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Dumbing Down Dog Bite Statistics

It all started with the maligning of pit bulls. The first efforts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) towards dogs began with coining the phrase of determining a dog’s character by the dog’s deeds and not the dog’s breed. Most of us in animal welfare accepted that as a fair assessment. However, over the years, the deeds of the breed caused greater concern towards the dog’s breed. Too many people were being killed by a single breed to not accept the fact that there is something different about that breed.

As the maligning of pit bulls got worse. To combat against people seeing the pit bull as a dangerous breed, news media began leaving out the breed of the dog engaged in acts of violence. More and more news reports of dog attacks are not reporting on the breed of the dog engaged in the attack. Some will say that the reason is that pit bull dogs are hard to identify and are often mistaken in these incidents. In some ways, they are correct. There are so many pit bulls and pit bull mixes that it is becoming more and more difficult to identify the breed amid all of the other breeds mixed into an offending dog if you don’t consider the wide forehead of the offending dog. Let’s face it, pit bulls have a single phenotypical characteristic that is too hard to disguise. That wide forehead is hard to overlook.

So, the best way to not allow pit bulls to be maligned in a dog bite incident is to not report the breed of the offending dog. In today’s society, reporting the dog as a pit bull is just racist.

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The Evolution of the Animal Shelter Profession

I was once called “old school.” I guess they meant that I am stuck to the old ways of the profession when the responsibility of being an Animal Control Officer was to serve and protect the public. Our profession has evolved, and to be honest, I am glad that I am now retired because I can’t stop being old school..

The No Kill Movement started the evolution. Our professional focus turned to the plight of the animals in our care. I have to admit, it was very fulfilling to see euthanasia rates decline. Shelters with a live release rate of 10% started seeing more animals getting adopted and eventually many shelters saw live release rates over 90%.

The problem was that many claimed that a 90% live release rate was still too low and that decisions had to be made to place animals that were not considered adoptable. Pit bulls became the poster breed for this cause. Organizations were attempting to convince the public that pit bulls were the breed to own. Even ones that had a history of aggression.

Recently, in my community, a woman was killed by a pair of pit bulls. The Newspaper, along with the local Animal Control organization wrote an article assuring the public that pit bulls are a maligned breed and that you should ignore the deaths caused by the breed. After all, “all breeds are the same.” Don’t let another pit bull related death interfere with the adoption of these animals from the animal shelter.

The problem with this evolution is that it is making people stupid. Animal Shelters are so focused on adopting every animal that they fail to warn people about the genetic characteristics that control an animal’s behavior. Let’s face it, when shelters have a population of 70% pit bulls, they have quite a sales job to make. After all, their mission is no longer to protect people, but to have the highest possible adoption rate…. no matter what the cost.

Since this evolution has sucked so many animal shelters in, it might become necessary to outlaw the adoption of potentially dangerous animals. The Commonwealth of Virginia outlaws the holding back of information about a dog’s previous behavior problems to potential adopters. I used to think that keeping adopters in the dark was a Southern thing, but it appears that it has spilled over into the rest of the Country. Maybe communities should reenact some old school philosophies.

I’m not suggesting that some breeds should be banned; I just think that animal shelters should get back to the days of full disclosure when adopting animals. An era of integrity and respecting the mission that people must come first.

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Pack Behavior

The best way to cement your next budget is to have a pack of dogs running loose in your community. There is an interesting dynamic that exists where two or more dogs begin hanging out together on a regular basis. As the pack grows, the pack takes on more confidence. As the confidence in a pack grows, it risks becoming more aggressive. It only takes one dog to turn aggressive in any situation to trigger the remaining dogs to become vicious.

It takes a few incidents of vicious dogs running loose for a community to gain an appreciation for their local Animal Control department. Add in a few fatalities and you can even gain new equipment, like tranquilizer guns and traps, for your Animal Control Officers.

Down through the years, we have witnessed humans taking on pack behavior. We see it in looting, protests, and in our youth. Given the increase in human hostility, you can be thankful for the Police Officers who protect us. Oops, didn’t we go through a period of defunding our Police? Boy was that stupid.

Just a few minutes into our nightly news programming to see that humanity has lost its ability of self-control. With fewer people being held accountable, more people are manifesting their rage in public.

If you have read any of my earlier blogs, you know that I think social media is going to be our downfall. Social media tends to wind us up and then is used to direct people to locations to let loose their rage. It seems that the intelligence of any crowd is determined by the dumbest person in the crowd. That is the person who acts out and triggers the rest of the crowd to become a mass of stupidity.

You can always predict one of these pending acts of stupidity when you see people wearing face masks. No longer are the face masks needed for COVID, but are now needed to protect the identity of someone preparing to do something majorly stupid. Why else would that gather with other like-minded people?

You can witness the parenting of children when you see flash mobs robbing stores or attacking people by our youth. A recent incident of ten children, between 13 and 17 years of age, killing a schoolmate over some stupid thing. Parents have given up their parenting responsibility to the schools that are really doing a poor job. In fact, the schools are exacerbating the problem. Instead of teaching our children life skills, they are taught to become outraged over preferred pronouns.

Animal Control officers have vast experience in handling dog packs. The trick is to break up the pack and drive the animals home where they can deal with their owners. The Police could learn from Animal Control when humans are the plague of our communities.

Dealing with pack behavior

I’ve always felt that using paintball guns using a mixture of pepper, skunk oil, and dye-pack ink would ensure that the pepper would stop their activity, the skunk oil would make them rethink their pack behavior, and the dye would evidence the animal’s involvement of being caught “in the act.”  If this method became effective for Animal Control Officers, Police could later adopt it for their own use.

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Rabies Test

This morning, I read an article claiming that a dog was euthanized after being tested for rabies.  On the surface, that seems reasonable because rabies is 100% fatal.  However, the rabies test is also 100% fatal.  The rabies test requires that sections of brain tissue be sectioned for viewing under a microscope for infected cells.  The process of accessing those cells in the brain caused the animal’s death.  The media confuses the issue when reporting the news of a rabies test, making it sound like a simple procedure.

In most cases, health departments that conduct rabies tests don’t want to dispose of the animal’s body and ask that the sample be delivered to them containing just the head.  Only the head.  So, it is clear that animals are not euthanized “after” a rabies test.

This is one of the risks that pet owners take when they decide not to vaccinate their pets; should the animal bite a child; the only way to see if the child didn’t contract rabies is to “test” the animal.  And now, we know what that means.  A rabies test is a surefire way to stop an animal from biting any more kids.

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Animal Laws

Most animal laws are enacted to keep the stupid people in our society from harming the rest of us. In a world in which we feel like we are over-regulated, the following laws are for your own protection:

Leash Laws – Pet owners are the last people to recognize that their pet is a danger to other pets or people. Leash laws are to help provide a level of control that an obtuse pet owner might need. Communities should NEVER allow for a law that provides for verbal control over pets; anything less than physical restraint is just a stupid plan. Sorry, I was lacking a better term for that.

Exotic Animal Laws – Many people do not have the sense when it comes to owning wild or verminous species. Exotic animal laws limit the ownership of animals that present a danger to themselves or others. In Portland, we had a person who owned a liger, in Milwaukee we had numerous people who owned verminous snakes. Sorry, here it comes again…. people who own these animals are just plain stupid. There is no point in owning a dangerous animal whether it is domestic or wild. Have you ever watched a show in which some idiot is interviewed claiming the number of times he (and it is usually is a “he”) was bitten by his verminous snakes? Sometimes you just have to ask yourself whatever happened to natural selection?

Licensing Laws – Less than 10% of the dogs entering an animal shelter wear any form of identification. The percentage is even lower for cats. For years, I created campaigns with the slogan: “A license is a phone call home for a pet without a dime.” Okay, that was a long time ago. The slogan never worked, so we purchased a pet tag engraver and began giving tags out when people reclaimed their pets. The free ID tags didn’t work; no matter how many tags we created for a pet; it would always be picked up without a tag. So, we created laws that pets that were picked up three times without identification would be microchipped.

Let’s face it, in addition to providing revenue, the pet licensing law was a means to get an animal back to the owner. The last thing we need is for owned animals taking up the necessary space in our animal shelter. In a perfect world, a pet owner would begin looking for their lost pet within 24 hours. Working in animal welfare, I learned that we don’t live in a perfect world. Many pet owners don’t seem to look for their pets at all… or, at least until the 3, 7, or 10-day stay-holding period is up. It is amazing the number of pet owners that show up after their pet has been adopted by someone else.

Most pet licensing laws require that the pet be vaccinated for rabies. Dogs and cats are the two species that are most likely to come in contact with a rabies vector species (bats, skunks, raccoons, and foxes). Rabies vaccinations are usually good for 1 or 3 years. Many veterinarians use the 1-year vaccination to force their clients to bring in their pets for an annual check-up.

Animal Cruelty – Although this is a blog about laws that protect you, a good number of people need to be told how to treat their pets. Yeah, I know; you would think that it would be common sense. But it isn’t. One of the most common complaints that animal control officers receive in the winter is that dog owners do not provide fresh water for their outdoor pets when the water bucket freezes over. In the summer months, the complaints turn to dogs left without shade or left in hot cars. I know what you are thinking, and I think that as well: a person should have to pass a test first before being allowed to be a pet owner or parent.

Dangerous Dog Laws – Some owners still will not recognize their dog as being dangerous, even after it has been declared dangerous by the local jurisdiction. Dangerous dog laws create an additional layer of safety for the community after a dog has exhibited signs of being dangerous. Those laws require additional confinement restrictions and insurance. Many dogs are euthanized when they attack or bite a person after they have been declared dangerous. Even with fatal dog attacks, it seems the only one who didn’t believe the dog was dangerous beforehand is the owner. I don’t know if this ignorance is the result of stupidity or just laziness to accept responsibility for the dog’s behavior. These laws determine when a person cannot be responsible to maintain an aggressive dog properly and then make a determination as to the need to kill the dog.

It is not uncommon for a judge to remove a dangerous dog from the community. Instead of euthanizing the dog, the judge rules that the dog should be removed from the community. In these cases, the judge just removes the dog from his community to place it upon another community to worry about. Judges don’t like to order the death of an animal and sometimes make foolish decisions.

It would be a wonderful world that if we didn’t have to live with laws, but humanity would kill itself if we didn’t have them.

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Dangerous Dog Laws

Recently, I was confronted with two issues concerning dangerous dog laws; the first was President Biden claiming that the Secret Service is lying about his dogs biting them and the other was an article that I ran across claiming that animals are not adequately represented in current dangerous dog legislation.

Having worked in the animal control business for most of my life, Biden is like every other pet owner who thinks the victims are to blame for getting bit.  It is owners who fail to take responsibility are the ones that necessitate the need for dangerous dog laws.

Concerning the article: DANGEROUS DOG LAWS: FAILING TO GIVE MAN’S BEST FRIEND A FAIR SHAKE AT JUSTICE .  The writers are correct, dogs don’t get a fair shake when accused of presenting harmful behavior toward people.  They can’t tell their story, so we have to act on their behavior.   Behavior that a responsible pet owner would keep in check.

Most dangerous dog laws seem to fall on the notion of one free bite.  After that bite, the owner has full knowledge of the propensity of the dog to be potentially dangerous.  Unfortunately, like the parents of an unruly child, people fail to recognize the behavior long after it is too late.

Dangerous dog laws are like other laws that remove potential hazards from society.  That’s what we have jails for.  But there are no long-term facilities for dogs.  In the old days, judges used to run dogs out of town.  Some probably still do.  So that they can become a problem for another jurisdiction to deal with.  I am guilty of warning the animal control officers of the jurisdiction in which one of my dogs was vanquished to them.

Dogs are considered personal property.  As such, the dog owner must be afforded due process.  However, this particular piece of property has its’ own mind and may act against the owner’s desires.  The purpose of dangerous dog laws is to protect society.   When an owner cannot control the behavior of his pet, the animal may be headed down the path of euthanasia.  Is it fair, of course not, but it is the only mechanism that we have to deal with the problem; because responsible pet owners are in such short supply.

The bottom line is that dogs have to live in our world.  That is why they have owners.  When owners fail, dog laws begin.

 

 

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Detroit Dog Attack

Recently a four-year-old was attacked in Detroit. There is nothing new about this attack, we see articles about dog attacks every week.  What is interesting is the wordsmithing calling the dog a mastiff shepherd.  Is this someone’s attempt at avoiding the term Pitbull mix?  As of this writing, no owner has come forward.  

Also interesting is Detroit’s Animal Control pronouncement of reducing the number of dog bites from  400 to 200.  This going to be extremely difficult because we are coming out of the Pandemic in which children have been isolated for a year.  Many of us are coming out of locked doors to enjoy the fresh air.  There is something about playing children and loose dogs that don’t mix.  

During the Pandemic, we were so focused on mask-wearing that pet owners did not take this opportunity to discover the art of responsible pet ownership.  The best way to bring about a reduction in dog bites is to put more officers on the streets to round up stray dogs.  I don’t know how this is going to play out when we have entered an era of defunding the police.  Many people will see the need to take up firearms to protect themselves, but, let’s face it, an inexperienced gun owner is more likely to hit the child than the dog.  And shooting a dog that is loose seems excessive.

I don’t know what prompted Detroit Animal Control to announce efforts to reduce dog bites.  Isn’t that something that they should have been doing all along?  Was this announcement just a response to the media when asked what they are doing to keep children safe?  We all know that the only way to keep children safe from dogs is for the dog to have a responsible owner.  Unfortunately, dog owners are not moving quickly towards this end.  Whatever Detroit’s plan, I wish them every success.

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Reoccurring Theme with Dog Bite Incidents

A recent incident of dogs attacking and killing a New Jersey child causes me dismay as the dogs’ owner failed to heed previous warnings about the danger his dogs presented to the community.  These cases continue to arise because pet owners are not held accountable for their dog’s actions and as such are not properly charged with reckless endangerment or homicide.  Prosecutors need to understand that simply having the animals euthanized is insufficient justice.  The animals had to pay the price for bad owners; now the owners need to feel the hand of justice for the terror they unleash upon their community.

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Porch Safety

As an Animal Control Officer, the household porch can be one of the most dangerous places that we face.  You must arm yourself in preparation to protect yourself.

If you are approaching a porch and there is a dog on the porch, using an ultrasonic device will aid your in determining the dog’s behavior as you approach.  I most cases, the dog will move away from the front door and allow you to approach.  You need to keep in mind that an ultrasonic device is your least effective tool to keep you safe.

A metal clipboard is the best defense in protecting yourself if you are attacked.  You might be attacked by a dog at the door when you approach or when the dog owner opens the door and the dog escapes through the open door.  It is important to use the clipboard as a shield and offer the board to the dog as it attempts to bite you.

It is not uncommon that you might be attacked by more than one dog.  Pepper spray is your best approach in dealing with multiple dogs or if you are finding your clipboard ineffective.  It is important to shake up your can of pepper spray once a week to make sure the pepper is evenly suspended in the container.  Pepper spray comes in various concentrations from .003% concentration to 20% concentration.  The 20% solution is sold to hikers to use on bears; but it appears to be a big hit with protesters; it produces a nice wide spray and comes in a larger container…. thus it will protect you longer.

If the dog pursues you to your vehicle and continues the attack, you should have a CO2 fire extinguisher available to  keep the dog at bay until you can call for backup or until you can reach for your catch-pole.

As with the clipboard, the catch-pole is an effective shield to keep the dog at bay, but it is an ineffective tool if do don’t open the noose.  If you cannot get the open noose over the dog’s head, you might consider letting the dog bite the noose and chinch the noose closed on the dog’s muzzle.  You can then  feed a second catch-pole noose over the first catch-pole and work the noose down the catch-pole and over the dog’s head.

Using a catch-pole usually causes a scene and in today’s society, capturing the dog will likely be videotaped and put on social media.  You have the way your capture method decision against being injured by the dog.

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Dilemma

We have become a society in which many of its members exercise their rights without consideration of others.  Recently, we have had incidents in which people are harmed when they inadvertently find themselves in the path of people engaged in “peaceful” protests.

One of the advantages of staying home as part of the pandemic is that we are safely distant from the harm of those peaceful protesters.  So far, no one seems to have an answer for how we should behave, if we were in our own vehicle and suddenly surrounded by angry people beating on your car.  An incident in Utah proves that protesters are capable of shooting into vehicles with unarmed occupants.  So you are faced with either sitting still and waiting to be harmed or putting your foot on the gas and plow your way out of the crowd.  Are you responsible for the people you injure in your escape?

The same hold true to people protecting their property.  If a crowd of people are coming down your street burning businesses or homes, to what level may the property owner protect their property?  Lethal force seems to be excessive when we compare the life on a person to that of property.  So?  What do you do?

As is consistent with my writing style, I tend to get sidetracked.  So, this time I am going to try to get sidetracked back on the issue of animal welfare.  You are walking down a street or a path and a dog comes rushing at you.  You cannot read the dog’s mind, so you don’t know the dog’s intent.  You have either (or both) a gun or a walking stick (it seems that life now requires that you carry one or the other).

You, of course, take a defensive stance.  You might yell, “Get this dog under control.”  It is a common practice that people frequently walk their dogs off leash without thought to other people out walking (this callous attitude is what has helped me fund my retirement).  Yelling will proved to be a moot point, because callous dog owners are slow to respond to the problems that they create.  So, do you take action against the dog, or wait until the dog has bitten you to prove the dog’s intent?  If you allow the dog to get that close to you, the dog might be too close for the walking stick to be effective.

We are increasingly faced with situations that are caused by people exercising what they consider their rights over the rights of anyone else.  Somehow, they have gotten it into their heads that looting and burning is a side affect of their right to protest.   More that ever, we have to work out scenarios in our minds in preparation for the unexpected.  Once you have figured out how you would handle a situation, you need to worry about to what extent are your permitted by law to protect yourself.  How would your actions play out in court?