To Save Lab, Woman Bites Pit Bull on Nose
Amy Rice is a Huge Hit with the MediaUPDATE 04/04/08: CNN has picked up Amy's story, the brave Minneapolis woman that saved her dog from the grip of a pit bull by biting the pit bull's nose. Countries as far away as Thailand have picked up her story too. DogsBite.org declares Amy Rice, Hero of the Day. We hope she does not have to undergo rabies treatment and that her dog Ella heals soon.
04/03/08: Woman Bites Back After Pit Bull Attacks DogMinneapolis, MN - She says she did not plan it, but after futile attempts to pull a pit bull's jaws off her Labrador retriever's throat, Rice was forced to turn to animal instinct: biting.
"I broke the skin and had pit bull blood in my mouth. I knew what happened, and I knew that it wasn't good."
Injuries to the pit bull were minor, but now Rice is dealing with a potential rabies scare as well as her 12-year-old dog's physical and emotional wounds. She's unhappy the pit bull, named Frances, wasn't immediately corralled by animal control officers, who told her animals that attack other animals generally are not taken away.
"I was sure that my dog was dying in my arms; it was horrible," Rice said of the attack. She feels lucky that nothing like this has happened to her before. "The victim," she said, "could have been a child. It just could have been so much worse." Rice rightly questions animal control's policy of not removing the dog.
Her dog Ella is recovering with several staples and stitches to her head and a crushed ear canal. Rice said the woman caring for Frances, apparently a stray, was waiting for a no-kill shelter to pick her up. On one level she understands the woman's motivation, on another, she thinks that when you take responsibility for an animal, you can't do so partially.
In other news
Pit Bulls Returned to Owner After Threatening Lorain MailmanLorain, OH - Animal control released three pit bulls back to their owner after they attempted to attack a mailman and police officer. In the incident (
Lorain Officer Shoots Two Pit Bulls, Kills One), police responded to a 27-year-old mail carrier who was left uninjured. But during the confrontation, the pit bulls threatened the officer. The officer shot two of the pit bulls -- injuring one and killing the other.
At the time, the pit bulls, 3 adults and 1 puppy, were being stored in a vacant house. Two of the adult dogs had jumped from an open window in order to escape the house, attack the mailman or a combination of the two. The point is, why would animal control give the dogs back to this owner? This is an owner that stores his dogs in a vacant house. These are dogs that confronted a police officer, in which one was shot.
If these dogs injure a person in the future, a county lawsuit is waiting to happen. Animal control released known dangerous dogs that had no proper confinement -- were being illegally stored in a vacant house -- to a highly irresponsible owner, who may be charged with a crime.
The logic is equivalent to handing a felon a loaded gun.Labels: Hero, pet attack
| 
