Cause of Death in Lee Co, SC Dog Attack

A follow up on the 65 year old woman in SC who died during a dog attack last week:

Lee County Coroner Alford Elmore told The Item of Sumter that an autopsy Friday showed that Ethel Horton had an enlarged heart and died before the dog did much damage to her.

The woman died of a heart attack. The husband, who was attacked first, remains in the hospital. The dog was killed following the attack.

NC Judge Rules Pitbulls Not Weapons

A NC Pitbull owner was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after his two dogs bit a 6 year old boy multiple times. The judge in the case ruled that Pitbulls do not fall under North Carolina's legal definition of "weapon" so the charges were dismissed. He also encouraged legislators to change that definition.

Body Language: It's Important

I'm unable to hear the accompanying audio on this clip right now (I will later) but from the video, it's apparent that no one was heeding the dog's or the reporter's body language prior to the bite. Thankfully the handler took immediate control of the situation afterward so no further damage was done. But it would have been nice to see that kind of quick thinking as the situation escalated and before the bite occurred.

IA Councilman's "Vicious" Dog Stolen

If you've been following the story of Sioux City, IA Councilman Aaron Rochester, you know that he's been an advocate for banning Pitbulls and that his Lab recently bit someone. The councilman tried to appeal the ruling that the dog is "vicious" and must be killed under the law - cos you know, it's not fair if it happens to my dog - but was denied.

Well now:

A Sioux City councilman's dog that has been deemed vicious and could be euthanized is missing from an animal shelter.

Police say someone broke into the shelter Sunday afternoon and stole Jake, a 3-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, from an outdoor kennel. No other animals were taken.

Lt. Mark Kirkpatrick says there are no suspects as of Monday and the dog hasn't been found.

Yep, no suspects. And I bet there aren't going to BE any suspects either. Not now, not ever. Just sayin'.

Dangerous Dog Congress?

The Dangerous Dog Congress website is full of sensationalized images of "dangerous" dogs while promoting an event to be held in November in Toronto:

The most significant animal policy event of the century, delineating evidence-based peer-reviewed solutions to the problem of dog-human attacks

The keynote speaker at the event is Adam Goldfarb from HSUS and the host is a company called Dog-Trax which appears to sell some sort of dog bite tracking software. The folks at dogsbite.org indicate the person behind Dog-Trax, Tamara Follett, is a dog breeder. In fact the Dangerous Dog Congress site says:

As a long-time owner and breeder of one of the most aggressive of the protection dog breeds, Tamara is uniquely qualified to assess the practicability and fairness of existing controls on dangerous dogs, and to propose additional controls which specifically target the source of the problem – not specific breeds of dogs, but any dog at high risk of attack, as well as irresponsible owners and breeders.

This seems to me to be saying Ms. Follett is an owner/breeder of a very aggressive breed of dog and that specific breeds of dogs are not aggressive. Make sense? *Head: Wall*

Anyone who can shed any light on this event or the folks involved, please share.

Shelter Worker's Dog Bites Two People in One Week

From WI:

A worker from the Door County Humane Society may need to sacrifice her pit bull after the dog bit a second person last week in Southern Door.

According to the Door County Sheriff's Department, Katie Miller of De Pere was running on Door County C on May 26 when a 3-year-old American pit bull owned by Amy Vlies, Brussels, came off the property and bit Miller in her left knee and right upper thigh.

Vlies was able to retrieve the dog, but it was the second bite reported within a week. The dog had shots last year but needed to be quarantined due to the previous incident. It was taken to the Door County Humane Society, where Vlies is employed.

I wonder if the shelter does a better job educating adopters about appropriate confinement for pets than it does educating its staff.

Who's really making the "sacrifice" here?

Op-Ed Calls for Reversal of FL Ban on BSL

An editorial (with poll) in the Orlando Sentinel starts out like this:

Spike is gone, mauled to death earlier this month by a pit bull on the loose.

The little Dachshund was the latest casualty of an out-of-control breed whose irresponsible owners are letting their animals terrorize dogs and people alike.

It's all downhill from there.

The piece goes on to say that because BSL is prohibited in FL, nothing can be done to protect people from dangerous dogs. And that Pitbull advocates don't post stories about Pitbull bites, only the nicey-nice stories.

Wrong, wrong and wrong-o-mundo.

There's no such thing as monsters and no such thing as "an out-of-control breed" of dog. Some individual dogs of all breeds bite, for various reasons. But most dogs don't bite. Some owners are irresponsible - they may own any breed of dog, including Dachshunds for example. But most owners are well intentioned people who, if they aren't already behaving responsibly, may need a hand up in the form of education and community support. Making low/no cost neuter surgery accessible to all pet owners who want it is just one way the community can make a difference. And the idea that nothing can be done to protect the public from dangerous dogs unless BSL is passed is utterly false. Non breed specific legislation regarding dangerous dogs is already on the books in many areas.

I'm a Pitbull advocate and I post stories about bites in addition to the hero dog and other positive stories. Some people don't like that. But we can always learn something from tragedy and every opportunity to educate is important. I don't blame the breed, I look at the backstory and try to figure out what went wrong. Too often, bite incidents could have been prevented by something as simple as not leaving a child unattended with a dog or keeping a dog confined. These are basic tenets of responsible dog ownership and yet the need for education is apparent. So I don't shy away from those. On the other hand, I don't fall for every "Pitbull Mauling Rah-Rah-Rah!" headline that makes its way on to the internet. We have seen time and again that the dog in question is in fact not a Pitbull, that there was no mauling, etc. while bite incidents involving other breeds get little media coverage.

As for who is terrorizing who, I'd say irresponsible journalism and wrong-headed thinking are partly to blame for perpetuating the myths (and ratings grab) surrounding Pitbulls. Everyone is entitled to his opinion but fear mongering and discrimination have no place in our communities. We are a no kill nation of pet lovers and a humane society. Join us.

Lack of Responsible Dog Ownership Contributes to Bite

A 10 year old boy was bitten by a loose Pitbull in Sumter, SC.

Two 3-year-old pit bulls a male and a female apparently got out of a fenced-in pen and came through a backyard path from a North Milton Street home.
The female was seized by the Sumter Police Department's Animal Control Unit and is being quarantined for 30 days.

I hate to read about kids getting bitten. It can be a physically and psychologically traumatic incident that plagues the kid for years. Whenever possible, I like to look at the details of the attack to see what can be learned. In this case, I didn't learn anything new, but rather got sucked into a WTF vortex:

“The dog was in the sewage behind the house, and then we (he and Wise) were standing in the yard talking about why the dog was in the sewage, and the dogs came running after us but mainly me,” Tobias [the victim] recounted[.]

Dog in sewage. m'kaaaaaaay.

The white pit bull later identified as the male, called “Big,” by his owner, Anthony Hayes tried to get at his neck, Tobias said, and that's when he was knocked over and the female pit bull, “Beauty,” bit his leg and didn't let go.

The dog's name is "Big". Is that really a NAME or does the guy have a Brittany named "Medium", a Pomeranian called "Small" and a Great Dane known fondly as "Extra Large"? Something is not right here.

Hayes, 30, said the dog is pregnant, which might be a reason it attacked. Both dogs were kept in the house until recently, when they got to be too large to stay inside. Hayes said either one or both of the dogs dug a hole to escape their fenced-in enclosure, which is partially covered with blue tarps to keep out bad weather.
“Once she has the puppies, I'm probably going to get rid of her. I don't need the drama or anything else happening,” Hayes said.

Item: Puppies reach their adult size long before they are 3 years old - years before. So what is this nonsense about they just recently got too large to live indoors anymore? Did the house shrink?

Item: Dogs dig. Is this new information to any dog owners out there? If you leave dogs in a pen for any length of time, they're going to dig. Especially if they are bored.

Item: Unspayed females get pregnant if they are made to live in pens with unneutered males. But since the cow is out the barn now, what exactly is the plan for raising and finding good homes for the dam and pups? Is there a plan? Was there ever? Whelping the litter in an outside pen with a male dog isn't the plan, right?

Oh Calgon, take me away!

We need education and community outreach to promote responsible dog ownership, especially in poor, rural areas. Time and again we hear about kids getting bitten or being killed in preventable situations that never should have developed. I know some people choose to ignore personal responsibility and 'you can lead a horse to water' and all that. But if we at least got the horse to the water, it might spare a tragedy.

Greenville Co, SC: 2 Roaming Pitbulls Attack

If you can stand all the typos, a SC TV station site has a story on 2 Pitbulls whose owner was "out of town" when they got loose yesterday. The dogs bit a kid, killed another dog who was in his own fenced-in yard and then turned on police officers who shot them both to death. Obviously we don't have all the facts here - namely, who was responsible for the dogs during the owner's absence and how did they get loose? But not letting an absence of facts (or spellcheck) deter them on their mission o' stupidity, the station has a poll on whether Pitbulls should be illegal smack-dab in the middle of their homepage. Sensationalism, anyone?

I say again: breed bans do not solve the problem of irresponsible owners. Nor do breed bans address the fact that any dog can bite, although it's important to note that most dogs don't. Is it possible for MSM to engage the community in a reasonable debate on responsible dog ownership and forgo the whole Pitbull-maulings-get-ratings mentality? If not, I guess it's up to us.

Breed Bias in Home Insurance

Dear Jack Russell Terriers, Chihuahuas, Dachshunds, Labs, Goldens and friends,

Welcome aboard the breed discrimination bus!

Insurance companies are in the business of making money. One of the ways they do that is by minimizing their risks in writing a policy. Some insurance companies consider how likely the homeowner might be to file a claim for injury caused by a dog. So instead of having a qualified behaviorist evaluate each dog as an individual - the only true (albeit costly) means of assessing a dog's potential for human aggression - they rely on various other sources for their information:

Where are insurance companies getting their lists of what they perceive to be "aggressive" dogs? Without knowing, it's difficult for home- and dog owners to discern which breeds are acceptable and which aren't.

As it turns out, there's no standard list insurance companies follow, but dogs can factor in when an insurer is reviewing your new customer application. And it's not just the breeds typically thought of as aggressive, such as pit bulls, Rottweilers, chow chows, Doberman pinschers and German shepherds.

[...]

"The real problem is that there is so much conflicting information (about aggressive breeds), that you don't know what to believe," says Donna Popow, senior director of knowledge resources for the Insurance Institute of America, a nonprofit offering insurance education in Malvern, Pa. "Any dog will bite, given the right set of circumstances."

True, but most dogs don't bite. And fear of having to pay out on dog bite claims is an overhyped bit of hysteria to my mind, used by more than just insurance companies in advocating discrimination based on a dog's physical apprearance.

So what can a dog owner in need of home insurance do?

Before telling your insurance company that you have what they may consider an aggressive dog, [Ledy] Van Kavage, of the Best Friends Animal Society, suggests you have some coverage lined up with another insurance company. Insurance companies differ on breeds they deem aggressive and some go by which breeds in your state have bitten the most.

Van Kavage also cautions that when you own a mixed-breed dog, don't offer your insurance company a guess on what the predominant breed in the mix is. "It's impossible to guess correctly what the breed is unless you have a DNA test done," Van Kavage says.

And I guess you definitely would not want to say you have a Golden-Pit-Chiweenie mix.

Pitbull Death Advocates Rely on Phony Legal Threats

KC Dog Blog reports on a failed bid to modify Springfield MO's Pitbull ban to allow rescues to pull Pitbulls from local shelters and adopt them out in other, more reasonable, cities:

The council apparently agreed with City Attorney Dan Wichmer, who said the city would be at risk of a lawsuit if someone ever got bitten by a dog the let go.

This flawed logic, as KC Dog Blog points out, takes the responsibility for biting dogs off the owners and drops it into the lap of the city. And when I started thinkin' 'bout flawed logic, I got the HSUS testimony in the Wilkes Co, NC case in my head. In trying to convince the judge that death was the only option for the 146 unevaluated dogs and puppies in that case, an HSUS representative said:

You know, we could be a couple years down the road and one of these dogs could do something, and I think it ultimately could come back on the county of Wilkes.

So riddle me this, Pitbull death advocates: In how many bite cases in the US has this scenario come to pass? That is, someone gets bitten by a dog and pursues legal action - not against the dog's owner - but against the shelter where the dog originated. The bite victim's attorney would need to inquire to the dog's owner to find out where the dog was obtained. In the (theoretical) cases of the Springfield and Wilkes Co dogs, the answer to that would be a rescue group. The bite victim's attorney would then have to inquire to the rescue group to find out how they had gotten the dog. I'm not a lawyer but this doesn't pass my common sense sniff test. What say you lawyers - would you advise a client to pursue legal action - not against the biting dog's owner - but against the shelter who released the dog (presumably with a signed standard release form absolving the shelter of liability) to a rescue group?

Statistically speaking, in what percentage of dog bite litigation cases has this happened? I don't know the answer but my guess would be that it's very low, possibly statistically ZERO. If my guess is correct, how is it that legislators and judges feel threatened by this straw man - enough to kill unevaluated dogs who would likely never bite anyone anyway? (Most dogs don't bite and dog bites are declining due to a number of factors.)

Every dog deserves a fair evaluation. And responsibility for individual dogs lies solely with the owner - not with the friend of a friend's neighbor's Uncle who had the dog at some previous point in time. Dog owning is a right and a responsibility to be undertaken and protected with care.