Rumors are flying in the wake of last week’s pit bull attack on a 2-year-old boy, and investigators say they are trying to separate fact from fiction.
Lockport Police Detective Capt. Larry Eggert said he’s gotten several calls from people who say they have information about the circumstances surrounding the attack.
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Rumors have spread about the dog possibly having been trained to mount humans, perhaps in connection with drug activity at the home, but nothing has been proven, he said.
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Mary Grisanti, former humane educator in Erie County, said she has heard of one other case in which a dog sodomized a baby. In that case, it turned out a teenager was manipulating the dog and holding down the child.
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Dodman, who runs Tuft’s University’s veterinary center in Grafton, Mass., wrote of an instance in which an un-neutered male dog penetrated an 8-year-old female.
“The incident was in part due to lack of proper management of the dog by the parents, and the dog, who was 5 years of age at the time of the incident, should have been neutered,” Friedman said. “I have to wonder, as all us canine professionals are wondering, why not only was the dog un-neutered, but why the parents left the dog alone unsupervised with a toddler for any period of time?”
http://www.lockportjournal.com/local/local_story_199144245.htmlLockport Police Detective Capt. Larry Eggert said the toddler had removed his own soiled diaper and asked to be changed just before the attack. His mother sent him into the living room to get a new diaper, Eggert said.
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Holly Hackmer, a veterinary technician at Brighton-Eggert Animal Clinic in Tonawanda, said she believes the dog may have smelled something in the air that triggered the attack.
“Maybe this dog smelled a female going into heat in the area,” she said. “We see dogs jump through windows, go through doors. They become overly aggressive. It’s the testosterone running through their system.”
Madeline Friedman, owner of Innovative Reality Dog Training and Behavior Consulting in New York City, said the dog could have even smelled something on the child.
Friedman — who prefers to call the incident an “anomaly” instead of a “sexual attack” — said dogs have over 250 million scent detectors in their noses, while humans have only 5 million. Several things could have contributed to the smells in the air that day, including the early-afternoon humidity and the fact that the boy had just removed a dirty diaper.
http://www.lockportjournal.com/local/local_story_194125921.htmlLockport Police say any firsthand information from the public will be helpful. They are investigating how a pitbull sodomized a toddler.
Police are getting many phone calls from people, but they want to hear from individuals with first-hand knowledge about the dog. They are looking into calls that the dog may have been trained, but they don't know by whom.
http://www.wgrz.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=49447As the investigation continues animal behavior experts say it's possible for an animal to sexually attack a human on its own. However a spokesperson for the Erie County SPCA says history shows similar cases always had another human involved in the attack and there was previous abuse. "In the four cases we're familiar with in the country in the past couple of decades, the animal was trained to behave in such a manner," Gina Browning said. "It is tied in usually with some form of domestic violence and/or child pornography, just a brutal history of such cases." In the recent Lockport case police say there's no evidence that anyone forced the dog to attack the boy, but they're still investigating.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19858693
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