Huskies May Be Euthanized After Dog Bites Off 4-Year-Old’s Hand

LAYTON, UT — A husky bit off and is presumed to have eaten a 4-year-old Layton, Utah, boy’s right hand when he reached under a neighbor’s fence to play with the dog, and now friends of the owner are gathering signatures on a petition to convince animal control authorities not to euthanize the dog and one other penned in the backyard.

The boy slipped a sock over his arm before reaching under the fence Sunday, authorities said. His hand was bitten off just about four inches above the wrist, but attempts to locate the severed limb were unsuccessful.

The child, whose name has not been released, was airlifted to a Salt Lake City hospital, where he underwent surgery and is listed in stable condition.

Layton Fire Battalion Chief Jason Cook told People the boy was brave throughout the ordeal.

“[He] was a tough little boy, wasn’t even crying,” Cook said. “He never even shed a tear in the helicopter.”

Authorities had hoped to recover the severed hand for possible reattachment, but “there is a fear it was probably ingested by the dog that bit him,” Cook told news station KSTU.

Cook told new station KUCW the two dogs, Polar and Bear, are not known to be aggressive and are family dogs.

"This is a pretty rare event, you know, animal bites happen,” Cook told the station. “But they tend to be not as severe as this. In my 30 years of doing this, I've never had one that's been this significant.”

Both the dogs’ owners and the child’s family are new to the neighborhood.

“I feel bad for them,” neighbor Stacey Taft, who watched the event unfold, told KUCW. “I mean, no parents want to go through that. They don't want to see that kind of stuff happen and to not be able to stop it is really hard.”

The two huskies have been quarantined, and Davis County Animal Care and Control is conducting a dangerous dog investigation. If the dogs are found to be dangerous, they could be euthanized, Rhett Nicks, the agency’s director, told KSTU.

“We look at the whole situation,” Nicks said. “We try to look at every situation that could determine the animal dangerous, as well as could mitigate the fact that the animal is dangerous.”

Jessica Nusz, who is friends with the owner of the dogs, has started an online petition to spare the huskies’ lives. Nusz told KSTU that she has known Polar and Bear since they were puppies and the dogs have “always been really nice.”

She thinks Bear, the dog authorities believe bit the boy, probably mistook the sock-covered arm for a toy and “bit down too hard and didn’t see there was a child on the other side of the fence.”

“With him being a dog, he thought it was a game of tug of war and he bit down too hard and took a lower portion of his arm,” Nusz wrote on the Care2 Petitions site. Her appeal had received more than 33,500 signatures by mid-afternoon Tuesday.

She called the situation “unfortunate on both sides,” but said Bear “doesn’t deserve to be put down for this freak accident.”

Jennifer Bigler, who owns dogs, is among those who doesn’t think the dogs should be euthanized.

“They might have thought it was an animal and just bit and too hard I guess,” Bigler told KUCW. “I don’t know. It’s sad. I hope they don't put the dogs down because the kid shouldn't be playing by the fence anyway.”

However, David Broderick, who has been training dogs for 20 years, thinks they dogs should be euthanized due to “the fact that [the dog] actually ripped it off.”

“It wasn't just a chomp. It wasn't thinking it was a game … If the dog was frustrated enough to do that kind of damage it will do it again given the chance,” he said.

The 10-day quarantine for rabies observation is required under Davis County law.
The law is triggered when an animal bite breaks the skin, Nicks explained to KSTU.

The tragic incident is a wakeup call for parents of young children, Taft told news station KKTV.

“We've talked to the kids about still being cautious around other animals,” Taft said. "Not all animals are always nice or they may feel threatened at some kind of action they might do."