I agree you shouldn't hit baby animals of any species (especially not children--never ever ever hit a child), but this dog wasn't a baby animal and it was behaving in a threatening way. In general it's unwise to hit dogs or cats because it might make them hand-shy (which could make them lose their socialization to humans...though it seems this particular dog wasn't very socialized anyway). However. I love animals deeply...but if the pit bulls on my block try to kill a pedestrian, I'm going to intervene and I don't care at that point if I hurt the dogs. I'm not going to stand around like an idiot yelling "No, stop, please stop"--I'm going to do whatever I can to save a life. And I would hope to God my neighbors would do everything in their power to try and save my life as well. Rattlesnake approaches my nephew and I will probably decapitate it with a shovel without even thinking--and I actually LOVE snakes. Shark attacks me, I will gouge its eyes out. Cats are my life, but if my cat lunged and latched onto a child's face I would throw it across the room without a second thought or at least spray it in the face with a water bottle. It's called instinct and we have it for a reason. We are animals too.