Parents for Dog Bite Awareness

We all know that important factors combine together to lead to predictable outcomes with dogs. Put another way, consistent ingredients all bake together to make a Bite Cake. 🎂

These “ingredients” include things such as household income, education, region/location, household marital status/changes, occupation, childhood abuse experience, and more. They overlap with the common ACE list for childhood trauma.

The most dog 🐕 bites tend to be recorded in areas with lower income and lower educational status, often also comorbid with substance use, divorce/conflict, and prior violence 💥 in the home.

This also matches the scientific literature available on what scientists call “high risk dog owners.” Meaning, people who choose to own dogs 🐕 known for their mauling and fatalities tend to be people with high rates of child abuse, domestic violence, animal cruelty, and even other crimes such as theft, assault, carjacking etc. 💔

One of the typical bingo retorts from pit pushers is the red herring fallacy to shift to human topics.

“Oh yeah, well humans are evil more than dogs!”
“What about human predators? Guess you don’t care about those!”
“Humans are way worse than dogs but you’re not fighting them!”
“Maybe you should care about the human abusers!”

It’s an ironic stance to take because we follow the human cases. They overlap with -you guessed it- pit ownership. We saw this recently with the sexual predator caught in the H-E-B grocery store stalking minors. His phone led police to a disgusting reveal of bestiality and animal abuse. With -you guessed it -pits and pit mixes in the home.

Here’s another case that Kendra brought to us. This blended family had a child in 2023. They live in Indiana in a rural, lower income area and have been involved with authorities and DFCS (CPS) before.

The father, David Schonabaum, called 911 last year because he found the baby covered in blood. When emergency services arrived to the home, they discovered a 6 month old baby in a bassinet, lying in a pool of blood and fighting for life. Hospital staff would later document at least 50 rodent bites and multiple missing fingers.

Prosecutors reported the home was in “unlivable condition” despite the father being required to work with family services to fix up the home.

David was found guilty of 3 felony charges. He faces 16+ years in prison. I do not know why the mom was not involved in this case.

“The infant’s right hand suffered the most traumatic injuries with all four fingers and the thumb missing flesh and exposing the fingertip bones,” the prosecutor’s office said.”

“Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Diana Moers said in a statement last week that Schonabaum’s most serious charge of child negligence causing serious bodily injury carries a potential maximum sentence of 16 years in prison.

Moers said the rat bites had “permanently disfigured” the baby boy.”

https://people.com/baby-rat-bites-nearly-died-blood-loss-father-convicted-8713208

This case is a horrific reminder that cycles of abuse often come with predictable elements. Understanding this gives us the ability to begin changing different factors to change the outcome.

Respectfully,
-JL DBA Editor©️