Does anyone know the real story of what triggered the dog to attack the French woman who had the first face transplant?
I would be curious to know why a family dog would maul it's owner so badly after she passed out.

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Does anyone know the real story of what triggered the dog to attack the French woman who had the first face transplant?
I would be curious to know why a family dog would maul it's owner so badly after she passed out.

Here's a version from the NYT that makes the most sense to me. I think basically the dog started pawing at her face and got more and more excited, nipping at her lips, etc...not aggression, just a dog being a dog around an inert piece of meat.

Not something most of us like thinking about, but it's not uncommon for dogs and cats to bite the hand that feeds them if that hand is dead on the kitchen floor. Kind of a nice reminder next time you dress up Fluffy in pink booties and a sweater. ;-) They're still dogs.

Here's another example ...this was pretty horrible...but these were probably feral dogs, so it's not quite the same.

It kind of reminded me of Raymond Coppinger's book "dogs". The book stated a theory that a domestic dog lost function of dissecting and consuming prey/animals. I didn't know how he was so sure about that. But my experience clearly showed me dogs, at least some dogs, totally still possessed those wild function. One time my dog caught a rabbit, out of curiosity, I let the dog do whatever he wants to do. He consumed it and dig a hole, buried the leftovers. It clearly showed they have wild instinct in them. It make me wondering how true other theory stands in the book although I really enjoyed that book.

As in this case, this dog chewed up its owner. it's just too weird.

I think the point in the book was that some domesticated dogs (ie. pointers) have a limited motor function in their prey drive (he listed the sequence as being something like stalk/chase/grab-bite/kill/disect) The example in his book was that a domesticated breed such as a border collie will have a very strong prey drive that also fulfills the entire sequence from stalk-disect. Other breeds, such as the live stock guardians, did not have much drive at all and their pattern did not include the "disect" motor function. The same may be able to be said for pointers that freeze in "stalk", although it probably doesn't apply to all pointing dogs.

Coppinger's hypothesis, I believe, was that you could select for dogs to have limited and higher drives through breeding, and that *some* dogs were bred so that they lost the motor function of disecting their prey. Your dog obviouslly had not lost that quality; however, I have seen dogs kill the prey and look at it and walk away from it. This of course could be explained by Coppinger. I also couldn't see any other explanation for the case he cited in his book -- where the LSG would not eat the dead sheep unless it was cut open and the border collie devoured it after disecting it. This would make me inclined to think that his theory holds some weight and that your dog, and possibly many others, was not bred in a way that limited his drive.

Is it? I thought he meant all domestic dogs had lost the last link in the motor pattern. I need to revisit that book when I get a chance.

I do remember he uses border collie as an example for herding dogs. Mine is a german shepherd. I think, coppinger believes these dogs are born of missing the last link in the motor pattern (dissect). I, based on observation of my own dog, think it's not that clear-cut. I think the environment, how the dog was brought up, may have more to do with the missing link. My hypothesis is, if a dog were raised by a pack of wolves, it will be able to dissect. In another example, a lion cub purely rasied by human won't know how to kill or at least not sure what to do at first encounter. But if you give the lion enough opportunity, or even teach him to, the instinct could come back. It could be the same to a dog, if a pup has observed its pack dissceting animals, it might be able to have the full range of motor pattern. I mean, the missing-last-link behavior may not be just a inborn thing. I wish coppinger could experiment it more to further prove his theory.

I would consider the border collie to be a domesticated dog. Since Coppinger uses it as a dog that disects, it would be inconsistent for him to say that all domesticated dogs do not have that function in their prey drive.

I do not think your idea of a dog learning to be able to disect would be all too far fetched, since we nurture prey drive while training pups. However, we cannot teach a dog to freeze into point, or have a full calm grip. Disecting an animal *may* fall into a list of instinctual behaviors like this. I would like to see Coppinger carry his experiment further, but he is getting up there in years and I would think it would be hard to find grant money or funding for an experiment like that -- but you never know.

"I have seen dogs kill the prey and look at it and walk away from it. "

Cats do that too, at least at times. It is common for cats and dogs to kill an animal and bring it home for inspection. As far as instincts, I remember reading a study that described an experiment with dedicated mousers. A cat was placed ina large enclosure and a mouse released. The cat stalked, killed and ate it. A second mouse was released, same result. Mice were released at intervals. The cat killed a number, stopped eating when it was full, but even when it ceased striking, and mice were running over its paws, it would stalk mice at a distance with its eyes.

Gosh, this is pretty creepy...

How many of you think your dogs will actually chew on you if you were totally knocked out...?


b.

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Gosh, this is pretty creepy...

How many of you think your dogs will actually chew on you if you were totally knocked out...?

Hah. Less than the number whose dogs actually will. Sleep well! <img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I think that by simply feeding your dogs on a regular basis and by not drinking/ doing drugs until you competely pass out, this doesn't become a big worry for responsible people.
<img src="http://www.leerburg.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Kinda reminds me of the classic John Wayne quote:
"Life is hard. If you're stupid, it's really hard."