As the parent of a 2.5 year old, writing this post just makes me so damn sad.
There aren’t a lot of details, but it has been reported that three-year-old Korbin Sprott was playing in the front yard of a Mackay home on Saturday night when he was bitten on the neck by his grandfather’s German shepherd.
The dog punctured a major artery in the boy’s neck, causing massive blood loss. The grandfather also suffered bite wounds to his forearm in the attack.
The three-year-old was rushed to Mackay Base Hospital and then on to Townsville Hospital in a critical condition, but died on Tuesday.
Unfortunately, some common risk factors to dog bites seem to have been in play here.
– A child under 5: an age group especially vulnerable to having their behaviour misread by dogs, and at greater risk of catastrophic injury when things do go wrong due to their low height and strength levels
– Playing with a relative’s dog: dogs of friends or relatives (grandparents especially) who aren’t living with a child and have varying levels of socialisation to kids, are often expected to know how to interact safely with them, setting both kid and dog up to fail.
– Child not with their usual caregiver: we can’t be sure, but it seems that Korbin was being cared for, or at least supervised by his grandfather. Carers other than the usual caregiver (a parent) don’t have the same understandings of that child’s limitations and may be less able to predict potential risks.
While this is certainly not about assigning blame, dog v child interactions which go wrong are incidents, not accidents. There are significant risk factors here that through ignorance, complacency or a genuine mistake, haven’t been properly managed and little Korbin has lost his life.
A tragedy in every sense. My heart goes out to Korbin’s family.
The dog ‘breed’ was reported to be a German Shepherd. And this seems to have generated an enormous difference in the way the media has processed the story.
For a start there are very few news outlets reporting the story;
A search for Korbin Sprott on Google reveals just 22 news reports for the story, and less than the first page of general Google results. Compare that to nearly 2,000 entries on news.com.au alone for Ayen Chol.
Not a single one features a stock photo of bared dogs teeth. The stories are short, focus on the few details available, and none lead on to emotive editorials about child safety or perceived problems with the German Shepherd breed. Basically, this little boy’s death is barely being covered as a story.
The Ayen Chol coverage shortly after her death, featured the following images:
Sydney Morning Herald – August 2011
The Sydney Morning Herald – August 2011
The Courier Mail – August 2011
The Brisbane Times – September 2011
Again, I repeat not a single article covering Korbin Sprott’s death features a photo of the bared teeth of a ‘shepherd type’ dog. In fact, to suggest that they would seems a bit grotesque and a lot in bad taste. But the media has no such reservations when the dog was reported, as in Ayen Chol’s case, to be a ‘pit bull mix’. And we saw some very bad decision making by politicians on the back of the hysteria this style of reporting directly generated.
We all want safe dogs and safe kids. It’s a no brainer that the idea of our kids being harmed, maimed or killed by any dog leaves us horrified and terrified. But if we really want effective action, and not the modern equivalent of a flaming-pitchfork witch burning, we have to listen to experts talking about proven solutions to community safety, over the media hype which is designed to do nothing more than sell newspapers and generate clicks.
There was no mention of the dog, I assume it was destroyed, so two lost their lives that day, so sad, so very, very sad. not to mention all those this has touched, such a tragedy, heartbreaking for the family, the poor grandfather. The grief, pain of loss, the shattered lives, how do you live with the knowledge that it all could have been avoided.
Yeah the dog was destroyed immediately, I read in one of the articles earlier this week. Two lives lost – very unfortunate to lose what potentially was a good dog, and a beautiful little boy.
Thank you for posting this. The blatant ‘breedism’ (for lack of a better term) is atrocious. I can’t imagine the agony this family is enduring and I would never want to lessen the seriousness of this incident but it is so obvious that we’re addressing ‘the wrong end of the leash’. Thank you again, hopefully more people will read articles like this and begin to question what they hear in mainstream media, a little bit more.
Such a very sad story – as you say nobody wants to see this kind of thing happen to any child. I did find it rather ironic that in the ABC report I read a spokesman from the RSPCA said that they didn’t want to see German Shepherds demonised as a result of this incident! Isn’t that exactly what’s happened with bull breeds?
Your article is absolutely true on all levels. It’s unfortunate that the people that are in the position to make positive and responsible changes are reactive instead of proactive. Thank you for sharing…
Would be nice to see a show like MediaWatch pick up on this and do a story on this comaparison of coverage :/
Well done for commenting on this. So wrong in so many ways & 2 lives lost as well within that family so there will be a lot of grief. My heart goes out to them….
It’s interesting as you say the way its portrayed in the media. I’m hoping that the media are just using more discretion when reporting about these articles but it does make you wonder if there would have been different pictures if the dog breed involved had have been different. Thank you for your insights….
Dogs and young children should never be left alone together unsupervised, no matter how well they seem to get on. Accidents do happen and it’s often the dog that pays the ultimate price when things go wrong. I feel sorry for everyone involved, as they have lost a precious member of the family, as well as a much loved pet.
The initial publication of the story on news.com.au featured a red and tan bully breed behind bars in a pound. That was the day the story was published and before the poor little guy passed away. The photos were changed to pics of him in the days after.
A really sad story, and it is wrong to simply blame the dog for it all. It is true about the fact that any dog can bite. Once again, this has been proven. But people need to socialise their animals as much as possible, and not just have them staying at home. So how can the dog owners do this in places like Victoria where there are crazy laws, like BSL? And when will the authorities that be wake up
and do something useful for the public? My suggestion would be to give the responsibility back to the dog clubs, and then help them.
In general, I agree that “pit bull” attacks generate more news articles, hysteria, and bias than any other breed, or type, of dog that attacks.
However, the circumstances surrounding the tragic losses of Korbin Sprott and Ayen Chol are “apples and oranges” comparisons.
As you’ve stated, some common risks were involved in Korbin’s case.
In Ayen’s case, you’ve got a non-resident dog basically invading a home and killing an occupant.
There was absolutely nothing common about the latter and, honestly, how many people would ever think that a dog would come into their house, on its own, and kill their child?
While neither incident should be considered less tragic as the result is the same, it’s understandable that more attention would be given to the death of Ayen Chol due to the circumstances and the unusual fears they generated. The government’s response, however, was pathetic and reprehensible.
This also proves that the attack of Ayen Chol was possibly because the dog was not socialised enough around young children. The BSL laws are to blame for this, not the dogs.