Their wolfdog kills their 3-month-old baby

The drama took place last Thursday at Chelsea. Around 1 p.m., local police responded to an emergency call related to an animal attack. The baby, seriously injured, was rushed to hospital. But nothing more to be done: there, he was declared dead, reports the BBC.

The wolfdog was euthanized on site, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office communicated, and an investigation was opened to try to determine the exact circumstances of the tragedy.

Authorities announced that the fatal attack did indeed come from a domestic wolfdog. “It has been confirmed that one of our children here in Chelsea was killed by an exotic pet and succumbed to his injuries,” said Mayor Tony Picklesimer.

Crossbreeding between dogs and wolves can be natural or organized by man. The wolfdogs resulting from this hybridization can then produce offspring.

In the United States, keeping wolfdogs as pets is legal in some states, prohibited in others.

In Europe, their possession is often authorized and two breeds are recognized by the International Cynological Federation: the Czechoslovakian wolfdog and the Saarloos wolfdog. Both are the result of crosses between wolves and German shepherds.

The American press recalls that a similar tragedy took place in Virginia in 2018, with the wolf dog of a family which had killed an 8-day-old newborn.

However, these cases are extremely rare and these animals normally never attack humans. The fact remains that a wolfdog is not an apartment dog. The animal is described as complex, unpredictable, has retained a hunting instinct, needs to exert itself a lot as well as an appropriate frame and supervision.

In the United States, in fact, thousands of wolfdogs are abandoned each year because their owners realize they do not have the resources to properly care for them.