Fatal Dog Attack 'A Warning' To Parents
www.timesdispatch.com
By Kiran Krishnamurthy
Apr 13, 2005, MADISON RUN, VIRGINIA -- Stanley W. Hayes said yesterday that the weekend death of his 4-year-old great-grandson offers a lesson to parents with large dogs. "This should be a warning to all parents that, in spite of what they may think of their animals, they should always be on alert," said Hayes, whose great-grandson, Robert W. "Robbie" Shafer, was fatally attacked by the Shafer family's Rottweiler-shepherd mix dog on Sunday.
The attack also appears to have focused attention on the debate about whether chaining dogs makes them more aggressive. Orange County authorities say Robbie, during an unsupervised time of less than a minute, apparently wandered to an area where the 64-pound dog was confined in his family's backyard.
His mother, Laura Shafer, had stepped into the kitchen of their mobile home to get her son a drink when she heard the boy screaming. She managed to pull their dog off the boy, but it was too late. Robbie suffered a broken neck and was pronounced dead at the scene.
"We were sitting in the yard and heard the screaming," said Bertha Miller, 68, who also lives at Placid Pines mobile-home park, midway between the towns of Orange and Gordonsville. "It's sad. He was a cute little boy. He used to come down to the mailbox with his daddy. He'd laugh, blow kisses, you know how little kids do," she said.
Authorities said they found no indication of negligence and that no charges would be lodged in the case. Orange Sheriff C.G. Feldman said no one witnessed the attack and that investigators had been unable to determine how or whether the boy provoked the dog.
Robbie, whose older brother died at childbirth, was to be buried after a funeral this morning.
Hayes, 82, remembered his great-grandson yesterday as a typical 4-year-old boy, fond of cars, trucks and eating at McDonald's. "He enjoyed every minute to the fullest," he said. "He was vibrant, bright, a delightful child."
Hayes, who lives in neighboring Greene County, said he and his wife saw the boy late last week. "We went to a very fancy, expensive restaurant called McDonald's," he said, laughing. "Robbie is always going to be missed," he added.
Hayes said he never saw Robbie interact with the dog, named Chance, but that he knew his great-grandson played with the dog. The family had owned the dog before Robbie was born.
Robbie's parents turned the animal over to animal-control officials after the 5 p.m. attack Sunday. It was euthanized Monday afternoon.
Chad Carr, the county's chief animal warden, said he knew of no previous reports of aggressive behavior by the dog.
Authorities say Chance was secured to a 20-foot chain at the time of the attack.
Feldman said yesterday he had heard from some animal advocates contending that chaining makes dogs more aggressive. The Humane Society of the United States and the U.S. Department of Agriculture consider chaining inhumane. "An otherwise friendly and docile dog, when kept continuously chained, becomes neurotic, unhappy, anxious and often aggressive," the Humane Society's Internet site says. The society says chaining for any length of time poses a safety risk to dogs, which might become entangled.
Tammy Grimes, founder of Pennsylvania-based Dogs Deserve Better, said confining a dog, no matter how playful, to a small space poses a special threat to small children. "The dog can become aggressive because it has only this small little space. It becomes more protective," she said. The group has cataloged more than 20 fatal attacks or serious injuries on children by chained dogs nationwide since October 2003.
Carr, Orange's animal warden, said the issue is hotly debated among dog owners. "A lot of it has to do with socialization. If you chain it up and leave it there all the time, yeah, it's probably going to be aggressive," he said. But if an owner regularly plays with the dog and spends time with it, Carr said, putting the dog on a chain might not result in aggressiveness.
Carr, who has a 3-year-old son, said he attaches his mixed-breed German shepherd-bird dog to a tether and that the dog can also roam in a kennel. "Everybody has different thoughts about it," he said.
