Did you hear about the french woman who got a face transplant after being mauled by a dog? It was the first in history. She lost the lower half of her face and recieved a new chin, mouth, and nose. In explaining what happened, I found the following AP quote on MSNBC:
"Dinoire, a divorced mother of two teenage daughters, spoke frankly about the attack in May by her Labrador. She said she was wrestling with personal problems at the time, had had a trying week, and took some drugs to forget, which knocked her out.
She said she was passed out when the dog bit her, and she did not immediately realize the extent of her disfigurement when she awoke.
When I woke up, I tried to light a cigarette, and I didnt understand why I couldnt hold it between my lips, she said. Thats when I saw the pool of blood and the dog next to me. I looked at myself in the mirror, and there, horrified, I couldnt believe what I saw especially because it didnt hurt. Ever since this day, my life has changed.
The dog was euthanized.
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I almost fell out of my chair when I read this. I mean, when I heard this woman had been MAULED, I assumed she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, you know, attacked by a rabid dog or a newly freed but crazed fighting dog or a brutalized "guard" dog of some kind, usually a rott or a pitt or a dobie or a german shephard.
What does a person have to do TO THEIR OWN PET LABRADOR RETRIEVER to get MAULED in their SLEEEP? I mean, I can't, off the top of my head, think of a more sedate, loving, tolerant breed than a lab. What happened to this dog? What kind of relationship did she have with her dog? This dog doesn't have an aggressive bone in its body, it was bred to retrieve, I don't know, dead ducks or something. And what do you have to do to your dog so that it waits until you are SLEEPING to attack you? And, a little off topic, what kind of drugs could a person possible take (outside of a hospital) that would knock them out so thoroughly that they would not feel their face being torn off their skull??? I am just shocked at this news coverage b/c the media just skims over these details, as if there is nothing unusual about a) taking drugs so powerful that you would not wake up when your dog mauls you, b) your own dog mauls you while your sleeping, and c) the pet that mauls you is your lab. I just feel like this story doesn't make sense. What isn't being told?
Fact is stranger than fiction.
And I feel really bad for the lab.
I don't think there are bad dogs, just bad owners. Granted, some breeds may have aggressiveness so thoroughly bred in them that I am willing to concede that it is possible to have some inate aggessive behavior, but that, I think, is identifiable from puppyhood. This innate aggressiveness, however, I don't believe applies to LABS.
