A California girl is recovering after her family’s pack of pups mauled the girl this month, seriously injuring her, family members say.
On the day of the attack, 2-year-old Felicity Peden was outside with the family’s four 12-week-old puppies and their parents as the family prepared for a party, the girl’s mother, Sierra Michele Peden, told USA TODAY. Wednesday night. .
Peden said the family adopted the mongrel puppies in May after moving to a new home in Onyx, about 60 miles northeast of Bakersfield. She said she was told they were “sort of a Labrador, Red Heeler, Pit Bull mix.”
“We had them for weeks and they never gave us any trouble with the kids,” Peden said.
The attack happened on June 3, Peden said, while the girl’s father was gardening and her three older sisters were inside taking care of the family’s baby.
Warning: graphic image below
Peden said that after leaving the backyard, she left her house to run an errand while her husband stayed home with Felicity and her older sisters, ages 13 and 11, and her 1-year-old brother. Minutes later, she received a call and learned that her husband was taking Felicity to the hospital.
“He said, ‘I found Felicity unconscious under a tree! I think she’s missing an eye!’ Peden remembered.
Felicity, who sustained injuries to her face, neck and upper body, was flown by medical helicopter to Valley Children’s Hospital in Madara, where she underwent three hours of surgery.
The dogs also ate Felicity’s ear, her mother said.
She said deputies from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office responded to her home after being alerted to the attack.
“Cops sat here for 15 minutes with us trying to find him,” he said. “Even the doctors told us they thought it was puppy play because if they were really attacking her, there would be bits missing, but it was just scratches and bite marks.”
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Peden said that Felicity was recovering at a rapid rate.
“She’s doing great. She’s super. She’s a wild child,” her mother told USA TODAY on Wednesday. “CPS (child protective services) came by today and she was surprised at how quickly she is recovering.”
Is ‘litter syndrome’ to blame?
In a post on a fundraising page created earlier this month by Felicity’s grandmother, Linnea Hooker of Las Vegas, Felicity’s family blamed “litter syndrome” for the attack, which refers to a “large amount of behavioral problems that tend to occur when canine siblings (littermates) are raised in the same household beyond the normal 8 to 10 weeks of age, when puppies are generally placed in separate households.
Their mother said she found out about “litter syndrome” online before the family turned the puppies over to animal control.
“I heard from someone on Facebook about littermate syndrome and had never heard of it so I googled it and then when animal control came out he explained that sometimes when there’s more than one puppy in the house, they begin to exhibit herd”. similar behaviors,” Peden said. “I asked my follow-up questions and told her everything that happened and that I looked into it and…she agreed. They didn’t diagnose the animals with that, they just explained what can sometimes happen when they’re not separated to bond with their owners.”
However, some vets pushed back Wednesday, saying the so-called syndrome is probably not the cause of the attack.
“This situation is very sad, but it’s likely that the puppies’ reasons for attacking the little girl are not as simple as ‘litter syndrome,'” veterinarian Liz Stenlow, chief of the behavior service at the animal health agency, told USA TODAY. University of California, Davis. .
Reisner Veterinary Behavior & Consulting Services, a specialized veterinary behavior practice that works with pet owners and veterinarians in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware regions, posted on Facebook Wednesday that “whoever coined ‘litter syndrome’ as their disorder with “abnormal features” itself was highly imaginative.
“It doesn’t exist in behavioral reality,” the practice posted, adding that there are more grounded explanations for what might have happened.
“I have found no literature to support ‘litter syndrome,'” Stenlow said Wednesday. “Nothing I’ve read prevents this from being a play interaction gone too rough or predatory in nature. This is a reasonable possibility for the behavior of four pups acting together.”
Stenlow said he’s personally had littermates as patients become aggressive toward each other, but it happens just as regularly in households with unrelated dogs living together. He also said that she hasn’t seen the sibling relationship between dogs affect interactions with people in the home.
Another thing to consider about the concept is that the pups were reportedly only 12 weeks old, too young to show stress about being together, Stenlow said.
Many dog owners aren’t aware of the body language cues their dogs display, Stenlow said, making them pretty unreliable when they say things like the puppies didn’t give them any reason not to let kids play with them.
“Obviously these parents did not intend to leave their young child unattended with these puppies, but this sad situation is a prime example of why not to,” Stenlow said.
Natalie Neysa Alund covers breaking news for USA TODAY. Contact her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund
