Dog Drags Newborn From Family Home in Ky.

A 4-year-old mixed breed called a Native American Indian dog is under quarantine by animal control...

A 4-year-old mixed breed called a Native American Indian dog is under quarantine by animal control authorities in central Kentucky. A newborn baby was hospitalized in critical condition after being taken from his crib and carried outside his home by the family pet, authorities said Tuesday.

(WTVQ)

A father was frantically calling 911 to report his missing newborn when he spotted the baby, bleeding from the mouth and clutched in the jaws of a family dog who had carried him from his crib to the heavily wooded backyard.

Four-day-old Alexander James Smith was rushed to the emergency room at University of Kentucky Hospital in Lexington, where he was listed in critical condition Tuesday with two collapsed lungs, a skull fracture, broken ribs and various cuts and bruises.

His father, Michael Smith, said doctors were optimistic the boy would survive, but a day earlier they braced the family for the worst and had to use resuscitation paddles to get a heartbeat.

"They took us straight to a consulting room with a pastor and gave us pretty much what was the last visitation," Smith said in an interview with The Associated Press from a hospital waiting room.

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Smith said he and his wife, Chrissie, had just put Alexander James (or A.J.) in his crib Monday afternoon in their Nicholasville, Ky., home. Smith said he was preparing to leave for the store to buy various baby items, including a video monitor that he now believes could have prevented the entire ordeal.

"It'll haunt me because that was my job," he said. "It's a nightmare."

When Chrissie returned to the bedroom minutes later after going downstairs to look at the shopping list, one of the doors was ajar and both the baby and their Native American Indian dog — a breed that looks similar to a husky — were gone.

Michael Smith initially headed to the backyard, knowing that Dakota, a mixed breed with wolves in its ancestry, had a reputation for stealing household items like cups and wallets and depositing them there. He spent 10 minutes searching among the trees and bushes in the two-acre fenced yard before finding the dog and child in tall grass some 200 yards behind the house.

He grabbed his son and sprinted toward the house, handing him over to emergency workers who had just arrived.