Originally Posted by :
Two young children are dead and their mother suffered major injuries after two family dogs attacked a baby and toddler outside their West Tennessee home.Kirstie Bennard, 30, suffered critical injuries when she tried to intervene in the attack on her 5-month-old boy, Hollace Dean, and 2-year-old girl, Lilly Jane, family and police said.
"She put her body on top of Lilly’s to try and protect her after the attack started," Bennard's uncle by marriage, Jeff Gibson told USA TODAY on Saturday. "Both (dogs) started attacking her while she lay on Lilly."The two children were pronounced dead when officials arrived at the home, the sheriff's office reported.
It was not immediately known what provoked the mauling.The mauling, Gibson said, lasted about 10 minutes.The dogs – two pit bulls that belonged to the family – were euthanized at Memphis Animal Services Thursday.
The family owned the pets, Cheech and Mia, for more than eight years without a violent incident, Kelsey Canfield, the mother's best friend, told Fox News.
"I can promise you those children were her world, and if there was any inkling of danger, she would have never had those dogs near her kids," Canfield told the outlet. "Those children were everything to them, and they just have a really long journey ahead."
How do you feel about PittBull's? I posted this because my wife shared this story with me and my son was just recently participating in a "read to sheltered dogs" event where you could adopt a dog (I know brilliant).
I've heard the arguments that PittBull's get a bad wrap, but it seems time and time again they are the focal point of dogs who do these horrible acts. [Reply]
Truly awful and very very sad. I’m not fan of pitts or any of the large working dogs personally. I might consider one later in life when I don’t have small children in my home though so I’m not writing them off completely. That goes for rotts and gsd but I’d probably never take a pit. [Reply]
Originally Posted by FlaChief58:
These dogs are known to snap and attack their owners. I feel sorry that those two babies died because their parents are so fucking stupid
I wouldn’t say stupid. I would say ill-informed. They wanted to believe and they had 8 years of evidence to support their belief. But nature doesn’t always work that way.
You want to hear about stupid? My wife is a nurse and one of her classmates got a job with a pediatric practice. One of her duties was to check on babies after they had been born. This was almost 30 years ago so I don’t even know if they would do this now but this classmate would visit parents at their home after the birth of a child. So she went to the apartment of a couple in San Diego. Their baby was about 3-4 weeks old. So when the classmate gets there, the baby is on the floor on her back on a blanket as the mom is getting ready to change her diaper.
The nurse sees something out of the corner of her eye on the top of the couch. She looks and it’s a large snake - about 6-7’ long. Boa/python/some type of constrictor. It is just loose in the house! And it comes down to the floor and raises its head up and looks at the baby. The mom says, “He’s been doing that since we brought the baby home and we don’t know why.” The nurse was like, “What the ever lasting fuck?!?” She called animal control and got the snake out of the house and told the mom what was happening and the mom had no damn clue!
I swear that our modern “safe” society has prevented some people from being removed from the gene pool that 100+ years ago would have been removed. And they are now free to pass on their stupid genes. Or modern medicine means that of 12 children born, we can expect 11 to reach adulthood and puberty. Our own intelligence has worked to weaken our species. [Reply]
I have had dogs loyal as they come, but when my toddler kin and young ones were near I was always on alert. Animals sometimes go animal.
Saying so today is undoubtedly racist and speciest and ablist and all kinds of bad words but you are 100% correct because nature will always triumph over nurture. Genes are a bitch. [Reply]
Originally Posted by frozenchief:
Saying so today is undoubtedly racist and speciest and ablist and all kinds of bad words but you are 100% correct because nature will always triumph over nurture. Genes are a bitch.
Can you explain where racism plays into my post?
Genuinely asking. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Graystoke:
Can you explain where racism plays into my post?
Genuinely asking.
Sure. I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but your post, which I agree with, can be reduced down to nature > nurture. That is, our genetic code will trump whatever training/education/background we go through.
But today there are many who disagree with that philosophy and call it all kinds of names. I don’t agree that believing nature trumps nurture is racist but it is routinely branded as racist.
Consider the following example:
Among humans, males are taller than females. While this is generally true, many today reject this as sexist because it posits a biological difference between the sexes. Further, arguing about genetics and nature has in the past been used for some really ugly uses, such as eugenics. Recognizing this truth, though, does not lead to eugenics.
And along these lines, even though it is objectively true that men are generally taller than women, most people do not understand statistics. As a result, when confronted with a statement like “Men are generally taller than women,” they respond with, “Well, my Aunt Sally is taller than my Uncle John,” and view this as some sort of refutation of the general statement.
Notice how in this discussion most people are arguing using stories, anecdotes or personal experiences. Nothing wrong with that. But when looking at statistics, there always exceptions, outliers on the Bell curve if you will. Basing an argument upon the outliers is logically fallacious but is frequently done.
Anyway, to argue today that nature trumps nurture opens the door to allegations of racism or a whole host of social ills, which is unfortunate because it shuts down debate. [Reply]
My parents had a German shepherd. When they were having a crew build an out building, she was worried he’d go nuts and think the men were bad, so she briefly introduced him. The very first thing he did? Grabbed the hammer from the foreman’s tool belt and played a game of keepaway.
Great dog, and yeah, he certainly patrolled their property well from things like deer, but he was too goofy and clownish. My parents swore he was secretly a retriever in a shepherd suit. [Reply]
Originally Posted by GloucesterChief:
I think you can generally apply nature over nurture to some extent with animals. With reasoning people though its much much murkier.
It is murkier.
We face some very real tensions in this issue. The discussion involves people, which makes it resonate with us much more. Further, arguing that nature > nurture has led to some really bad results. But the more we study genetics, the strong the argument is, in my opinion, that nature does trump nurture. Look at the studies done on twins, particularly the studies done on twins separated at birth.
But even if nature does trump nurture, each individual has rights and they cannot be abridged just because of biological happenstance. Put another way, if Jeffrey Dahmer had a twin, the twin should not be imprisoned just because of his relation to Jeffrey. But if Jeffrey Dahmer had a twin, how comfortable would you be going to his house to watch a football game? That is why such comparisons are murkier when applied to people. [Reply]
