News keeps coming in about the pit bull who allegedly sodomized a toddler. As I’d previously written, Rhonda at StinkyJournalism.org had sent me additional information which indicated the dog may have been trained to mount humans.

Obviously, such training would point to heinous human criminal involvement and explains why the police had inquired about previous acts of aggression. Investigators contacted the dog’s previous owner, who’d had the dog as a puppy before it was taken in by the boy’s family. The owner said there was no prior history of aggression or even biting.

Although the investigation is ongoing, several questions have been repeatedly raised. Where were the boy’s parents at the time of the attack? How would a dog get a diaper off of a toddler without leaving bite marks? And, most of all, is the dog being accused of sodomy that was actually committed by a human?

Via Rhonda again comes this update which addresses many of those questions:

“We’re still plodding through it,” Lockport Police Detective Capt. Larry Eggert said.

Eggert said nothing incriminating was found in the results of DNA tests that were taken from the dog and from the boy.

“If it says dog DNA for both parties, it’s dog DNA, which is pretty much what we were expecting,” he said.

Women’s and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo will not release any information about the boy’s current condition or if he is still a patient there. He underwent surgery there when he was admitted on July 8, the day of the attack.

The boy’s mother told police he had just removed his own dirty diaper and asked her to change him. She said he went into the living room to get a clean diaper and was alone with the dog, a 2-year-old pit bull named Bear, for a matter of minutes when the attack occurred.

The mother heard the boy scream and walked in to see the dog sodomizing him, police said.

Eggert said at the time the boy suffered “some pretty significant injuries” and was expected to undergo reconstructive surgery.

So, while DNA tests rule out a human as the perpetrator of the sodomy, the test results do not rule out human culpability. And the mother certainly has a plausible explanation for why the child was not wearing a diaper at the time of the attack. She is, incidentally, still demanding that the dog — which remains in custody of the SPCA in Niagra County — be put down.

Many of you have left comments indicating that dogs do not act this way of their own accord. I am not a dog owner, but I’m familiar enough with the concept of the “alpha dog” and notions of “pack mentality” to wonder whether such territorial, instinctive behaviour could account for this kind of an attack.

Share your thoughts.

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