Your Dog, YOUR Responsibility

I have been working with animals for more than 40 years, and over that time, I've been in a position to have to break up at least five or six serious dogs fights---the kinds where one or more dogs would have probably been killed if the fights had not been stopped. Being in that situation is extremely scary, trust me. Everything is happening very quickly, dogs' teeth are flashing, blood may or may not be flowing, dogs are growling or "screaming" (the victims are yelping or what I describe as "screaming from pain and/or fear), and there might not be another person around to help deal with breaking up the fight.

When an aggressive dog is attacking another dog (or more than one dog), they are VERY focused on their "prey"; you can't distract them from their victim(s) by merely calling them---physical intervention is required, and even that needs to be something severe enough to REALLY get their attention and/or pure physical force to pull them off the other dog(s).

Yesterday, I was walking my three little (each is less than 25 lbs) terrier mixes on our daily walk around our neighborhood. They were, as always, on leashes (and I had a plastic bag full of dog poops as my "reward" for this excursion), and we were almost back home when suddenly a (loose, no collar) dog came running towards us---and then "through" our little group, passing and running "away". I was just processing this when another dog (loose, BIG---75 lbs or more?---with a collar) came right behind the first dog, but this dog did NOT keep going---he started to attack my three dogs. He started to grab one after the other with his big mouth/teeth, which easily reached around each of my dogs' chests & necks.

What to do? Maybe you've been warned about some dogs, who are involved in attacking another dog, turning & redirecting their attack/bites on a person who tries to intervene, and this IS a definite possibility, so I'm not advocating that kind of approach for the "uninitiated" person to attempt. YOU could get seriously injured or even killed. However, I was NOT going to let this MONSTER kill my dogs, and there we were, in the middle of the (residential) street, and all I had was a bag of dog poop. I felt I had no choice but to risk diving in & trying to pull this big, viscious dog away from my dogs, or one or more of them would be killed.

I first put all three of my dogs leashes in my right hand & shortened up on the leashes, holding them as close to the collars as possible for more control over them. With my left hand, I grabbed the other dog's collar & started to pull him away from my dogs as hard as I could. This took THREE tries, since he kept lunging back to continue the attack. I was also SCREAMING "Call 911!!, Call 911 !!" continuously during the attack, hoping that ANYONE would hear me & call for help. Even if I'd HAD my own cell phone with me, both of my hands were "busy" and I don't think I would have been able to use a phone. I eventually had my dogs at one arm's length towards my right and the other dog at an arm's length to my left, where he was STILL struggling to get to my dogs (and NOT to apologize...).

FINALLY a neighbor called 911 right about the same time as the dog's owner came running from her house, carrying the (useless, at this point) dog's leash. She wanted to take the dog home. I was SO not going to allow her to do that; I wouldn't let go of his collar because I was afraid she was going to take the dog & somehow "hide" him before the police could arrive, so I believe I said some "not nice" words to her...Mea Culpa, I'd just been traumatized, I didn't yet know the extent of my dogs' injuries, & my adrenalin was still pumping. SHE and her dog were not going ANYWHERE.

After three days (well, it was probably about 15 minutes, but it seemed much longer) a police officer arrived to take a report. Now, this is where I believe things might have been misconstrued....I, having worked with animals all of my adult life, and who had also had a chance to check my dogs (who weren't in any obvious distress or bleeding from gaping wounds), had had the time to calm down from panic mode to merely "seething inside but outwardly calm". The OTHER dog's owner was having an emotional meltdown, LAYING by the side of the street, weeping, etc. The officer spoke with me first (less than 5 minutes; I got that information from his sargent) & I told him what had happened. I was, pretty much, the ONLY person who was there from start to finish. He then told me to wait where I was while he spoke with the other dog's owner. I told the officer that I wanted to hear what she was going to tell him to make sure she wasn't going to lie about any of the incident; he told me to just wait "a bit" while he talked to her alone. So I waited...and waited....and I figured she MUST have had enough time to tell the little bit of the story that SHE had witnessed, so I slowly walked closer & heard her saying something like, "We've been wokring with him...". I asked (calmly, I believe), "Are you working with a trainer?", since the dog SO obviously needed professional intervention. I then said, "If I had been a child, this could have been a tragedy". The officer then told me, "You and I are done here" (possibly not his exact words, but the implication was that I should LEAVE). So, I walked away with my dogs & went home to wait for Animal Control to come to take another report.

It turns out that "Baxter" (the other dog's name) has a history of aggression, and has bitten a person (one of the neighbors who just STOOD watching this dog attack my dogs & did NOT try to call 911) in the recent past. I don't know if there have been other incidents, but Animal Control already had noted him as a "Dangerous Dog". It also turned out that the owner IS trying to get professional help (at UGA's veterinary animal behavioral department); I'm very glad to hear that & hope they can help Baxter become a better citizen.

HOWEVER....Baxter still escaped from his fenced yard, unbekonwst to his owner, and had been running loose in the neighborhhod long enough to be several houses away from his home before he attacked my dogs. The owner's "excuse" was that her (adult) daughter's friend had not closed the backyard gate adequately, and Baxter had been able to open it & leave the yard. I'm sorry, but there is NO excuse for a dangerous dog to have ANY possibility to be loose, off-leash, running through a neighborhhod where many people, dogs, and children are frequently outside. If I had been a person with less (physical) strength, unable to pull Baxter off my dogs THREE times; if he hadn't had a collar that I could grab in order to have SOME way of grabbing him with some degree of "safety" (?); if I had been a CHILD with even one dog on a leash----this WOULD have been another tragedy you'd be hearing about in today's news.

I honestly do NOT blame Baxter. I don't know his entire history (from the day he was born; he's about 5 years old now) so I can't "know" if he's simply aggressive for unknown reasons (neurological "mis-wirings?), if he's been abused by someone in his past, or if there were earler warning signs that were ignored by the owner(s) (such as growling if they approached his food bowl or toy) that should have been addressed before he got to the point he's at today. Regardless, yesterday's attack should NEVER have happened, and the blame is entirely on the owner(s). KNOWING that Baxter is a dangerous dog, capable of servely injuring or killing another dog or person, they should have been MUCH more vigilent about how secure his enclosure was/is. NO possibility of his escaping should have existed. Period.

So, I'm pleading with you, everyone who has a dog, to take responsibility for that dog's actions. The dog is only doing what it wants to do, good or bad; they don't have 'consciences' or the ability to reason. YOU are the responsible party for anything your dog does. And I now have pepper spray to take with me every time I take my dogs for a walk, which is a shame...I LOVE animals (I'm a veterinarian & have devoted my life to caring for them), but I will NOT hesitate to protect my dogs from another dog's attack, count on it.

Veterinarian Paula Loniak is the owner of Vet-to-Pet mobile veterinarian service who makes house calls in the Athens area. She can be reached at 706-870-7111