Putin’s pet? Attack of the Russian baby-killing dachshund from hell

And other truly weird tales of one of the dogs statistically least likely to kill anyone:  only two fatalities on record anywhere,  ever

SEVERSK,  Siberia, Russia––An eight-year-old longtime family pet dachshund on March 10,  2025 killed a month-old baby girl in Seversk,  Tomsk Oblast.

Little news escapes Seversk,  a “closed city” located north of the junction of Kazakstan,  Mongolia,  and Siberia,  on the right bank of the Tom River.

Seversk,  a top secret site kept off limits to non-residents,  is the location of multiple nuclear reactors and chemical factories established under former dictator Joseph Stalin.

Even the KGB could not,  or did not try,  to hush this attack up

First appearing on maps as Pyaty Pochtovy in 1949,  Seversk became Tomsk-7 in 1954,  before regaining individual identity as Seversk in 1992.

Seversk could have been the model for the Siberian prison camp described by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Alexander Solzhenitzen in The First Circle,  though it was not;  there were and are many other Russian “closed cities” much like it.

But “when man bites dog,  that’s news,”  and when dachshund kills human,  that is even bigger news,  so sensational that even the KGB,  the Russian secret police,  could not––or did not––keep word from leaking out.

Official statement

Released the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Tomsk Region in a prepared statement:

“During the night of March 10,  2025,  in an apartment on Kommunistichesky Avenue,  a pet dachshund bit a baby girl born in 2025 while she was sleeping in her crib.  Her mother found the child’s lifeless body in the morning with multiple bite wounds.

“The dog has since been euthanized,”  the official statement said.  “A criminal investigation has been opened regarding the death of a minor child under signs of a crime defined under Part 1 of Article 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation,”  meaning “causing death by negligence.”

Tabloid details

British tabloid media added detail without citing verifiable sources.

Wrote Ed Holt for The Daily Mail,  “An ‘aggressive’ sausage dog has killed a newborn baby after vets ignored the concerns of the child’s parents and refused to euthanize the animal.

“The dachshund jumped into the baby’s crib and silently strangled the child to death with his jaws while her parents slept soundly.

“The shocking attack occurred,”  Holt reported,  “just a month after the family welcomed their second child in the Russian city of Seversk in Siberia.”

History of aggression

“Speaking to local media,”  Holt reported,  “a family member said,  ‘The baby’s mother blames herself.  But it was a tragic accident.  It was the middle of the night.  The girl was sleeping,  and everyone else too.

“The dachshund behaved aggressively towards adult owners,”  the unidentified family member continued.

“When the second child was born in the family in February,  the aggression only increased.

“The parents understood the danger.  They decided on euthanasia.  They brought the dog to several clinics,  but they were refused,  because the dachshund was physically absolutely healthy.

Father forgot to leash the dog at night

“Fearing a possible attack,”  Holt paraphrased,  “the parents decided to keep the dog on a leash during the night.

“However,  on that night,  the father forgot to tie up the dachshund.”

The infant death by dachshund came two weeks after the Russian RT Television Network broadcast video taken from  a car at an undisclosed location of a woman shielding her child from a Rottweiler with her own body,  suffering serious injuries on a snowy path before a man came to their rescue with a shovel.

Dachshunds ate British suicide

The Russian dachshund attack “comes after a missing mum-of-two was found having been partially eaten by her two pet sausage dogs––with the animals being described by her son as ‘her life,’”  recounted Henry Moore for the British LBC network.

“Jemma Hart,”  reportedly a suicide,  “was missing for a month,”  Moore said,  “when her body was discovered at her home in Swindon,”   between Oxford and Bristol,  “partially devoured by her two pets.

“Neighbors reported their concerns to police after she failed to open a text message and one of her dogs was heard whimpering from inside the house.”

Coroner Ian Singleton told the inquest into Hart’s death that Wiltshire Police were contacted on January 29,  2025 after the neighbors “had not seen her since Christmas.  Officers went to her home and found her deceased in the living room.

“One of her dogs was also found dead at the scene and the other was in a distressed condition.”

Rare previous cases

ANIMALS 24-7 has file information on nearly 500 dog attack incidents involving dachshunds,  but all except ten involved dachshunds as victims of other dogs,  chiefly pit bulls.

Among the human Dachshund victims were four children and five adults who suffered disfiguring bites,  including a four-week-old baby in Kuna,  Idaho,  in October 2017.

That Dachshund,  one of four Dachshunds in the home,  climbed on furniture to reach the baby,  in an attack similar to the Seversk attack.

The one fatality,  Julia Beck,  87,  of Fort Wayne,  Indiana,  died on May 15,  2005,  of injuries suffered two weeks earlier in an attack by both a dachshund and a Labrador retriever.

Toe & cheek

The next most serious dachshund attack in the U.S. came when a dachshund in 2008 gnawed off one of a 56-year-old diabetic woman’s toes in her sleep.

The most recent previous dachshund attack of note came in March 2024 in Swansea,  England.  Victim Kelly Allen,  45,  told Nikhil Pandey of the tabloid World News,  he wrote,  that a friend’s dachshund,  “initially friendly,  attacked her suddenly,  latching onto her cheek and tearing off a chunk of flesh.  The dog then proceeded to eat the piece of flesh.  Ms Allen also sustained a bite wound on her arm during the struggle.”

The “dachshund attack” that wasn’t

The most notorious alleged dachshund attack on record did not actually involve any dachshunds at all.

Killed by a pit bull and a pack of pit mixes on the evening of May 10,  2018,  Tracy Janine Garcia,  52,  of Carter County,  Oklahoma,  within a week entered into urban legend via flagrantly inaccurate tabloid headlines as the purported victim of a pack attack by dachshunds.

Garcia was mauled outside her home by seven allegedly neglected and evidently inbred pit dogs belonging to an unidentified neighbor.

The abnormally short legs of some of the dogs,  shown in photos of their remains,  in combination with their erect,  pointed ears and long,  sloped muzzles,  are characteristic of bull terriers,  the smallest common pit bull body type.

How the garble happened

Six of the dogs’ reported weights were under 40 pounds.  The pit bull believed to have been mother of the rest appeared to be bigger.

All were within the normal range for fighting bull terriers,  but up to twice the size of most dachshunds.

ANIMALS 24-7 detailed how the misidentification of the dogs who killed Tracy Garcia occurred,  step by step,  in How tabloids turned the pits who killed Tracy Garcia into “dachshunds.”

The first mistake was that the first reporters on the story contacted an agency for information that in fact had never seen or handled the dogs,  and then accepted statements about their identification from local pit bull advocates,  including a pit bull breeder.

Vet said:  “Pit bull & four pit bull mix puppies”

Clarified Ari James of The Ardmorite later on the same day the garbles took on a life of their own,  “All seven of the dogs involved were rounded up by Ardmore police department’s animal control officers. According to Ardmore Police Department records,  the animals were taken to Westwood Veterinary Hospital,  then were delivered deceased later to the Ardmore Animal Shelter.”

Stated Westwood Veterinary Hospital senior veterinarian C. Douglas Aldridge,  DVM,  via Facebook on May 15,  2018,  after controversy over the dogs’ identities arose,  “The dogs appeared to me to be a pit bull and four pit bull mix puppies.

“Who knows what the female was?” Aldridge said of the one dog whose ancestry appeared to be uncertain.  “She looked to me like an Australian shepherd mixed with something with short legs.”

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