Nanny Dog? Or "In Its Nature?"

Baby Jeremiah Eskew-Shahan and 120-pound pet dog named Onion.

Yesterday I told the story of a Jack Russell terrier that bit a baby girl 30 times and ripped off her ear (since re-attached).

As I noted, there is no such thing as a "nanny dog" and anyone who uses those words to describe any dog, much less a Pit Bull, a molosser breed, a Dachshund, or a Jack Russell Terrier is a dangeous fool.

Today's example is the story of a cross between a molosser (a Mastiff) and a Rhodesian Ridgeback (a breed designed to face lions).

It seems this 120-pound dog killed a one-year old child on the little boy's birthday, but the dog has since been granted a reprieve because killing the child was deemed to be in "its nature."

From the Associated Press comes the story:

If a dog fatally mauls its owner's child, should the animal be killed or spared?

That's the question that will be debated in a Las Vegas courtroom after a southern Nevada toddler celebrating his first birthday was killed by a 6-year-old mastiff-Rhodesian ridgeback mix named Onion.

The boy's family voluntarily gave the animal up for euthanasia after the April 27 death of Jeremiah Eskew-Shahan. But the New York-based Lexus Project argues the animal should be sent to live at a sanctuary outside Denver because it didn't do anything wrong and was only following its nature.

Onion was slated to be killed on Tuesday, but an 11th hour court injunction on Monday delayed the death at least until a Friday hearing.

The boy's father, Christopher Shahan, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal the dog deserves to die. His son was at his grandmother's house in Henderson on his first birthday when he crawled to the sleeping dog and started petting him.

Officials said the 120-pound animal latched his jaws around the boy's head and began shaking him. The grandmother tried to pull the boy away. Other family members in the house rushed to help, but it was too late. The boy was flown to a hospital, where he was declared dead the next morning.

Rich Rosenthal, a New York-based lawyer who heads The Lexus Project, argued the child and his parents were at fault, not the dog, because the animal's nature is to attack if provoked while sleeping.

"I'm sure the parents are going through their own hell of how could we have let this happen, but killing the dog won't bring the child back," Rosenthal said. "Something grabbed the dog by the hair while it was sleeping and it reacted. In his mind, he didn't do anything other than what's normal for a dog to do."

• Related Post:
  ** There Are No "Nanny Dogs"
  .