Dassing said he had the door cracked open, and the pit bull lunged through the door when he heard the Chihuahua bark, even though the pit bull's owner had him on a retractable leash.
"The pit bull just reached right inside the door and grabbed our Chihuahua and just lock-jawed onto it," Dassing said.
The attack is the fourth in the past month involving a pit bull, and three out of the four dogs attacked later died. But Brian Behrens, who works with Born Again Pit Bull Rescue, said it's not fair to blame the breed for the attacks.
"Being aware of the stories that have happened, there was a setup for failure from the beginning," Behrens said. "You just have to be diligent and careful no matter what kind of dog you have."
Numbers generated by several studies suggest pit bulls are the deadliest and most likely breed to bite. But many of those studies are disputed because of imprecise method logy or incomplete data. The last listed report by the Centers for Disease Control found pit bull terriers responsible for 66 human deaths between 1979 and 1998.
Rottweilers were a distant second, causing 39 reported deaths. More recent studies have relied on media reports of pit bull attacks rather than hard data, but also found pit bulls to be disproportionately responsible for reported attacks.
But Behrens finds the rhetoric about pit bulls misleading. He said owners allowing dogs to run off-leash, failing to pay proper attention when they are leashed, or failing to secure their pets are the most common reasons pit bulls find themselves in a position to harm another dog.
"A lot of what happens, I think in these situations, is strictly a matter of you have to be responsible," Behrens said.
Washington County Animal Control is investigating the latest attack. Officers could not locate the dog or the owner.
(KPTV.com - Oct 14, 2014)
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