "100% LOYAL," Wagner "loves with all of her heart," Wagner is "sometimes misunderstood," and Wagner "has a gentle heart." Russian Roulette is a game readers. As Angela Rutledge said after her pit bull named "Kissyface" killed her son, "Some people win and some people die."
Friday Updates
A Friday update by WHP-TV stated that Wagner owned at least two pit bulls. Thus, the photos on her Facebook page are presumably her own dogs. One of Wagner’s pit bulls was inside the home at the time of the fatal attack. That dog is now being cared for by her son. It’s unclear where her other pit bull was? State police said the three attacking pit bulls belonged to her roommate. Her best friend, Carla Mae Snow, said that Wagner was an advocate for pit bulls and loved her own.
“I know if she would be alive today, we should not want to see pit bulls to be brought down any more than they already are.” - Carla Mae Snow
Family and friends “speculated” that Wagner had been breaking up a dogfight at the time. Yet, there were no witnesses to the attack and state police offered no speculation, except to say the dogs attacked for an “unknown reason.” It is also worth commenting that no one knows what Wagner would or would not want if she were still alive today. A pit bull mauling death is a poor time to defend pit bulls, of which one news report stated Wagner was partially eaten by the dogs.
Only one of Rhoda's pit bulls was inside her home and uninvolved in the fatal dog mauling.
View the DogsBite.org Google State Map: Pennsylvania Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.Related articles:
07/14/21: 2021 Dog Bite Fatality: Child Killed, Mother Hospitalized While Caring for Neighbor's...
06/26/21: 2021 Dog Bite Fatality: Woman Dog Sitting Pit Bulls Found Dead in Osage County...
Law enforcement departments across the United States should release consistent "baseline" information to the media and the public after each fatal dog mauling, including these items.
I just saw this news story on a national on-line news media outlet an hour ago. It was Not for an unknown reason that she was killed by dangerous breed canines. There are two reasons why the dogs killed her: 1. Because they are dangerous breed canines, bred to attack and fight to the death, without giving any warning sign. 2. Because she failed to obey the Boy Scout motto.
The only warning sign that they convey is that any non-anti-social diagnosable human being that is not decerbrate and/or decorticate instinctively immediately knows upon sight that the proximity of the obviously dangerous animal is an unreasonably elevated risk of grave threat.
I actually have little sympathy for this one. Empathy because I have my own faults. But this case sound different from the clueless aunt doing a favor for an out of work nephew but knows nothing about dogs.
She has blame because she should of known better but had to be a pit lover and defend the poor misunderstood pit bull. But the media which downplays these attacks and makes excuses is also at fault. Then we have the pit lovers that come on after every single attack and show their sweet pit bull that will lick you to death. So a person with limited knowledge of pit bull attacks because only seeing a local story occasionally sees one article about a death that is slanted to make this look accidental, rare or unexplained then 100 people showing a pit bull not attacking at that moment. Well they just go Oh, had to be reason for attack look at all those sweet dogs. And I don’t believe that most of those so called sweet dogs haven’t killed another animal or showed human aggression, just being hid.
This is a real hurdle for people working for BSL. I think right now pit bulls and pit bull type dogs are more than 6% of the dog population, Most of them have not seriously or fatally mauled a human. So the pro-pit propaganda makes sense to them.
Also occurs to me reading this one how exponentially the chance of mauling is, the more pitbulls together, there are.
I also have to wonder in multi-pitbull attacks how much is re-directed aggression on the human who tries to take away their other dog, prey.
She’s also an older woman. Thus, since pitbulls like easy prey–a likely candidate for being mauled.
Nobody deserves to be torn to shreds by wild dogs, even gullible ones.
Which is why there needs to be enforced BSL.
Boni, it seems probable that 1 pitbull decided to attack the woman feeding and cuddling them, while dog-sitting, she was well known to those dogs.. but why didn’t the other 2 pitbulls try to protect the woman? who was caring for them? They just joined in with the killing! Moral of the story is please, do not dog-sit pitbulls (even friends or family pits that you think you might know) even if you HAVE known them since little pups, they are TOO dangerous 🤨 just a dreadful breed, too untrustworthy
Since we weren’t there we don’t know for sure what started the mauling.
What we do know is that pitbulls are *excited* by mauling. It’s like dogs bred to enjoy bite work, or dogs bred to enjoy hunting, or dogs who are bred to enjoy running. Once a dog *starts* that behaviour, it’s fairly common for the whole pack to jump into the fun.
Sadly, when a dog is bred to enjoy mauling its prey–then other animals and people can trigger that joy by happenstance no matter how familiar they are to the pitbull/s.
So yeah, don’t pitbull sit. Ever,
And don’t dogsit entire packs of dogs unless you know how to work safely in a kennel environment with numerous dogs.
Almost certainly what happened is 2 (or more) of the dogs got into a fight (maybe over food, or maybe over nothing) and the woman tried to intervene. Redirected aggression is extremely common in many dog breeds, including bully breeds, once they had redirected onto her and she started screaming etc, it would have set off the prey drive of the dogs and they would have kept going until the “prey” is dead.
Many dogs do indeed protect their people from aggression from other dogs, however many pit bulls will join in on a fight or attack due to their prey drive and impulsivity being so high (they don’t have much ability to stop and analyse a situation before acting, unlike more cautious, thoughtful breeds of dog).
I have seen videos of multi pit attacks. Pits that live in the same house will get in to someone’s fenced back yard and attack a pet or person. The victim will get inside and the pits will turn on each other becase there is nothing left to kill.
That is the kind of “loyalty” I can do without.
Just thought of this marketing slogan:
Pit Bulls: 100% Loyal Until They Kill You
That’s pretty good . Or it could be Pitbulls: 100% loyal until they maul you.
Because people will say how low the % of people killed is but they are not taking in to account all the others that survive but are seriously injured , disfigured or traumatized for life.
Good one, Your Quiet Neighbor. Citzn1, I agree with you.
I might say, “Pitbulls: 100% loyal until they bite you,” because I don’t like saying the word “maul” (pronunciation is weird). I would go on to describe their strong jaws and tendency to fixate and continue to bite once they’ve started.
Anyway it’s pithy and we should add it to the vocabulary.
How about, “Pit Bulls: 100% Loyal to Their Genes”
It is curious that this has not made the news with the two biggest news outlets in that area: PennLive (aka The Patriot-News) and ABC27. Why? Not even the York Daily Record, which is large.
Perry county is a place that got its first redlight in 2010 and the second in 2013. It is a place the Harrisburg region loves to make fun of so it is perplexing that the main media companies would not run wild with this story.
Also, the Harrisburg Humane Society warehouses nothing but pit bulls/Mixed Breed (pit mixes)>>>hounds > Catahoula leopard dogs. How do you verify that these dogs were actually euthanized and not taken in by Speranza Animal Rescue?
I stand corrected. After more searching, both of the above news outlets did a report on this death.
Wow! In her FaceBook photos, it looked like she was really ‘abusing’ that poor pibble [sarcasm off] a pitbull does what it wants, whenever it wants… one of them decided to attack/kill the caring woman, looking after them that day. The other 2 pits didn’t go to her aid, but joined in! This breed is very dangerous, a fighting breed and [sarcasm on] no-one should be fighting them anymore, cos it’s illegal and stuff…[off] they kill more folks than bears, pumas, sharks etc. each year– combined!
What a surprise, she was an intense nutter and was totally fine watching another person’s 3 murder hounds. And it cost her her life.
Crazy that after this happened, the family haven’t learned a thing and they are keeping her own murder mutts. This would have been a great time to say “Hey, this breed just killed my mom. Maybe I should put these beasts down since the same thing could happen to me or an innocent person one day”. But that’s asking too much from pit nutters…
I won’t board pit bulls, and I have been asked multiple times.
I was wondering.if the woman and her dog that were reportedly killed by stabbing in an Atlanta park could actually be a dog mauling. Her dog looked like a pit bull or pit bull mix to me. News listed an enormous number of stab wounds. She was well liked, and they said there was no motive for killing her.
.
“Lycan on August 12, 2021 at 4:05 am said:… … … … ”
Reported to the Admin.
I wish statistics would separate bite from “maul”. Or use bite index.
I am not in love with BSL because it can be abused but dogs in the top 10 should at least have statewide laws requiring some kind of special license and mandatory liability insurance. Personally I think all pit bulls (whatever they call them this decade) should be sterilized and allowed to go extinct. Coliseums are long out of style legally. What niche can they fill not already taken by the barely civilized Staffs & finally calmer Bull Terriers?
A lot of dogs will bite, but not many breeds go for a kill.
I’ve competed Chows, Beagles, Daschunds and Brittanys, owned various dogs &Hybrids (5 pure&3 mix who would have skewed the ATT with 7 pass and 1 aw shit naw shall not pass!), 2 Southern pits, one from fight lines and a royal (bred backs to Boxers and Bull Terriers to “cool the blood”. They give away the lanky ones). I had one aggressive biter in my chows, snipped quick. All the weenies were moody nippers, my Hand me down Brittany became unshowable and spayed-she was a tyrannical attack beast at 3yrs. My Peke bought in 71 bit the face of the little girl who stole her when 6 months, Dad volunteered to fix her face. Me, friends kids and then my kids have between us 9 cocker spaniel attacks <_<
No one wants to be bit, but true fear of possible death comes from a handful of breeds.
The first pit I rescued was so sweet til at 2yrs he grabbed my neighbor's lil girl's hand that he played with every day. She was behind a tipped lawnchair and my Malamute/wolf mix and the evil Brittany started honkin big fight til I shot him myself. I was 16. I worked all summer to help them pay expenses. Double fear was when a loose pit rushed across our acre yard to get my 2yr old son and shredded his royal terrier when she bit thu her roofed deer-fence enclosure and battled on the deck. He also was saved by obstruction(a hobby horse) I grabbed my son inside and called my friend to come shoot it. It would tear he up moe then bang our door. First time I was eve AFRAID of an animal.
::::WILL NOT EvER OWN a bully breed again:::
Only dogs I owned that bit me the owner with intent was that sketchy white chow, our triple school fail GSD (broke my hand) and the most dangerous encounter a part rott puppy from that crappy GSD. From nowhere at 9 months &95 lbs, he attacked my torso several times and despite the thick oil canvas and down liner jacket … punctured me and bruised, dislocated shoulder (was my trick shoulder ..still). I had to whack him with a shovel and trap him in side yard. Went for treatment and had AC euthanize him. After being held hostage by the clingy unreliable GSD for 5 yrs, I ended it early. If I have to chain a dog, it is not a pet anymore and chained animals go crazy. And he was a happy smiling unremorseful wigglebutt 4 hours later when I came back from ER. Too many kids in this street and he was not liking them.
What I find most disturbing with the pit and that rott/gsd mix is no_discoverable_trigger. Impulsive with crushing jaws It is more like owning a leopard and just as dangerous, maybe more so since exotic animals we naturally stay alert to. Should need special registration to own them! And they are NOT family pets! If they can't do their hardwired job with you, they are not for you.