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19 thoughts on “2024 Dog Bite Fatality: Baby Boy Under the Care of a Babysitter Killed by Three Large Dogs in Duncanville, Texas

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  1. Poor baby died because his parents didn’t do a background check.you shouldn’t trust your baby to someone who own a big dangerous dogs whether it’s pitbull gs huskies.there was a story a while back where a dad trust his son to a babysitter who own pitbull and it killed the baby I think his named was daxson .the baby be still alive if she give him to a babysitter who owns cats.

  2. It appears the babysitter/homeowner/dog owner was running an unregistered (illegal) daycare from her home. The state does not have a listing for a licensed day care at her address.

    Four children present. One article said they were her children, but the owner, Marilyn Trout, is nearly 60 – doubtful. I am sure this is all part of the police investigation.

    Yes, I would like to see a picture of the dogs. Strange it was not caught on camera as the dogs were taken out. Usually a news crew catches a picture. There were 4 dogs in the home. 3 were involved in the attack.

    Another tragic, preventable loss.
    By the way, over a billion dollars in losses recorded by insurance companies in the US for dog bite injuries last year. 35% of losses on homeowner insurance is from this one cause. If homeowner companies are starting to drop people for living in hurricane regions, flood zones, fire areas, dropping people for dangerous dogs has got to be close behind.

    My daughter lived in an apartment and paid for a DNA test on her dog. She had to go into the office for the staff to take the oral swab. I hope this will become more universal.

  3. Doesn’t matter about the parents IMO, in this case.

    Because we don’t know why they left their child there. Perhaps this babysitter was the only one around they could afford. Should they have chosen better? I don’t know. They certainly paid more than the price for their lack of judgement.

    I still want to know what those GSDs were mixed *with*. Not that a pack of GSDs can’t go feral or wild, just that they are less likely to, than dogs mixed with pitbull.

    The other question for me is…how did the dogs get *to* the child?

  4. A confirmed case where all three dogs were involved, how horrible. There’s no way that these dog were calm and stable family pets prior to this attack.

      • I’d agree. I have two, and that’s my limit. I think if you have over three you’re really pushing it. I wouldn’t want to try to handle a third, personally. With two, I can give equal attention and am able to control them well, we go out in public with them on a leash together, it just works (they are also Frenchies, so small and not aggressive). People get a little nuts thinking they can handle a pack, and it almost never works out well. You end up neglecting them for lack of time and energy, they feed off each other’s bad behavior… it’s just a bad idea.

        • I’ve had up to five, with board and trains and fosters

          That said, board and trains aren’t loose dogs running around in your house, unsupervised. They’re crated unless they are working or supervised, playing/exercising.

          More than one foster in one’s stable pack (2 trained dogs are plenty) is a bad idea because you want more *trained* dogs than untrained dogs in a group. Dogs learn from each other and what they learn, isn’t always the behaviour you want and must be stopped post haste.

          I try to stress that if the first dog is not trained to a high degree, do not bring another one home just to “keep it company” or to resolve behavioural problems like barking. With two trained dogs, a third foster isn’t likely to cause a problem unless it’s unstable or exhibits bad behaviours.

          It’s difficult to walk even two dogs at a time and it takes a fair degree of skill. (most people do this absolutely wrong by walking one dog per hand–leaving no free hand should something untoward, occur) This means that anyone with three or more dogs is not walking their dogs in most cases. Training takes an hour a day per dog or more until the dog is proficient.

          Of course, one pitbull is one too many due to their high degree of dog and human aggression.

          Five untrained or poorly trained dogs together is a disaster waiting to happen.

          • When it comes to determining how many dogs to own, I’ve found that “zero” is the ideal target number.

    • I agree.
      Even with owning zero dogs I have to clean their waste out of my yard and hear their constant barking.

      More often than not I can see an owner yelling at a pit that is ignoring them if I look outside.

      When I go to either of the local farm stores I hear the “click, click. click” of untrimmed pit claws on the tile.

      I don’t understand why you need your pit with you to look at tools, implements, tractor parts, tires or ammo but a shocking number of people can not make a purchase without their pit there to approve.

      By approve I mean ignore the owner and strain at the end of a retractable leash.

      There was a big hubbub in the news lately where someone owned a Serval and it escaped.

      Animal control made a show out of catching it and not returning to the owner. Lawmakers have rushed to the capitol to ban private ownership of servals.

      Keep in mind the escaped serval harmed exactly zero people or other pets.

      My state consistently is in the top ten for deaths related to pits.
      Lawmakers bend over backwards for the pit lobby even letting Leddy Van Kavage write the state’s laws regarding BSL.

      One serval is apparently cause for alarm yet you can have a half dozen pits in your back yard and no one cares until they “somehow get out”.

      I am not saying keeping servals for pets is a good idea, yet if all the pits in my state were to be transformed in to servals overnight I suspect the number of maulings would drop.

      Particularly enraging while serval-gate was going on the local news covering that story was constantly pushing pits as their “pet of the week”.

      An animal that has as far as I know never killed a person is way too dangerous, why don’t you take home the number one killer of people, kids and the elderly in particular.

      However much you hate the media industrial complex, it isn’t enough.

    • Appreciate the 2nd and 3rding.

      Although as of late I haven’t wrapped my head with a lengthy manuscript, I plan to once I settle upon the right magnification of readers to make me comfortable.

      One thing that will NOT make me comfortable is to have a whining hound seeking attention every five minutes {or less}.

      Nope. I can’t concentrate like that.

      Don’t want one.

  5. I would be too lonesome without any dogs, and my Service Dog is retired due to medical problems. Thus, I get to train another dog which won’t be easy for me.

    I find it interesting that the police can call the dogs shepherd mixes. Lots of huskies are listed as shepherd mixes.
    Yet, the temperament of these two breeds is markedly different. Also, remember that GSDs have black muzzles which is a dominant trait. Therefore, a mutt without a black muzzle isn’t more than 25% GSD.

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