A dog remains quarantined at Yolo County Animal Services in Woodland following a bite incident Saturday that severely injured a 5-year-old boy at a South Davis home.
Chief Animal Services Officer Vicky Fletcher said Monday the dog, a male American bulldog that’s about a year old, will be held for at least 10 days during the bite investigation as well as to determine whether it has undergone rabies vaccination.
“We’ll work with the owners to find out exactly what they want to do,” Fletcher said. “We don’t know if the owner is going to want to relinquish it or not.”
Animal Services had not received any prior complaints about the dog, Fletcher added.
According to Davis police, the attack on the child occurred shortly before 5 p.m. at a home in the 300 block of Cambridge Terrace, where the owner’s 10-year-old nephew and the victim had been playing the back yard. The owner’s dog was at work, and a second adult in the home was sleeping at the time.
The boy, whom police initially reported as being 7 or 8 years old, sustained injuries to his face and head, Fletcher said. He was transported initially to Sutter Davis Hospital, then transferred to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento for further treatment. No further information about his condition was available Monday.
Davis police Lt. Ton Phan said no criminal charges are pending against the dog’s owner.
Fletcher said her agency is still awaiting reports Monday from the Davis Police Department as well as the Animal Services Officer who responded to the scene “so we find out exactly what happened.”
“Sometimes when two kids are playing and the dog is more familiar with one (child), the dog thinks that playing is not necessarily playing,” interpreting it as fighting, Fletcher said.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene