Why didn't the neighbor just shoot the thing dead? Now vet fees are going to be wasted taking the bullet out and time and money will be spent debating what to do with the damn dog.

I like it when witnesses don't sugarcoat things like this neighbor.

i can't be sure, however, i don't think this was a conversation that happened after the mauling, but before it. the neighbor's use of the present tense is misleading. for the woman to defend the dog AFTER it nearly killed her kid would be insane, whereas i think she's most likely just stupid.

Maybe, Dan, if you do have a dog, it will have this coming out the closet momment, where it will say, "See Dan I've been a pit bull all along! Do you still love me?"

If your dog attacks someone, it should be considered attack with a deadly weapon. If it mauls your own kid almost to death, you should lose custody of your kid, and any remaining dogs you have.

I got snapped at a couple times by my dogs growing up, but they never even bruised me even when I was jumping on them and pulling their hair. These people and their dogs are both fucked up.

Stinker may be a pit bull, but he's sweet and would never hurt anyone.

Unless, you know, he's provoked.

This story is filled with so many delicious stereotypes...the pitbull, the trailer, the confederate flag in the window...the babysitter yelling "get your gun!"...the moronic owner clearly more concerned about her dogs' reputation than her child's safety...the smartass neighbors...

Oh fuck Dan this is so funny. Hey fellow sloggers lets all search the web for the most gruesome photo we can find of a maimed or dead kid and then add a snarky caption to it. Everything is fair game here at the SLOG. We are the hip kids We are the cool kids. Let's rock!

Don't forget to post your photo and witty caption here at the Slog where anything goes.

Hey remember that post Dan put up about the fat woman who rolled over in her sleep onto a baby and killed it. Gawd-I'm still laughing. Someone mentioned how horrible it must be for that women to have killed that child. Dan of course has the right attitude about the incident. Who gives a fuck about that woman and kid. We sloggers have been amused-now let's move on to the next big thing.

DAN!

just START ANOTHER BLOG ABOUT HOW YOU WANT TO KILL PIT BULLS!

theres never going to be a lack of stories about idiots that dont know how to train or control their dogs.

and YES! the answer is more than always "yes. someone, or something, either directly or indirectly must have provoked that dog somehow."
pit bulls arent flesh eating predatory monsters from a parallel universe who mysteriously hunger for human flesh...they are dogs. dogs can be trained. whenever something like this happens, punish the owners accordingly. as if the damage came from the owners own hands. end of story.

That's right, Dan is in fact truely a pit bull, deep down inside. He may appear to be loyal and affectionate and a total wuss, but he also holds back this deep desire to tear small children into little bits.

That's why Dan has a thing against pit bulls, because he sees himself, another self loathing put bull.

That's right, Dan is in fact truely a pit bull, deep down inside. He may appear to be loyal and affectionate and a total wuss, but he also holds back this deep desire to tear small children into little bits.

That's why Dan has a thing against pit bulls, because he sees himself, another self loathing pit bull.

COMMENT DELETED: Off-Topic/Spam

We'd rather not moderate your comments, but off-topic, gratuitously inflammatory, threatening, or otherwise inappropriate remarks may be removed, and repeat offenders may be banned from commenting. We never censor comments based on ideology. Thanks to all who add to the conversation on Slog.

COMMENT DELETED: Off-Topic/Spam

We'd rather not moderate your comments, but off-topic, gratuitously inflammatory, threatening, or otherwise inappropriate remarks may be removed, and repeat offenders may be banned from commenting. We never censor comments based on ideology. Thanks to all who add to the conversation on Slog.

Update on this story: The girls mother has surrendered the dog over to Anchorage Animal Control and it has been euthanized.

I live in Anchorage in a totally different neighborhood than where this occurred, and I have to tell you I'm afraid to take my own dog (he's a shepherd/husky mix so he's no slouch himself) for walks in my neighborhood because there are so many pit bulls here and idiot owners let them run free.

For those of you who continue to defend pit bulls by saying "all dogs are capable of biting if not trained properly" - I have to say yeah but not all dogs have been bred for generations for the SPECIFIC PURPOSE OF KILLING ANOTHER LIVING THING. Yes it is the fault of people and not the dogs that so many pit bulls have become vicious, but that doesn't change the genetic facts.

In this instance a reportedly well-treated dog was playing with people it knew and just "snapped". I don't give a rat's ass if the six year old girl provoked it some how or not. If this was your child, none of you would care "why" the dog attacked either.

The fact is, breeders have created this situation where pit bulls frequently behave this way and because of how they are built, they can do more damage than other dogs. Yes other dogs bite too, but the reason you don't hear about them as much is because they don't end up creating horror stories such as this one. I guarantee that the media would report about ANY BREED of dog if it practically ripped the throat out of a six year old child.

And for the record, if people started purposefully breeding toy poodles to be vicious attack dogs, I would also say something has to be done and we should think about banning toy poodles (or at least forcing breeders to change their breeding practices).

If breeders of pit bulls and other genetically aggressive breeds of dogs continue to be irresponsible and owners continue to make excuses for their dogs actions, than it is up to communities to do something about it.

mom likes the pit bull cause said dog eats her pussy just fine late at night - and seems to like the taste of bacon fat and hot pussy mingling

ask Dan, he knows, he gets the letters

I dig the fact that there was no question in the girls mind that the neighbor had a gun.

That's Alaska for ya!

before people start screaming for a pitbull ban again let me repost some coments i posted i while back in a simelair slog-post:
(by the way, i think this story proofs my point, the problem was not the breed of the dog.
Its the idiot owner who left his "security" dogs in the same household as a young kid withoud proper supervision.)

>>>>>>>>>
here in the netherlands we had an pitbull ban for years, and guess what? it just got lifted because tons of clever profesors admitted that it was impossible to uphold, un-fair, dangerous, discrimitive and classist. And not to forget, didn't change one bit in the amount of dogg-attacks/serious injuries per year.
So now we are going to get an way more sensible tight law on agressive dog behauvior (basicly one stike and you'r out).
So why the hell are you lobbying for something that is already proven to be ineffective?

for the people able to read dutch: here is the goverment conclusions on the so calles "pitbull-law"
http://www.minlnv.nl/portal/page?_pageid=116,1640321&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&p

by the way, liberals screaming about pitbulls is the same as women who only focus on the unknown man out there ready to abuse you instead on the far bigger threat by their spouses.

bring in the numbers (dutch but apperently simmilair to the usa):
66% of the incidents need no medical attantion (doctor/hospital)
64% of the deadly attacks (per year 1 on 16 milion people) are by their own dog. more than 90 percent of those in or around the owners house.
at more than half of the incidents involving minors there was no adult present.
67% of all the lethal and non lethal attacs are considerd provoked by the involved human.
20% of al deadly victims are younger than 5 years, while they only make up 6,5 % of the population
pitbull inflicted wounds are not considerd more serious than wounds inflicted by other breeds.
pitbulls are responsible for a slight higer amount of the reported incidents by the police than is considerd normal for their percentage of the overal dog population. (but so are an whole range of other dog breeds like jack russels, rotweilers, belgian shepperds, dalmations and with the hardly owned but verry biting prone turkish shepperd as overal leader)
And more importand almost all the at the police reported incidents are with unfamilair dogs attacking adults wich only make a small portion of the overal number of (serious) incidents.
dogbites are far less likly to kill you (1.2 deaths per year/7000 ER treatments on 16 milion people,) than sport (11 deaths/160.000 ER threatments) or diy home improvement (23.5 deaths/30.000 ER threatments)
your chance of dying by dog bite is considerd 1 in 13 milion.
since the mayority of the (serious) incidents involve (unsuperviced) childeren and elderly and the family dog the best way to cut down the amount of incidents is considerd education.

oh, and one more thing for you amaricans to consider, in ohio a court considerd the banning of a specific breed unconstitutional.

so... doe's the oposition have numbers aside from hysteric media coverage. No? than i asume that you people are also going to lobby for an ban on being a black man based on the average foxnews broadcast?

@18 you forgot to mention EXPENSIVE. Tax payers generally can't stand paying for animal control as is ... and then to demand that they go out and patrol all the neighborhoods for pit bulls? They can't even keep the streets totally rid of strays.

@19,

I'm not certain of that. Completely banning a breed, which, at a minimum, would place extra criminal liabilities on owners if their illegal dogs attack, could easily be cheaper than what pit bull apologists say we need to do: require spaying/neutering even to the point of providing it at low or no cost, extra licensing, extra penalties for allowing dogs off leash, extra monitoring and penalties against owners when dogs bite someone even if there's little damage, etc.

Personally, I'd just rather throw the owners in prison whenever a dangerous dog attacks someone, but I doubt the pit bull apologists would be any happier with that than an outright ban.

@20 It's not being a pitbull apologist. It's being a realist.

Ask yourself these two questions.

What is a pitbull?
What defines a dog breed?

Once you realize this, you are starting to ask these underpaid people who usually do their job out of sheer passion, to make some shitty judgement calls on what makes a pit bull a pit bull etc. etc.

It's utter fucking nonsense! Throw the dog owners in jail for all you want, hell. I DON'T own a dog because I'm aware of the responsibility and liability of one. But don't say ban breeds, because it's petty, elilitest, and downright ignorant of what REALLY happens. No body really BREEDS pitbulls. No body really breeds rednecks. People breed yale graduates for presidential candidacy and people breed toy poodles. Compare and contrast and which do we have more of?

Anyone who wants to impose a breed ban will have better luck going out with a hack saw, finding all the Justin Timberlakes and sawing off their nuts!

Looks like the dog was put down. But there's another money quote down in this followup article:

http://www.adn.com/anchorage/story/493323.html

Gower is an animal control officer. Here's what he said:

Despite the attack, Gower said pit bulls are not an inherently bad breed. Any type of dog can snap and attack someone if it's handled improperly or gets too excited, he said.

"Pit bulls can be wonderful pets," Gower said. "Occasionally something might happen, but they're no more likely to bite than any other dog."

I'd say - maybe pit bulls are no more likely to bite than any other dog... but i want to see REAL statistics on what breed of dog kills and seriously maims the most. My money is definitely on pit bulls.

Obviously that child was going to be more secure in the ICU. The dog was just looking out for her interests as any security dog would do.

@22

Unfortunately finding valid stats is hard. The often cited Merritt Clifton study (used by pro-ban types)omitted more than 200 dogs from it's findings and lacks both reliability and validity.

This year there have been 10 fatalities (to my knowledge) caused by dogs. Here are the breeds involved:
1)Doberman Pinscher
2)Jack Russell Terrier
3)Husky Mix
4)Pit bull (3)
5)Olde English Sheep Dog
6)Black Lab puppy
7)Australian Shepherd Mix

Hey Dan,

Thanks for bringing this subject so much attention. Hopefully it will result in an increase in awareness of the situation. Dogs are, after all, ANIMALS. They aren't people, they aren't plush toys, they have the capability to hurt and kill. Everyone needs to be aware of what the responsibilities are of ownership, and they also need to be aware of what dogs are capable of. Perhaps then we can reduce the number of fatalities each year.

Of course, it could just result in people tuning out your shrill and unreasoned rhetoric.

@24 Your list shows that out of the hundreds of recognized dog breeds, 30% of deaths were caused by pitbulls.

Back in June, an Anchorage pit bull named Dozer attacked and killed a cat on camera. The owner of this dog was photographed with a young child and appeared to live in a mobile home.

Current Dozer attack:
http://www.dogsbite.org/blog/2008/08/6-year-old-anchorage-girl-critically.html

June Dozer attack:
http://www.dogsbite.org/blog/2008/06/killer-pit-bull-caught-on-camera.html

@26- exactly... 3 deaths and we are at 30 %. Statistics based on tiny sample sizes give us SKEWED DATA, yet become generalized as decision making criteria for creating breed bans. In reality dogs are responsible for, on average 36 deaths per year. I am not saying these deaths are acceptable, but they are not a substantial reason to kill thousands of innocent dogs. Particularly when there are MANY preventative measures that can be taken to keep attacks from happening.

Horses kill 100+ people annually.On average.

For some proof that breed bans do harm the innocent check out http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/239590749