An apparently spontaneous attack on a 93 year old woman by a recently adopted ( alleged) Put bull type dog with no record of aggression in a local town and then… another breed close to my heart biting the face of a family member resulting in 200 stitches has me thinking and pondering motive. I’m often asked why, because people want to understand what causes a sudden attack. I don’t have all the answers. Whenever I’m not sure I look to human behaviour ( sorry I just have to spell it the British way) for clues and ultimately answers.
Newtown school CT, Fort Hood Army base Texas, Columbine high school CO, Franklin high school Pittsburgh PA, Aurora movie theatre. To name just a few.
Sadly the list of humans who apparently snap and go on killing sprees is endless. And there are those with absolute motive such as the most recent killing of three people at a Jewish community centre in Kansas by a KKK member.
The point is that whilst attacks on people by dogs or any other animals are terrible, they are still very low compared to the number of dogs and humans on the planet and must be kept in perspective. Humans attack one another daily, often without motive, leaving us vulnerable and questioning society, but we don’t ban humans because that’s just not reality. We look to understand the early warning signs so that future tragedies may be avoided. An example was the young man who killed so many children in our home state of Connecticut. He did not fit the typical mould of a mass killer.
We understand so little about one another yet we insist other species share our lives, demanding virtual perfection and wonder why things go wrong when we expect so much compliance from them and they fall short of our expectations.
Maybe we should lighten up a little on those other species when we the superior species just cannot get it right; at least not all of the time. We must hold ourselves more accountable before judging lesser species. A little perspective never hurt anyone.
– Amen.