Friday, February 6, 2009

Pit bull shooting

After a Claremont Police Officer shot and killed a pit bull last week, I got to thinking if pit bulls really are more dangerous than other canine breeds or if they just have a "bad rap", as the pet owner argued.

Deanne Anderson, the dog's owner, told me, "If she was a Golden Retriever, they wouldn't have shot her."

She may very well be right. But police and witnesses did say that the dog charged at the officer. This was following attacks on 2 other dogs and their owners in Memorial Park.

In the dog's defense, nobody or their dogs were injured by the "attacks," for lack of a better word. Not a scratch or a puncture wound.

It sounded to me like Anderson's dogs were out for a joy stroll in the park, rather than on the prowl for victims, saliva dripping from their exposed teeth. Being adolescent dogs (a 3-year-old and a 2-years-old), the 2 were showing the smaller dogs in the park who's boss, as some dogs tend to do.

I don't want to downplay the severity of the incident, or the fear that the victims legitimately experienced. Two big pit bulls on the loose can certainly be intimidating, especially when they are trying to bite your dog. "They seemed ferocious," one witness said.

But back to the question, are pit bulls more dangerous than other breeds?

According to this New Yorker article, pit bulls have historically been bred for dogfighting and therefore have higher levels of aggression and a lower tolerance for pain.

"Most dogs fight as a last resort, when staring and growling fail. A pit bull is willing to fight with little or no provocation," the article states.

But the article goes, "When we say that pit bulls are dangerous, we are making a generalization, just as insurance companies use generalizations when they charge young men more for car insurance than the rest of us (even though many young men are perfectly good drivers)..."

The article concludes that, "The strongest connection [for bad dog behavior] of all, though, is between the trait of dog viciousness and certain kinds of dog owners. In about a quarter of fatal dog-bite cases, the dog owners were previously involved in illegal fighting. The dogs that bite people are, in many cases, socially isolated because their owners are socially isolated, and they are vicious because they have owners who want a vicious dog."

"The junk-yard German shepherd—which looks as if it would rip your throat out—and the German-shepherd guide dog are the same breed. But they are not the same dog, because they have owners with different intentions."

The article also discusses government reactions to pit bull attacks and how profiling pit bulls can relate to profiling terrorists.

Back to Claremont and the Memorial Park incident. Anderson is clearly a loving dog owner who was crushed to learn her pet was killed in such a violent way.

I am certain she did not raise her dogs to be nasty, and both she and her neighbor told me the female Harley was the good natured one of her 2 dogs.

Is there any way this could have been avoided? The police officer had a taser gun on his belt along with the pistol. Why not just taser the dog? Or if need be, shoot the dog once, rather than 4 times. I would think a single pistol shot would immobilize the dog without ending her life.

I don't want to be too critical of the officer, who was forced to make a split second decision with his own safety at risk. But as an animal lover myself, I wish there was some way the killing could have been avoided, while making sure the dogs did no further harm to others.

Any thoughts?

6 comments:

  1. The owner of the dog questioned if there were anything else that could have been done. Yes, there was, she could have properly secured her pets.

    The officer acted not only for the safety of himself, but the safety of others as-well. Dogs bite, regardless of their breed. I'll bet the officer would have shot Lassie had she just finished attacking two dogs and began charging at him.

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  2. " I would think a single pistol shot would immobilize the dog without ending her life.
    "

    Are you serious? Where, precisely, was the shot supposed to strike a dog that was allegedly charging the officer? Think about it for a second. Any single shot to the torso from an officers fire arm would have been lethal almost wihout exception.

    Unless, of course, you were expecting the officer to channel Jesse James and merely "wing" an attacking dog...???

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  3. Thanks for your comments. One note in response, the 80-pound pit bull survived 4 gunshot wounds for about 9 hours before it died later that evening at a Vet Hospital. The dog owner said it was shot in the neck, torso, shoulder and side. So I think it's very possible that it could have survived one single shot, if no vital organs were hit.

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  4. Rrrright...

    In one breath you boldly proclaim that certainly 1 shot would certainly disable the animal without ending its life.... but then you wax poetic on how this animal was able to survive for 9 hours after taking 4 shots. Tell me, do you know what happened to the animal after the first shot? Was it a grazing shot? What about after the 2nd? After the 3rd? How many of the shots were "significant" injuries? I'm guessing 1.

    Do you have ANY idea what you are talking about or would you just prefer to speculate?

    So... let's recap:

    - The owner was incapable of raising vicious dogs even though said dogs allegedly attacked several animals and people.

    - The police office should have been able to place a shot at a charging animal in such a manner so as to temporarily disable the animal... but not cause enough of an injury so as to cause its death.

    Your standards for the owner are remarkably low and unfairly high for the officer.

    If you have something on the officer, why don't you come out and say it rather than speculate ad nauseum?

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  5. My final comments on the topic:

    First, I never said "certainly". I said it's "possible". The dog survived for several hours with 4 gunshot wounds. That's a fact, not speculation, unlike you "guessing" about significant injuries.

    Second, I have nothing against the officer, or any police officer in Claremont. I often work with CPD staff and have always found them to be open and helpful.

    Third, I agree that the owner bears responsibility for all of this. Especially with pit bulls having such a bad rap, the owner should have taken proper precautions to secure any open windows or broken fences to prevent the dogs from getting out.

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  6. Today, I witnessed a pitbull walk up to my daughter's dog in my daughter's driveway. Pitbull grabs daughter's dog by the neck, drags it one whole houselngth away, thrashes my daughter's dog back and forth; all being witnessed by my daughter, son-in-law, three grandsons, myself and the dog's owners. What heppened then, you might ask. Pitbull gets shot dead and my daughter's dog survives the jugular bite and has surgery to the tune of $700.

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