After East Hartford baby is fatally mauled by family dog, CT experts provide some warning signs

An East Hartford family is in mourning after a 1-year-old boy was mauled to death by a family dog that also injured his mother on Wednesday.

In the wake of the dog attack that killed 1-year-old Lennox, experts are sharing safety tips to help families coexist safely with their dogs, including how to spot when a dog is uncomfortable or scared and how to better understand what circumstances may make them feel threatened.

NOTE: Authorities have not yet said what provoked the fatal attack, which occurred on a trampoline and involved a family dog. Comments in this article are about general dog safety, not this specific dog or event.

Debbie Sheridan, a certified bite prevention educator based in West Hartford, said that more often than not, dogs will indicate that they’re uncomfortable or scared before they bite.

Some of their indicators are clear — growling and barking — while others may be confused for friendly movements like rolling over and showing their belly.

“Usually a dog will give warning signs, one of the early signals is a yawn,” said Sheridan, who is also a licensed family dog mediator and owner of Debbie’s 4 Dogs LLC.

Next, a dog may try lifting a paw, laying on their back, sniffing the ground or growling.

“And if they don’t feel like it’s working and that nobody’s listening, they may feel that they need to be more forceful. So they feel the need to do a ferocious bark,” she said.

Growling and barking shouldn’t be seen as bad behaviors worth scolding, Sheridan said, but should be seen as an expression of fear or discomfort that the dog is trying hard to communicate.

“I always say to celebrate the growl,” she said.

Scolding a dog for growling, she said, is like scolding a child for saying they are scared or uncomfortable.

“Dogs are never allowed to be anything but perfect. If a dog growls nobody should ever scold them. A growl should be something that makes someone say: ‘OK you’ve got something going on, I can help you,’” she said.

“Instead a dog gets scolded or shocked or euthanized for saying ‘Hey, I’m not really feeling comfortable here.’”

‘In a split second’

Thompson G. Page, attorney and co-founder of the Center for Animal Litigation in Hartford, said that “dogs give off signals all the time and people don’t know how to read the signals.

”It’s a dog trying hard to say ‘I’m not feeling comfortable about this, I’m not feeling safe, stay away.’ And nobody listens. And then as a last resort, the dog bites,” he added.

Thompson said that most animal bites are the result of an animal feeling threatened or fearful.

“They communicate that they are scared about their situation by biting,” he said, no matter the breed or relationship to the human they may bite. Dogs bite, he said, to react to their fear and mitigate what they may perceive as a threat.

“This is happening in a split second, and this is happening with a complete instinctual reaction to surviving,” he said.

Robb Heering — a state-appointed Animal Advocate in Connecticut courts — said that the United States documents about five million dog bites per year, and more than half of all bites happen to the dogs’ owners.

About 50 to 60 of those bites were fatal in the last documented year, Heering said.

“It’s shocking and tragic but this happens more than people would believe,” he said.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, at least half of those bitten are children.

Sheridan said children and dogs should never be left unsupervised and she hopes to teach more families how to safely interact with their dogs and read their behaviors.

Some behaviors that many people learned around dogs, like reaching out a hand to sniff, can actually be threatening to dogs.

“People used to say ‘Put your hand in the dog’s face and let him sniff it,’” Sheridan said. “But that’s actually like saying ‘Bite me.’”

Other motions, like “leaning over a dog, waving their arms or flailing, reaching toward them, can be scary,” she said.

Sheridan also advised that people should always allow strange dogs to approach humans instead of the other way around.

“Rather than approaching a dog, let’s always give the dog the choice,” she said.

Both she and Thompson said that humans should try to look at each interaction from a dog’s perspective, especially when the dog is interacting with children.

“If everybody could teach their children to respect a dog, to understand that they have feelings and teach the kids to speak in dog language,” children and dogs alike would be safer and happier, she said.

Sheridan often visits elementary school students and helps children practice behaviors that can prevent dog bites. Her advice is to act like a tree.

“We can teach our kids that if a strange dog is coming up to you, turn sideways, and be a tree. Wrap your arms around yourself or fold your arms in front of you to keep them from flailing,” she said.

She suggests families practice this behavior like they would any other safety drill so that it’s ingrained as an instinctual behavior.

“Once a week to practice being a tree. If you see an unknown dog approaching you, then that pathway is in the brain. It’s there and it pops up when you see the dog. And for this to really work we really have to have it there in their head,” she said.  “If everybody learns this at an early age it would be a really good thing to have some good dog education.”

Sheridan recommended the “tree” approach when a bite is happening, too. Flailing, shouting or hitting will only scare a dog more.

Thompson agreed that knowing how to read a dog’s body language can save lives and prevent injuries.

“Most dog bites, it’s children and it’s their own dog,” he said. “People call and say ‘The dog just bit her out of the blue,’ but that’s truly never the case.”

Police did not provide many details about how the East Hartford attack occurred, but said that the baby and his mother were attacked on a trampoline.

Heering said incidents involving dog bites and trampolines are not entirely unheard of.

He said the dog could have been “influenced by the movement on the trampoline. It’s certainly not totally uncommon.”

“There is, believe it or not, a trend (regarding) trampoline movement associated with dog bite attacks,” he said, noting there is not much data available to explain how or why the attacks unfolded.

“However there are at least a dozen or so in the last decade where trampoline movement is (the) stimulus that provokes dogs,” he said. “It’s just a terrible, tragic thing but I see more and more of it involving trampolines.”

Heering said that movement is a stimulus for dogs, and Thompson and Sheridan agreed.

Thompson said the majority of dog bites happen around children because their behaviors — flailing arms and legs, jumping, screaming — can startle a dog and send it into survival mode.

Thompson said dogs normally bite when they are provoked, spooked or threatened and “they communicate that they are scared about their situation by biting.”

“Dogs don’t have fun on trampolines,” he said, noting they feel uncertain and ungrounded.

Thompson said the dog may have been “reacting to a situation because it was frightened because all of this activity is completely foreign to its genetic makeup,”

“Jumping, that activity is aggressive to an animal,” he said.

When a dog sees jumping and bouncing, he said, they may be scared of an attack.

“To a dog, the only animal in the world that would ever be acting that way is attacking him,” he said.

The family of the baby who died in East Hartford launched a GoFundMe this week, raising money for funeral expenses.

A family member who created the GoFundMe said that the family had planned to go to Chuck E. Cheese that afternoon to celebrate the boy’s first birthday. Lennox turned one on March 9, according to media reports.

The boy’s parents spoke to NBC Connecticut, with his father saying he was not home at the time of the attack but had left the dogs outside.

His mother Keyshla Torres, who is pregnant, was also hurt in the attack.

“I witnessed it,” she told NBC. “(The dog) got onto the trampoline, then he grabbed the baby.”

The boy’s aunt said on the GoFundMe page that they never expected the dog to act aggressively.

“Believe it or not it was the family dog (and) never in a million years would we have seen this coming,” the family member said.

The boy’s father, Ricky Rohena. spoke to NBC Connecticut and said, “If the dog would have been aggressive or anything like that, trust and believe he wouldn’t have been around the baby.”

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, U.S. Centers for Disease Control data shows that more than 800,000 people receive medical attention for dog bites each year.

“Children are the most common victims of dog bites and are far more likely to be severely injured,” the AVMA said.

The association said most dog bites to young children happen during “everyday activities” and involve interactions with familiar dogs.

The association also said on their website that people should remember “any dog can bite: big or small, male or female, young or old.”

Even the cuddliest, fuzziest, sweetest pet can bite if provoked,” the AVMA said. “Remember, it is not a dog’s breed that determines whether it will bite, but rather the dog’s individual history and behavior.”

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