When a Male Dog in Kill Mode Attacks

This...

...becomes this in 18 months.

Yesterday I read about the tragic deaths of two Tennessee children mauled by their family's two pit bulls. Here's advice which I saw put into action at the yearling barn one hot summer day in Louisiana years ago. This one action will save lives when in an instant your pet dog turns into a killer.

Most people have no idea how to handle dogs. They see a cute puppy wag its tail while rolling over to have its belly scratched and think, "O-o-o-h! So adorable! Gotta have it for the kids!" They know nothing about housebreaking a dog, feeding, grooming or "what causes that dog to growl at my child all the time?" Sadly, the number one main lesson they don't know to teach their children is to never invade a dog's space when it's eating. That food lying on the floor in the bowl that says "Fido" is its prey, albeit handed to it from a can by a person.

I don't know what triggered the mauling of the two children in Tennessee but I've seen my own granddaughter, when she was young, get in her dog's face and try to pet and kiss it while it was eating. Emphatically I always told her never to do that because a dog has instinctual triggers to protect territory and food no matter how much it might love a person.  

So now to the barnyard fight in Louisiana where one day two male dogs - a German Shepherd and a black Labrador Retriever - were trying to kill each other. My husband and I were supposed to meet the vet at the barn and we'd just arrived. We could see what was going on before we got out of the truck. In the middle of the yard two dogs belonging to two grooms who had brought them to work were in a tangle of teeth around necks, swirling dust, and deep throaty growls - a fight to the death. Several grooms were running around throwing buckets of water on the dogs, standing back several feet while hitting them with rakes and brooms, throwing rocks. Nothing fazed the dogs because they were in their instinctual kill mode.

I remember thinking, since my husband was farm manager, that people would ask him to run in and break up the dog fight and he'd get hurt. However he said something about a gun being the only solution so someone ran to the Cajun man's cottage by the last barn since he had guns to shoot wolves that roamed the land at night. Meanwhile the girl who owned the German Shepherd was crying and screaming since her dog was staggering as it was being killed by the lab's teeth now sinking into its neck.

Just then, like the Long Ranger to the rescue, the veterinarian rolled in. He also could see what was happening before he got out of his truck. He never turned off the key...just put his truck in park and leaped out. He raced over to the dogs and with his right hand leaned over and grabbed the lab's testicles and squeezed them with all his might. 

That dog yelped in immense pain as he leapt straight up in the air several feet. He instantly (obviously) let go of the German Shepherd's throat, then ran off squealing and whimpering in pain. (The German Shepherd lived, the lab was banned from the barn.)

That, my friends, is how to stop a male dog from killing. Recently a man was telling me how his neighbor's male dog had been fighting with his dog so I told him "just walk over and squeeze his testicles as hard as you can and he'll stop". The man was skeptical until I said, "Think about it for a moment. If someone did that to you, wouldn't you stop?" Then I told him the above story.

Please pray for the two children's father and mother. The father was at work. The mother lived, but was also mauled while trying to protect her children - a three year old and an infant. The story is so horrific that I can't bring myself to link to it but you can find it on Google.