A real-life "Face-Off"/Irresponsible Pet Owners Parts IV and V

Remember that John Woo flick "Face-Off" with Nic Cage and John Travolta, where they literally switch faces in high-tech face transplant operations to settle an old score? A partial face transplant has just been performed successfully in France on a woman whose nose, mouth and chin were bitten clean off by a dog (Irresponsible Pet Owners, Part IV). Check it out.

This is truly amazing news. God bless her. There but for the grace of God went I!! Yep. Four years ago the dog of a (former) friend of mine bit me pretty seriously in the face. His lower teeth sank into my nose and his top ones came within literally a couple of millimeters of my left eye, no joke. By a sheer miracle, the dog missed my eye, tear ducts, nerves, etc. and didn't do any lasting damage to any of those, but he perforated my sinuses which took 3 months to heal, nearly broke my nose, and ripped my face wide open from underneath my left eye across the bridge of my nose all the way over to the right side of my nose. My plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Miller at Piedmont Hospital, ROCKED. His skill and talent saved my face from disfigurement and I will be eternally grateful to him and his wonderful staff. (If you're in the Atl area and ever want a facelift or chin tuck, or you're in an accident and your face gets messed up, go to him!) I do have a permanent scar, but it's not noticeable unless I point it out.

The whole kicker to this was that initially, the girl was very eager to make things right again, wanting to do all she could and encouraging me to work with her insurance company and all, but some other nasty things were happening in her life, so she succumbed to a serious victim complex and started seeing me as her enemy. Our friendship got very strained; she started avoiding me when I called her to go out (taking care to not remind her of what happened ... nobody wanted to put it behind me more than I, but at that time the scar on my face was still very fresh and glaringly obvious so I suppose my presence carried a reminder she just didn't want to deal with) and she refused to put the dog down or even contemplate the certainty that he would do it again to someone else in the future, perhaps a child or a baby. Instead, she started to intimate that perhaps I was the one at fault, because I'd been wearing a black jacket when Buster bit me and whoever abused him before she'd adopted him had worn black so he was just reacting to past trauma - kinda like using the "She was asking for it because she was wearing a short skirt and a low-cut blouse" argument to let the rapist off the hook. And she even went and built a whole puff-piece website dedicated to him, to worshipfully enshrine him in cyberspace. (I won't divulge the URL here, but you can ask me for it privately if you're curious, because it's interesting, and the name of the website is quite funny in an ironic way. Just don't post any flames on her website or send her flame mail. I'm above that, and I trust all my readers are too.) Basically, she did everything she could to block the "unfortunate incident" out of her head and convince herself it never happened, so she wouldn't have to deal and face the responsibility associated with what her precious poopsie did. When things came to a head with her insurance company digging in its heels and refusing to cover all my medical expenses, and I had to get a lawyer to work things out, her insurance company started to put pressure on her, and she got the misguided idea that if the "evidence" disappeared, they would stop hassling her and everybody would leave her alone, not that the presence or absence of the dog would have mattered in a court of law, but that's what she was thinking. So, she called me in (fake) tears, telling me her beloved Buster had run away. A few weeks later, at the mediation session, my lawyer called her mother to confirm certain facts about the case for the insurance company, informing her that he was at the mediation session and would she mind if he put her on a speakerphone? Of course not. He then asked her what Buster's status was, if he had ever run away. She said noooo, of course not, he had never run away, in fact he was sitting there right beside her, where did he get that idea? When he informed her that her daughter had told me that Buster had run off, she accused me of lying (when in fact it was her daughter who had just been caught in a lie), praised the dog as "a sweet, peaceful thing that would never dream of hurting anybody" (when she had been right there with me and the girl and my family when I was taken to the hospital and had seen the damage with her own eyes) and called me a "money-grubbing bitch" (even though neither she nor her daughter were being financially affected in any way by this dispute since it was between me and the insurance company, not me and them) ... completely forgetting that my lawyer had put her on a speakerphone and the insurance company's rep, the mediator, and I could all hear her loud and clear. I was in tears, but my lawyer was beaming. He politely said, "OK, Mrs. So and So, thank you for your time," and hung up with her, and without missing a beat, said, "OK, can we talk now?" The insurance company rep, seeing that the policyholder's credibility (and capacity for logical and rational thought) had been placed in SERIOUS doubt and I was 100% on the level, replied, "Yes, let's talk." And so I finally got my settlement. No, I didn't get a boatload of dough in the way of "pain and suffering," but I definitely got enough to cover my remaining expenses and restore my face as much as was possible, which was all this "money-grubbing bitch" was ever after anyway. LOL.

That concludes Irresponsible Pet Owners, Part V!!

Irresponsible pet owners, part three ... and counting ...

NICE!

From the Associated Press:

Attack Dog Sicced on Hurricane Victims

STUART, FL-September 19, 2004 — Police say a Florida man – whose job is to help people – deliberately ordered his pit bulls to attack hurricane refugees inside their office building.
Click Here for more about Hurricane Season 2004

Ryan Moore is a mental health counselor who treats anger management problems and addictions. He was arrested yesterday and charged with aggravated battery.

Police say he released his dogs with the command "go get them" while he and the others were riding out Hurricane Frances earlier this month.

One man suffered deep bites to his stomach, face, throat and hands. A woman was bitten on one leg. They called 9-1-1 – but police couldn't respond because of the storm.

This isn't Moore's first brush with the law. He's been arrested before for domestic violence, sexual assault and aggravated assault with a weapon.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Irresponsible pet owners, part two ...

From MedicineNet.com:

Fatal Dog Attacks

ATLANTA & WASHINGTON--Dog bite injuries can lead to serious infections (such as tetanus and rabies), disability, deformity, and occasionally death. Most of these injuries are preventable.

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Humane Society of the United States recently updated data on fatal dog bites for the period 1989 to 1994.

In the 6-year study published in the medical journal PEDIATRICS (Vol.97 No. 6, 891-5), Jeffrey J. Sacks, M.D. and associates reported the finding of 109 bite-related fatalities. They found that 57% of the deaths were in children under 10 years of age. 22% of the deaths involved an unrestrained dog OFF the owner's property. 18% of the deaths involved a restrained dog ON the owner's property, and 59% of the deaths involved an unrestrained dog ON the owner's property.

The researchers also found that 10% of the dog bite attacks involved sleeping infants.

The most commonly reported dog breeds involved were pit bulls (24 deaths), followed by rottweilers (16 deaths), and German shepherds (10 deaths). The authors point out that many breeds, however, are involved in the problem.

The death rate from dog bite-related fatalities (18 deaths per year) in the 6-year study period remained relatively constant compared with the prior 10 years.

The authors emphasized that "most of the factors contributing to dog bites are related to the level of responsibility exercised by dog owners."

Irresponsible pet owners, part one ...

From the Monday, Sep. 27, 2004 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Girl OK after pit bull attack
Dogs' owner is shot; 1 of 2 pets is killed
Charles Yoo - Staff
Monday, September 27, 2004

Mercedes Smith, 12, tried to get away from the two pit bulls that were mauling her head, a sight neighbors watched in disbelief.
"Somebody help me!" the seventh-grader yelled repeatedly.
Candice Cameron pleaded for the lives of her pets. "Don't shoot my dogs!" she said, according to witnesses.
Mercedes eventually freed herself from the dogs that other neighbors had complained about roaming without leashes. She later underwent reconstructive surgery of her ear and scalp and was in stable condition Sunday at Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital.
In the course of the commotion early Sunday morning, one dog was killed and the other eventually placed with animal control. Cameron was wounded by one of eight shots a neighbor heard fired. She is in stable condition at DeKalb Medical Center.
Police are still trying to piece together what happened, why the animals decided to attack Mercedes, how they had become loose and what the girl was doing outside after midnight. No one was arrested or charged Sunday.
"This is an ongoing investigation," said Officer Dale Davis, a spokesman for the DeKalb Police Department.
Police responded to the 911 call from the Orchard Lane condominium and apartment complex off Flat Shoals Road in Decatur, near the Gallery at South DeKalb, shortly before 1 a.m. The caller said two dogs were attacking a neighborhood girl.
Witnesses say the pit bulls, cocoa-colored and muscular, would not let go of Mercedes, who could not stand up.
The dogs, they said, only stuck to her face.
By then, a circle of shocked neighbors and family members had formed, and men whacked the dogs with sticks and poles.
Still, the animals did not budge, witnesses said.
Police identified Cameron, 28, who lives on Jackybell Trail, as the dogs' owners. Police did not say why or how Cameron got injured, particularly whether the bullet pierced her when she was defending the dogs.
"She was shot," Davis said. "We are following up on it."
Adrian Moreland, a neighbor, said he heard eights shots but didn't know who pulled the trigger.
"But somebody was shooting the dogs," he said.
Neighbors said one pit bull was shot and killed, which police could not confirm.
The other one will be monitored for the next 10 days by the county animal control department.
Lynne Reid said she could not recognize Mercedes, who is friends with Reid's 13-year-old daughter, Danielle.
"It was as if someone had poured a bucket of red paint all over her," Reid said.
The same dogs chased Danielle in the past, Reid said.
Three months ago, she called police and told an animal control officer that the pit bulls were a menace, roaming the neighborhood, she said.
"I have never seen the dogs on a leash," said Reid, adding that Mercedes' injuries were "a sight I never want to see again."