A three year old boy in southeast Houston was bitten in the face by a pit bull over the weekend.  He is expected to be released from the hospital today. 

The dog's owner was given a citation requiring him to turn his pit bull to animal control.

In Pasadena a woman was mauled to death by a Rottweiler and a Rottweiler mix that she had been taking care of.  The owner had gone out of town for a few days and his friend Sandra Sanchez, age 32, was helping him look after the dogs while he was gone.

She had been living Kenneth Gamble, her former social studies teacher, while she tried to get back on her feet after some financial setbacks.  Mr. Gamble, who has glaucoma, needed help around his home and someone to drive him around.  So they both benefitted.

But Ms. Sanchez was only 5 feet tall and slight.

Gamble said Sanchez often had fed the dogs, a male rottweiler and a female rottweiler mix, and played with them with no problems. But, standing just over 5 feet tall, she wasn't big enough to take the dogs for a walk.

Right away, I see a big problem.  As a small person who has almost always had very large dogs (danes), if you can't walk the dog that dog needs to be trained to know you are in control.  Before anyone says I am blaming the victim--I'm not.  This is an observation about the dogs, who were not trained.  Since Ms. Sanchez did own the dogs, it was not her responsibility to train them.

The Harris County Medical Examiner's Office has said she bled to death after being bitten on the torso and face.

The head of the Houston SPCA right says that this attack could have started out as play--since both of the dogs are young, though large.   Playful large dogs often kill full grown cattle for the fun of it.  There is almost no way a small, slight person could throw the dogs off once they decided she was fair game.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that the Houston Health Department is finally making some changes to BARC, the scandal ridden city animal shelter.  Infamous for delaying care to a dog shot by police and one of it's vets refusing to do neutering because it is too "stressful", BARC really needs to get back on track.

It is good to see that pressure brought to bear on the Health Department has finally paid off.