Pet Doberman kills Brooklyn infant

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/04/2008-01-04_pet_doberman_kills_brooklyn_infant-4.html

A Brooklyn baby was mauled to death Thursday by his family's pet Doberman pinscher as the boy's grandmother looked on helplessly, police said.

Eight-month-old Andrew Stein was lying on a blanket on the living room floor of his family's Windsor Terrace apartment when the dog pounced and clamped its jaws around his tiny head, neighbors said.

Andrew's grandmother, who was baby-sitting, tried to get the dog, Maccabee, off the baby, but it wouldn't let go, neighbors said.

"The dog had the baby on the floor," said Leonardo Collado, 46, superintendent of the building where the Stein family lives. " told me she was screaming for help because the dog had the baby on the floor and she couldn't get the baby away from the dog."

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As cops investigated what provoked the vicious attack, neighbors described the dog as gentle and said Andrew's parents, Paula and Brian Stein, and his grandmother were very responsible guardians.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/04/2008-01-04_pet_doberman_kills_brooklyn_infant-4.html

What a shame! I'm not going to second guess here other than the baby probably shouldn't have been on the floor with the dog there. Also the dog may not have seen the grandmother as the alpha leader. You gotta be careful with dogs and kids till the kids are a bit grown.

And this time it wasn't a pit bull!

and get jealous. I heard a similar story of a golden retriever doing this to a 4 month old years ago.

It pulled the baby off the middle of a full size bed while no one else was in the room and mauled the poor kid.

Hell, my Mick has barked aggressively at children, and he's just a Border Collie (who LOVES people). I sure wouldn't leave a baby on the floor with him. I wouldn't leave a baby on the floor with a Yorkie.

my young children. Didn't ever dare to leave them alone.

flamebait

I have mixed emotions on pit bulls. That breed IMHO has gotten far too popular with some who are breeding and raising them badly. And I'd love to see dog fighting be eradicated - but I don't know exactly the solution. Certainly teaming humane officials and police in to task forces and making the criminal penalties stiff both in jail time and $$$$$s could be a start. That's why I was happy to see Vick get sentenced.

I can understand why some areas have banned the breed but I wonder if that is any more of a solution than the gun bans some cities have.

I misread the title of this one as

Pat Robertson kills Brooklyn infant

:rofl:
I have nothing else to add!

My parents had dobermans for many years. They can be great dogs. Ours used to take turns guarding my youngest brother when he was a toddler. He liked to sit out in the yard and play in the dirt with toys. One would lie near him while the other went sniffed around the yard for a while and then it would go lie down near him and the first would get up and walk around. One of them was always right there with him doing guard duty.

And then there was the time my son spent a few days with grandpa and grandma. He started a little walk down the gravel road before my mother realized he had left. When she caught up with him, he had a dog on each side, a hand on each dog's back. When she started to swat his bottom, one dog tried to force herself between them to stop her. And then there was the time we were running down the driveway and she protected us by biting the bee that was dive-bombing us...

Anyway, just because it's a large dog doesn't mean it's vicious and to be honest, all this "afraid of dogs" stuff is really getting stale. My grandma's chihuahua was meaner and more of a threat to kids than our dobermans ever thought about being.

She refused to believe that the baby was more important than she, and she started peeing on the baby stuff. We realized that the next level was to start swatting her or biting her, so we got rid of the cat. I still miss her, but I don't regret doing what was right for our daughter.

Sometimes the pet doesn't want to accept the new one into the pack. You have to watch them very carefully, and if you see dominant behavior from the dog, and if he doesn't take to training and careful watching, you have to get rid of it and give it to a new pack.