Natural History

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

30 Responses

1. on May 3, 2012 at 8:03 pm rebecca

   Jack Russell’s are well know for their attitudes on the golden retreiver lets check the breeder any in or line breeding no for faults but look at all the puppies you get….

   
   
   • on May 3, 2012 at 8:09 pm retrieverman

     Golden retrievers, like any dog, inbred or not, can exhibit predatory behavior toward children. It’s not very common, but it can happen. Nicholas Dodman describes some well-bred working like springers that wanted to kill a baby in his The Dog Who Loved Too Much.

     Predatory behavior is the exact same response that a dog would exhibit toward a squirrel. This dog may be entirely safe with adults and even older children, but he may not have known that babies were people.

     
     
     • on May 3, 2012 at 8:13 pm rebecca

       yes i read that the other day

       
       
     • on May 4, 2012 at 8:13 am Jan

       It is a Golden Retriever “mix”… but that doesn’t matter, it’s the fault of the humans who think that it’s okay to leave a baby/young child unattended with ANY dog of ANY breed… what were they thinking? Even with a young child it takes a few years for the child to understand the repercussions of their actions. They can be hurtful physically to a pet or other human and not understand that what they are doing is hurtful.

       
       
2. on May 4, 2012 at 6:01 am chervilmeadow

   Have you noticed how many factors seem to be repeated in these cases. O ften there seems some indication of a dysfunctional family, a grandparent’s dog, a macho young man in a low income environment. In Britain staffordshire bull terriers feature too often it seems and sometimes these dogs have been encouraged to be aggressive by their young male low mentaility owner who is often physically and mentaly inadequate, a bit scared of other young men in his neighbourhood and wants to seem more macho in that deprived urban environment.

   
   
   • on May 4, 2012 at 8:17 am Jan

     There are so many web pages that can be found featuring a baby and a dog together… Look at the pit bull breeders in particular. They want to “prove” that their dogs aren’t killers so they have babies and young children pose with their dogs. That really sends the wrong message to dog owners.

     
     
     • on May 4, 2012 at 8:19 am UrbanCollieChick

       Totally agree Jan. I included that in another comment below.

       
       
     • on May 7, 2012 at 7:39 am Jana

       I found this page while doing research on child safety for a school project:
       http://www.safekidssafedogs.com/html/photo_album.html

       Some are cute, some are cringe-inducing! There’s also the “cute” series of photos with a Neo rolling on a very small baby. Looks more like a dog investigating and claiming a “thing” than approaching a small human.
       http://stuffofawesome.com/how-to-hug-a-baby-1280995944-5816.jpg.html

       
       
3. on May 4, 2012 at 8:17 am UrbanCollieChick

   I don’t think we can blame only certain lines or family environments here. Various mongrels raised in happy home environments have all the same potential; even those that don’t necessarily exhibit “strong” prey drive. My kelpie is an oddball in that he has pretty low prey drive, but when we visited a friend with an infant she left on the floor to play, Tucker laid down next to him, looking inquisitive, tail wagging. I held him, but w/o being negative, then led him elsewhere. The happy tail didn’t necessarily mean he wanted to have a best baby buddy. There was a small, squealing creature on the ground, wiggling. If I had left him, he could have pounced and then, well, who knows? Teeth don’t have to be used in earnest to do damage to a baby face.

   Babies exhibit a lot of characters prey would. High pitched yells, wiggliness, small size. I had to explain this to a colleague – a former agricultural student mind you – who felt any dog that hurt a kid was “bad” and needed to be put down because “any normal dog knows a baby is human, so if they hurt babies they are dangerous to all people.” UGH!

   Rman is right. This is NOT Disney folks. This is real life.
   The Unexpected Pit Bull just released a large email with a video full of nothing but pictures of pit bulls with kids and babies, many with babies lying on the dogs’ tummies, backs, etc. I don’t blame them entirely.The entire state of Maryland just deemed in their high courts ( and they MUST have been high to do this) that all pit bulls and I think even crosses are inherently vicious; loaded guns waiting to go off. Gee. To think I once considered moving to MD. Anyway, TUPB felt the need to do something to combat this equally irrational moment of bad judgement.

   But this also leaves an impression that you can just drape toddlers all over dogs and should have nothing to fear. And that could set the pit bull and a lot of other dogs like mastiffs, dobermans and others that already intimdate some, up for future disasters, further tarnishing their image and ultimately imposing further fear, legislation, banishment and euthanasia.

   
   
   • on May 4, 2012 at 8:22 am retrieverman

     The dingo really did eat the baby.

     http://news.discovery.com/animals/dingo-australia-122402.html

     I’ve often thought about getting an Australian cattle dog and naming it Lindy.

     
     
   • on May 4, 2012 at 8:34 am Jan

     total agreement here…

     
     
     • on May 4, 2012 at 8:36 am Jan

       I was attempting to agree with “UrbanCollieChick”

       so sorry the dingo really did eat the baby!

       
       
4. on May 4, 2012 at 8:32 am pennypup

   Absolutely terrible. I’ve never left Kyuss alone with the kids. Children can be rough and should constantly be supervised at all times; not just with dogs.

   
   
   • on May 4, 2012 at 9:36 am UrbanCollieChick

     They sure can and actually Tucker is a bit afraid of small kids for that very reason. Ironically I was told by his former owner that he loved kid of all ages and would make a good therapy dog for them. So NOT true. When he arrived all it took was three 9 year olds who got off their bikes 15 feet from him, and started to run towards him, to make him go the other way. They didn’t even get up to him. I had to stop them. They actually asked “Why?” Wow. I did the “Because I said so” crap. Not great reasoning but hey, he’s MY dog! ‘Nuff said.

     Anyway, a therapy dog is supposed to be relatively unflappable. It’s a taller order than a lot of folks realize. So here Tuck had an owner who clearly only knew him part of the way. She had been right about some other things but dead wrong on the kid issue. Hardly Tucker’s fault and in fact most kelpies are darling with children so long as they are not taken for granted and tormented. Kids can be monsters.

     
     
5. on May 4, 2012 at 9:22 am chervilmeadow

   Just returned a lovely book to a local library. “Sophie The Lost Cattle Dog” is about
   an Australian retired couple who took their young cattle dog, Sophie, aboard their small boat when they set sail for a trip around the Queensland coast near Brisbane. Sophie disappeared overboard and was assmumed to have drowned in the fast current between the islands. However six months later she was discovered on an island having apparently swum several miles to get there. She is assumed to have lived off shore crabs and dead fish. Sophie was discovered on this uninhabited island by a park ranger who trapped her and word of mouth brought the owners to collect the still fit cattle dog as she came ashore in t5he ranger’s boat. Fortunately, says ther author, Sophie had not “gone feral” as they had feared when told she had survived. Sophie became famous in the world’s papers as the dog which survived all odds. Meanwhile the old couple had eventually acquired another cattle dog pup believing Sophie to be dead.The new one a red whereas Sophie is a blue and they got on fine together. Lots of lovely photos in the book including some showing both cattle dogs playing together. I loved the book as my wife and I visited that area some years before this adventure took place. The Cattle dog is a really tough dog as we know.

   
   
   • on May 4, 2012 at 9:50 am UrbanCollieChick

     I’ll have to find that book! If I had a house I’d consider an ACD. I’m still amazed I have a kelpie who can live in my apartment and sleep while I am at work; midday dogwalker notwithstanding.

     Then he rocks the frisbee in the afternoons!

     The Aussies made some fantastic dogs. They are among my faves! My only regret is the AKC got hold of the ACD. Even the show kelpie folks still refuse AKC entry. The working kelpie folks ( my dog) are one of the few who actually made a point of notoriously saying “There are show dogs and working dogs in many breeds and we are making it official by speaking out that there are different lines. We are putting it right in the name. ‘Australian WORKING kelpie!’ Tony Parsons is THEE man on the working kelpie. He’s written some awesome books. I’m hoping to find a good breed book on ACDs, history and working ability, that isn’t just all about the show ring and “How to Raise, feed and train..”

     I went to Oz in Aug 2000 for a month. Drove up the Cape York Peninsula to the town of Laura ( my real name), stopped at a bar that may as well have been Croc Dundee’s hangout. They told me of an old farmer up the road that had heeler pups ready to go. THE REAL DEAL! I was sooooo tempted to snatch one and change my flight plans for home. Lived in an apartment and had doubts so skipped it. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t pass up the best dog ever.

     Oz is amazing. I can see why the native folks believe in “The Dreamtime” as it truly is a dreamy place!

     
     
     • on May 4, 2012 at 10:42 am chervilmeadow

       Mary, my wife, and I drove a Toyota campervan from Sydney up to Cairns one year not long before you and diverted inland enroute. Did you get to visit the Lamington NP. We had to park ‘wild’ there as bookings for the small camp site were full. I recall a nice little town near the NSW Queensland border called something like murwumbulah (spelt completly wrong, sorry). The thing is it is so much like the small town nearest to our village here in Buckinghamshire England except in the Australian town they grow bananas in their gardens. An old school friend of our son lives there, Actually I didn’t like the attitude towards aboriginees displayed by some rural white ausies, the equivalent of some American “redknecks” I suppose but maybe worse!
       We didnt get up quite as far as you did as we flew on from Cairns to Honolulu. and then to SanFrancisco where I have relatives. Those were the days..! Funny thing is we only met our first cattle dog in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California and we were amazed that it was allowed to roam free over miles of mountain terrain but always came back for supper at the house which put us up that one night. It was a blue one I recall, friendly but tough as old boots by the look of it. Too much information off topic, sorry!

       
       
       • on May 4, 2012 at 11:04 am UrbanCollieChick

         LOL! It is off topic but hopefully Rman will forgive us once. Sounds like you had fun in Oz too. Yep, “blueys” are tough ones. We should be email friends!

         
         
     • on May 4, 2012 at 5:11 pm Kathy

       Have you seen the Bull-Arab, the dog they created out of the bull terrier, the greyhound and the pointer because they didn’t have any bulldogs for hunting wild pigs? It looks like a bulldog, just a little bit “off”. AU is like the US in a parallel universe.

       
       
6. on May 4, 2012 at 10:53 am Joyce Kesling, CDBC

   Thanks for helping get an important message out. I was just awestruck and concerned parents would be so careless with their children 8-(

   
   
7. on May 4, 2012 at 11:57 am M.R.S.

   Regarding the incident of the “golden retriever mix” ( a dog of unknown ancestry labelled such merely on basis of its appearance) on report said that the father of the child was sleeping in an adjacent room. Sleeping? while a child nearby was screaming from dog bites? or was he passed out/stoned/or otherwise blotto? Not to mention the idiocy of leaving an infant alone with a dog –any dog.

   Was an autopsy done on the child? What of the possibility that the child died (SIDS? other?) before the dog got hold of it? That was the case in at least one instance; person died of heart attack, dogs tried to rouse the person, and/or pull the body towards their home. Dogs got the blame and were killed before results of autopsy confirmed hat the relatively minor injuries from the dogs were not cause of death.

   
   
8. on May 4, 2012 at 12:06 pm Alejandro

   Why do some dogs seem to understand the baby is human from the get go and others don’t? is it genetic? breed related?

   Do the ones who don’t realize it is a human when the baby grows, begins to walk and talk, realize it is even if it smells the same?

   I have seen dogs react with joy when introduced to a baby for the first time, and other growl as if the baby were a cat.

   two different videos

   puppy loves baby
   

   dog thinks baby is dog (crazy drunk parents)
   

   
   
   • on May 4, 2012 at 12:58 pm retrieverman

     Most dogs do recognize that babies are humans.

     But you have to be very careful.

     
     
   • on May 4, 2012 at 4:13 pm kat

     Joy =/= reconizing its human. My dogs both reacted to me son the *exact* way they reacted to my rats when I had them. Wagging tails, happy barking, licking, nudging.

     The growling dog is more safe then the happy dog. No one is going to mistake his actions for freindlyness and leave it with baby. It’s also less likely to approach baby in the first place: most growling dogs are freaked and freaked dogs mostly run first.

     
     
     • on May 4, 2012 at 4:17 pm retrieverman

       Is this Katthevamp?

       
       
       • on May 4, 2012 at 6:38 pm kat

         Yep

         
         
9. on May 4, 2012 at 5:02 pm Kathy

   We left our basenji bitch home alone, which she hated. On our return a couple of hours later, we found a life-sized rag doll dragged across my daughter’s room into a doorway. It was lying on its back. Both arms had been torn off at the shoulders. Nothing else in the house had been touched.
   Another story. I saw three whippets take off after a pet monkey. These dogs were savage ratters. They could have killed the monkey in a flash. About 15 feet from the monkey (who was thoroughly unintimidated) they all stopped in unison, and proceeded to mill around with their heads down. It looked like “Sorry, sir, we took you for someone else. That’s a lovely fur coat you are wearing. Etc.” Then they took off in unison and beat a hasty retreat.
   Dogs are animals. They do classify things and people, but they figure out how to do it without the benefit of language. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they don’t.

   
   
   • on May 5, 2012 at 3:20 am jean

     A doll is abstract. to us it looks human but its really just plastic and cloth. just because the dog ripped a doll to bits does not mean it would do the same to a person , its probably smelled your daughter , knew she played with it so decided to chew it. My dogs chew my stuff because they see me using it and think it is desirable

     
     
     • on May 5, 2012 at 1:26 pm Kathy

       I meant to say that dogs are inscrutable. I know you can’t fool a dog with a doll, but can a dog kill someone in effigy? How would we know?

       
       
10. on May 4, 2012 at 7:38 pm Jan

    Some one sent me this link this morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT7_CtjEVFU

    
    

Comments are closed.