Monday, February 05, 2007

It happened again!

I posted a while back about dogs who have eaten pieces of paralyzed people who cannot feel the dog biting them.

It happened again! A woman has been charged with child endangerment after her pit bull puppy chewed off her 4-year old son's foot. Her son has spina bifida, and cannot feel anything below the waist. After the incident, the puppy was sent straight to doggy heaven, but I'm not sure if that was the woman's decision, or the local government's.

What I take issue with is destroying the dog. What was the reason, exactly? I think it was a knee-jerk reaction. Possibly it was also another case of a dog being sentenced to death for the crime of being a pit bull. I don't think you can blame the dog for this, any more than you can blame the dog for eating a juicy steak that you left on the floor. A puppy doesn't understand how paralysis works. In the wild, paralysis equals death. Only in human society do paralyzed individuals live on. So we're supposed to be surprised that the puppy took the boy's peaceful silence as tacit approval?

Assuming that the woman's story is true, the charges against her are unjust. It was a puppy, after all, who probably presented absolutely no danger to any child, except paralyzed, sleeping children. A reasonably smart parent would have realized the danger, but law enforcement has never set the bar that high to be considered a competent parent. For example, how many parents are prosecuted, whose children drown in their own backyard pools? Hardly any.

So what makes this case different?

I won't get into whether parents should be imprisoned when their children die of their stupidity, but I'll just say that I don't think it helps anyone.

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