“Olde English Bulldogges,” huskies, denial, & avoidable deaths of children
Merritt Clifton posted: " Raising public awareness of risk saves lives. "Respecting grief" does not. HARTSELLE, Alabama; MILFORD, Connecticut––Denial of a dog's risk kills. Excessive respect for a family's grief that conceals the identity of a dog who has already killed s"
Husky & "Olde English Bulldogge." (Beth Clifton collage)
Raising public awareness of risk saves lives. "Respecting grief" does not.
HARTSELLE, Alabama; MILFORD, Connecticut––Denial of a dog's risk kills.
Excessive respect for a family's grief that conceals the identity of a dog who has already killed someone kills, too, by suppressing awareness at the very time when awareness might be most successfully amplified.
Concealing the name of the owner of a dangerous dog can kill, as well.
Denial and "respect for grief" kill because the most certain way to prevent future deadly dog attacks is to understand how they occur; what sorts of dog do the killing; what individuals breed dangerous dogs; and what individuals acquire and keep dangerous dogs, despite and often because of the elevated risk associated with pit bulls, closely related breeds, and to a lesser extent, any dog breed resembling a wolf enough to have sometimes been sold as a counterfeit "wolf dog."
(Beth Clifton collage)
Risk-taking personalities
Who owns a dog who has killed or tried to kill someone is critically important, even if that person is exonerated of criminal responsibility.
History demonstrates that people who acquire one dangerous dog tend to acquire more, even after one is euthanized for mauling a person or another animal.
Risk-taking personalities seldom change as result of just one "accident," no matter how predictable and how deadly.
The epidemic of dog attack fatalities, soaring to new heights almost every year of the present century, will never stop or even slow until there is universal recognition that responsible dog care begins by choosing dogs who are neither bred nor raised to kill and maim, who need not be watched closely every second to ensure they are not wreaking havoc, and if they happen to escape from a secure enclosure, will do no damage while at large more severe than pooping in a neighbor's petunias.
Left: the Clark family. Right: Beau Clark. (Facebook photos)
Animal shelter director seemed to get it
Darren Tucker, animal shelter director for Morgan County, Alabama, may not agree with all of the above, but unlike most of the rest of the Hartselle, Alabama community, Tucker seemed to get the major points in commenting to Decatur Daily reporter David Gambino about the February 26, 2024 mauling death of four-year-old Beau Clark.
Beau Clark, the son of Hartselle youth baseball coach Kevin Clark and high school English teacher Hailey Clark, reportedly rode his bicycle to the home of a neighbor he had visited several times before, entered the yard, and was killed by the dog belonging to the as yet unidentified neighbor.
Kevin Clark, injured in attempting to rescue Beau Clark, was also transported to the nearest hospital.
(Beth Clifton collage)
"Deputy held the dog at gunpoint"
After Morgan County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived on the scene, said sheriff's office spokesperson Mike Swafford, "one of our deputies was helping the father with the child, and the other deputy was able to locate the dog, who was still aggressive. The deputy held the dog at gunpoint and ultimately had to put it down."
Tucker, "whose department collected the dog's body and sent off specimens for analysis," wrote Gambino, "said the animal appeared to be a pit bull mix weighing between 40 and 60 pounds."
"This morning," Tucker told Gambino, "we contacted the Morgan County Health Department, because the people who own the dog had called about getting the dog's remains. The Health Department would not allow it. The dog has to be sent in [for rabies testing] because of the severity of the incident."
Darren Tucker, head of Morgan County Animal Control. (Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce photo)
"I think the child was familiar with that dog."
Continued Tucker, "I think the two families are neighbors and know one another. So, there's no malice between the two. I think the child was familiar with that dog."
Beau Clark's death, said Morgan County district attorney Scott Anderson, was a "terrible and unexpected event that no one foresaw happening.
"Given the totality of the circumstances that include, but are not necessarily limited to, the desires of the family, the friendship that the two families share, and the fact that everyone was surprised by the actions of the dog with regards to this unexpected attack," Anderson said, "it does not appear, at this time, that criminal charges are warranted."
The Morgan County Sheriff's Office meanwhile altered the initial identification of the killer dog from "pit bull" to "Olde English Bulldogge."
English bulldogs on the ends. Olde English bull dogs in the center. (Beth Clifton collage)
"Olde English Bulldogge"
Gambino, however, seemed to recognize that "Olde English Bulldogge" is merely a pit bull variant, as did animal shelter director Tucker.
"Tucker said 97% of the calls that animal control responds to for aggressive animals end up being pit bull related," wrote Gambino. "His shelter relies heavily on animal rescue groups to adopt dogs out. At least two of the groups will not take pit bulls at all because the breed's 'trigger' is unpredictable."
Explained Tucker, "It's in that dog to not let go. If it had been a golden retriever, a cocker spaniel, an Irish setter — it would have probably bit and have been done, and that child could be alive today."
Tucker, continued Gambino, "urged the community to carefully investigate breeds and temperaments when adopting dogs."
(Beth Clifton collage)
What grief-stricken teachers can teach
But then Tucker, like much of the rest of Hartselle, remarked that "Sadly, we spent more time today fielding questions about the dog breed than anything else.
"You know, there are two families that are shattered, a school system having to deal with someone who works there, and then you have teachers that have been touched by multiple people in these families who all had to wake up today and go deal with that."
The most appropriate way for teachers, in particular, to deal with the death of Beau Clark would have been to teach a lesson about taking responsibility for not creating a public safety hazard in choosing a pet, and in choosing a method of pet containment that either a small child or an excited dog can easily breach.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Buried wire electrified fence?
Some Hartselle commentators on Facebook indicated that the dog who killed Beau Clark might have been contained only by a buried "Invisible Fence."
The Invisible Fence company was successfully sued as far back as 1988 over an incident in which a child was injured by a dog who raced past the buried wire to maul a child, and lost a similar case in 1998 over disfiguring injuries inflicted in 1996 by a Rottweiler who crossed the wire to attack two children, then mauled a third child who came to their rescue.
Old English bulldogs. (Beth Clifton collage)
Thinly disguised pit bull
"The modern Olde English Bulldogge," says the International Olde English Bulldogge Association "is a reconstruction of the original Olde Bulldogge. The foundation of most of today's Olde English Bulldogges can be traced to English bulldog, American bulldog, American pit bull terrier, and mastiff."
The Olde English Bulldogge, in short, is just a thinly disguised pit bull.
This is confirmed by an affidavit easily accessible online, dated October 17, 2005, from longtime "American bulldog" breeder John D. Johnson.
"David Leavitt's 'Olde Bulldogge' that he is breeding up," testified Johnson, "is crossed between English bulldogs, American bulldogs, American pit bull terriers, and bullmastiffs."
(Painting by Julius Caesar Ibbetson, 1759-1817.)
Re-created bull-baiting dog
Elaborates Wikipedia, "In 1971 dog breeder David Leavitt of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, wanted to "recreate a bulldog with the looks, health and athleticism of the 18th century bulldog which was originally created for the English sport of bull baiting between the years 1100 to 1835.
"The foundation crosses consisted of one-half bulldog, one-sixth American bulldog, one-sixth bullmastiff and one-sixth of other breeds."
Olde English bulldogs, by any spelling, have considerable history, and not just in "olde" times or in England.
Remedios Romero Solares.
Housecleaner killed
Housecleaner Remedios Romero-Solares, 30, of Fallbrook, California, was killed by eight "Olde English Bulldogges" at the home of a dog breeder and marijuana grower whose name police did not disclose on December 7, 2012.
But on the web site of the breeder on whose property the Romero-Solares fatality occurred was acknowledgement of the dogs' fighting ancestry and the incorporation into their pedigrees of at least two recognized pit bull lines and two lines ancestral to modern pit bulls.
Among 29 "English bulldogs" known to have been impounded since 2005 for killing or severely disfiguring humans, or for killing horses or multiple other dogs, or for having been used in dogfighting, 12 were explicitly identified by animal control officers, police, or owners as "Old English Bulldogs," i.e. pit bulls.
From the available information, 10 of the 16 other "English bulldogs" involved in similar incidents were also of the "Old English" variety.
Among these 10 dogs were the two six-month-old "puppies" who killed seven-year-old Malaki Mildward in College Springs, Iowa, on January 22, 2015.
"Six months ago," the Daily Mail reported of that attack, "Malaki's mother posted on Facebook: 'Have Pitbull English bulldog pups got shots and ready to go message me for details and pics.'"
Brayden Heery Burwell. (Beth Clifton collage)
Denial in Connecticut
Denial is also evident in the wake of the February 16, 2024 death by dog of two-week-old Brayden Heery Burwell, son of Joseph and Shelley Heery, at their home in Milford, Connecticut.
"The family is choosing not to release details of what happened," reported Frank Recchia for Connecticut News 12. "They said it was not 'an attack' by the dog but rather 'a tragic accident.'
Kevin Morse, Shelley Heery's mother and uncle of the victim, told News 12 "The dog has since been put down," Recchia said.
Would that have been appropriate in response to a genuine accident, in which the dog had no culpability and posed no future risk to anyone?
The dog most recently known to have been kept by the parents was a husky named Dakota, acquired on February 9, 2019.
Shelley Heery & Dakota the family husky. (Facebook photo)
If the dog responsible for the death of Brayden Heery Burwell was Dakota, or any other husky, an attack might have been foreseen, and contact between the dog and the victim might have been avoided.
Huskies since 1982 have mauled 67 children in the U.S. and Canada, killing 32 of them.
This is a fraction as many as the 632 people killed by pit bulls and the 120 killed by Rottweilers, but still more than have been killed by any other breed type.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Calling something foreseeable and preventable an "accident" obscures the reality that it could and should have been prevented, and does not help to alert others to what needs to be prevented.
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