I once lived in a small town bordering Canada. We were a close knit community. Except when it came to the local dog. My neighbors would get so angry when the dog was out chasing deer through the community. Some of them talked of killing the dog. The dog’s owner knew how everyone felt, but he just could not find it in himself to make any effort to control his dog.

This is the common theme that we deal with as animal control officers, we see the same people committing the same infractions. It isn’t the dog’s fault, but try convincing the owner of that fact.

Owners seem to be more upset with you impounding their dog, than to appreciate their role in the chain of events. I have encountered numerous times in which the owner just throws up his (or her) hands and just decide to teach the dog a lesson and let the dog sit in the pound (I know, I hate that word too), “to teach it a lesson.”

I have had the opportunity to write a lot of city/county codes on animal ownership and one of my favorites is the ability to charge a person with animal abandonment for failing to reclaim their pet at the shelter. Some people cannot find it in themselves to do the right thing, so government has to force the issue.

The longer that I have been in the animal welfare profession, the more that I questioned if pet ownership is a net gain for the pet. We hear about all of the ways that pets are good for us, but how effective are we in being good for the pet? Especially when we cannot bring ourselves to do the most simple thing of keeping our pets out of trouble.

Working in an animal shelter, you will see incidents of a pet showing such devotion to their owner while their owner abuses them. You will see incidents in which owners will decide that it is easier to kill their pet than to provide basic care. You will see these things and ask yourself, “How did we become the dominant species.?”

God wanted us to be good stewards of our world. It is hard to find a single area in which we followed that directive.

If any good has come out of our pandemic, it is from decisions from local communities to do away with their Fourth of July fireworks celebrations.  This may be the first time in many years that our animal shelters do not fill up with terrified pets.  All that remains is the persistent popping of firecrackers from neighborhood children, both young and old.

I liken a firecracker to a Twitter account: there are many people who become annoyed at your tweets, but you can’t stop yourself from firing off a tweet anyway.  Due  to the sensitive nature of pet’s hearing, firecrackers are quite annoying; to the point that some animals become terrified.

Every year, many animal shelters post instructions as to how pet owners should prepare for the Fourth of July.  If you live in a mountain State, you also have to prepare for Pioneer Day.  It comes down to finding a quiet place for your pets and placing identification on the pets.

Working in the animal welfare profession, you will become amazed at the large numbers of animals that enter your shelter without identification.  You’ll will also be amazed at the failure of people to look for their lost pets.  Cats are particularly troublesome because their return rate is less than fifteen percent.  People just don’t seem to be interested in looking for their lost cat.

Animal Shelters go to great lengths  to help  pet owners find their lost pet, like posting pictures of animals during their intake  process at the shelter and posting them on their website.  Pet owners just don’t seem to utilize the tools to help find their lost pet.  I had one pet owner tell me, “It is just too much work.”

We have a large portion of our society who are so focused on what our Country is not that they have forgotten what we are.  Sometimes we need a little reminder:

The Declaration Of Independence

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing taxes on us without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses;

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

I was reading an article of a child being bitten by the family dog. The injuries were sufficient to pass the child from the local hospital to a larger one. At the end of the article, the author stated that the breed of the dog was removed from the article at the request of the family.

It appears that those who first read the story, saw the article before the edit had occurred: commenting about the breed being a pitbull mix.  Those who read the unedited version claim that the dog was a Rottweiler/Pitbull mix.  The interesting part of the story was the comments that followed.

Some claim that one breed is no different that another breed. Some offered up blaming the victim. One person expounded on a “recent study” that claimed that dogs never bite without reason.  The longer the comment, the more the person wants to protect aggressive breeds.  However, most people recognize the truth that victims are not always to blame and that some dogs have genetic traits of being more aggressive than other dogs.  It appears that people who see the risk of owning an aggressive dog breed can express themselves succinctly with few words; even when they joke about the bite is the result of climate change or the virus.

This is what upsets me about dog bite investigators; they attempt to bring reason to a dog bite by explaining away the dog’s behavior.  Most of their causation is the result of wild guesses.  The bottom-line is that dog and people have altercations and a dog’s most obvious way to express anger is with his/her teeth.

I am not opposed to pitbulls.   I know that most pitbull dogs will never be a problem.  I also know that the dogs that later bite someone has probably engaged in behaviors that would have warned a normally cautious person.  People tend to overlook signals that are clearly presented to them.   Failing to accept those signals for what they are will eventually get someone hurt. 

I am opposed to callous people owning large breed dogs; people who fail to see the signs.   Local officials claim that the number of dog bite incidents have increase because children are spending more time with their pets during the pandemic. It appears that during this time, more parental attention must be directed to their pets and to their children.  Let’s face it, the truth is that Pitbulls are very loyal dogs, that is why they faced the abuse of their owners in the past to engage in dog fighting.  The problem with loyalty is that it can be misplaced.  

Misplaced dog loyalty usually ends up with someone getting bitten.  The usual scenario is that the dog thinks it is protecting a family member who is just horsing around with another person.  Dogs frequently become loyal to only certain members of its family and not others.  The worst incidents is when a dog becomes jealous of a new family member.

In the animal shelter business, we frequently experienced a dog becoming furiously loyal to one or two volunteers and turned aggressive towards the staff in charged to feed or clean up after the dog.  I always drew the line with dogs that threatened staff.  Volunteers frequently voiced their descent when that line was drawn.  

Volunteers, like pet owners will see threatening behavior and not accept it for what it is.  It is not uncommon for a pet owner to express shock  at their dog’s behavior when all of the neighbors claim that they saw the incident coming.  The writing off of the behavior  places others at risk.

The main reason that the owners of the dog wanted the breed removed is because of their social media presence.   It also brings into question as to the investigation that will follow from Child Protective Services.   How do you explain away your negligence to the child as well as to your pet?

I have completed a career in dealing with the aftermath of negligent pet owners.  For that reason, I am opposed to allowing large breed dogs on to airplanes as “comfort animals.”  One option is to require the owner to provide proof of a million dollar insurance coverage to cover any incident that might be caused by the dog on the flight.  In this way, the airlines weed out those who are just scamming the system (which I believe is 95% of them).   But that is another story.