Monday, August 31, 2009

Parenting for the fail

Just give this story a couple hours, maybe a day, and it will be everywhere. *sigh* ETA: Boy did I call it:

Pit bull eats toes off infant

Jacksonville Daily News - Lindell Kay - ‎4 hours ago‎
Authorities say they expect to file child abuse charges against a Southwest area mother after a pit bull chewed off the toes of her infant son early Monday. ...
WNCT - abc11.com
The lead line in every story is along the lines of "Infant had toes eaten by Pit Bull".

Nevermind the dog is actually a 12-week old puppy - you know, the kind that are teething and chew on everything in sight, especially soft, squishy things. Nevermind that the parents are the ones up for felony abuse charges, not the dog. And nevermind that the parents, asleep in the same room as the infant managed to remain unconscious during the entire biting incident because, and I quote, the mother "was taking medication and never heard the child cry". Apparently boyfriend was taking the same "medication". Magical.

Classy parenting skills right there.

I remember this story from last year, which was even more tragic. A puppy was left alone with a 2-mos-old infant and ended up killing the child. The dog, a 12-week-old Lab, had been starving when he tried to eat the infant. It was a pretty gruesome mauling and happened to occur when the teenage mother and her mother were "asleep" in another room.

The comments on the Lab puppy story are all along the lines of parental irresponsibility and gross negligence. There are 22 comments. Twenty-two. That's it. ETA: We're at 83 comments There are already 20 comments in the "puppy chews toes, doesn't eat infant" story and half are suggesting pit bull puppies should just be banned due to their toe-eating proclivities. It's frustrating - it's a red herring and misses the point entirely.

It is just common sense not to leave a vulnerable infant alone with a dog, of any age or size or type or breed. COMMON SENSE. This is not scaling Mt. Everest difficult. It isn't string theory mind-boggling shit. This is basic stuff.

I really hope this infant does not lose his foot, that he ends up in a permanent home and not stuck in the craptastic foster care system or, goodness forbid, back with his heavily medicated parental units. I hope the other kids end up somewhere better too. I will also hope the puppy is given a chance at being in a home where his owners don't end up in jail for gun-charges, you know, a nice, responsible home. Unlikely; I'm sure they'll kill the dog, but I can hope.

2 comments:

Princess said...

Wow I guess they've never heard of crate training? There were a million red flags in that story that point to the mom and boyfriend for failure or taking care of their kids and properly handling a puppy. No child should be left alone with ANY dog, pit bull or not and that's the case with these two stories.

When are we going to start blaming the horrible parents?! Not the dog?

As for the comments on the story, I couldn't bring myself to read past the ignorance of the third one.

Unknown said...

At least authorities are blaming the parents, but the general public seems keen on focusing on the dog. The puppy isn't being charged with any crime, the parents are.

Not reading the comments is a good idea, I think. :)