DOGS THAT KILL SHOULD BE PUT DOWN                

Years ago, two pit bulls belonging to a tenant in an apartment building in Toronto, Canada, let her unleased dogs out of her apartment. A woman living on the same floor exited her apartment and was subsequently mauled to death by the two dogs. I was so upset when I learned of this, I wrote the premier of Ontario and suggested that all pit bulls should be removed from the City of Toronto. Within months, legislation was created ordering all owners of pit bulls to remove their pit bull dogs out of Toronto. Some were put down and others were given to other people in other cities or towns.                                

Chinese dog owners had to make the decision as to whether to get rid of their pets or not. If they didn’t, the government could come and kill them. Officials in the Dayang New District of eastern China said dogs, even if they are registered and vaccinated, will be killed on the spot if seen.  China’s relationship with dogs and their owners has been a contentious one for years. During the first few decades of the People’s Republic of China, established in 1949, dog ownership was essentially outlawed.  Restrictions on dog ownership in China have increased in recent years, but the practice has grown in the country despite these limitations. China does not have any laws relating to animal cruelty, and many in China still believe dogs are a public threat.

Now I will tell you about really dangerous dogs who killed other dogs and people.

In January 2017, a large pit bull killed a small dog in front of its owner in Los Angeles. The woman was still holding her pet's leash as she pleaded with the vicious dog not to kill her dog. The owner of the pit bull was a homeless man living in a tent and had had two dogs roaming the area without being leashed.

In November 2017, in Eccles, in the UK, a dog owner whose two bloodthirsty pet dogs mauled a beloved couple's Beagle to death said that his dogs were usually gentle with his three-year old daughter.  That doesn’t mean that his dogs won’t attack other animals.

In August, 2016, Archie Darby, just four months old, was mauled to death by a dog. His 22-month-old brother Daniel was fighting for his life. The family’s, three-year-old Dexter was killed in a savage attack by an American Pitbull. A neighbour reported hearing “agonizing screams” through the wall.                                  

In  2017 in Staten Island in the State of New York, it was only ten seconds  of terror for a New Springville resident one Sunday morning as the 71-year-old watched helplessly while his beloved dog was mauled by a pit bull.

Arnold Roth said, "I was walking my dog, not far from my home” as he recounted the incident involving his 6-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Kasey. Roth said he was near the corner of Merrymount and Shiloh streets around 9:30 a.m. when "I heard a dog barking and I saw a young lady who looked like a teenager with two dogs; one was a pit bull."

Roth said the young woman was across the street from him when one of her dogs broke free and darted toward him. "Before I knew it, the pit bull was all over my dog," he said.

The woman -who was still holding onto her other dog's leash  walked across the street and grabbed the pit bull by its leash, but the damage had been done.

"The whole thing lasted 10 seconds," he said, but Kasey was seriously injured.

"At first, I didn't see anything," Roth said of the injuries. When he returned home, he noticed that Kasey "was very sensitive in a couple areas when I was calming him," he said. He and the dog were lucky that the dog wasn’t killed.

In May, 2005, A rampaging Rottweiler fatally mauled two tiny, trembling pooches in Central Park as their terrified owner watched helplessly.

The grim episode unfolded late Thursday, as Melanie Coronetz, an Upper East Side author, walked her purebreds, Argo, 10, and his half-sister Monkey, 11, and a third mixed-breed dog just inside the park near 101st Street.

As the dogs did their business, Coronetz said the hulking Rottweiler bounded out of the bushes and sank its teeth into them.

“All of a sudden, this dog loomed and came out of nowhere,” she told The Post yesterday, just hours after her beloved babies were declared dead. “He didn’t sniff around, he just attacked. I think this was a trained fighting dog.”

Coronetz said she tried to defend her prized 10-pound schipperkes (a breed of Belgian shepherd dog) from the 135-pound Rottweiler by beating him with the handle of her retractable leash, but it did nothing to stop him.

“I was hitting him on the head, on the stomach, on the nose, and none of it seemed to bother him,” she said. “I was screaming and calling for someone to call 911, but by the time the police came, it was too late for my little doggies.”

Coronetz and her husband, Bruce Miller, rushed Argo – a finalist at the Westminster Dog Show in 1998 – and Monkey in a cab to the Animal Medical Center on East 62nd Street.

“I rushed with Monkey in a taxi to the Animal Medical Center, but I could feel the life go out of her,” she said. “My husband, Bruce, took Argo to the hospital in another cab, but he died, too.”

The couple’s third dog survived unscathed. After the slaying, the Rottweiler darted off, but was quickly nabbed by cops who later brought it to the Animal Care and Control shelter at East 110th Street.

There, officials said they knew who owned the dog because it has a microchip identifying it.

Coronetz said shelter workers indicated to her that the dog had a checkered past.

“Apparently this isn’t the first time for the dog. They said he had been through the system before,” she said. “I think this dog is dangerous and she should never, ever leave that place alive. My heart is broken.”

The mauling happened after 9 p.m., at a time when the Parks Department has said it turns a blind eye to dog owners who take their pooches off the leash, because there are few visitors in the park.

I will tell you an interesting story about the time when I got bitten by a dog. In that particular year, I was a process server delivering court documents all o0ver Southern Ontario, (Canada’s most populated province) to people who had been sued in court.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who have dogs that bite people or other dogs. If I can do anything to stop this from happening I will do it. I will make sure that it will be at the expense of the dog owners who owned such dogs.

Many years ago I was serving a court document to a woman in a community just north of Toronto.  I entered the porch of a house where I was to serve the document.

Suddenly, a mid-sized black dog (which I didn’t see) bit me on my left knee leaving a small bloody gash. A fat black woman answered the door and the first thing I said to her was; “Your dog just bit me!”

She immediately replied, “Good. You shouldn’t be on my porch anyway.” Oh Oh. That was one thing this stupid woman should never have said to me.

After serving her with the court document, as soon as I got into my car, I phoned the police and told them what her unleashed wild dog had done to me. Fifteen minutes later, a police patrol car arrived on the scene.

        

The officer invited me into the car. I told him that I am a peace officer serving court documents and that the woman’s dog bit me. I told him what she said to me and I showed him the dog’s bite mark on my left knee.

What I didn’t know until then was that police departments have the phone numbers of every home in their jurisdiction unless the phones are unlisted. He called his station and a minute later, he got the phone number of the woman and called her.

Not only did she not answer the phone, she turned out her lights. That told the officer that she was still at home. He then pulled out a bull horn and spoke the following words very loudly so that her neighbours would also here him. “MISSUS JONES (not her actual name) THIS IS THE POLICE. IF YOU DON’T OPEN YOUR DOOR TO ME, I WILL SMASH IT OPEN!”  How embarrassing that must have been for her knowing that her neighbours probably heard the officer’s command.

She opened the door and waited for the officer to approach her on the porch. He told her that she was being charged with owning a wild dog that was not leashed while in the presence of the general public. 

That was number one of my revenge.

A trial date was set for her trial and I was subpoenaed to attend the trial as a witness.

Before the trial date arrived, I drove to the woman’s home again to photograph the dog. She had it leashed to the house and as luck would have it, the dog lunged at me. I got a picture of the dog in the air heading toward me with its teeth bared.  It looked really scary. Of course, I was out of reach of the dog so the dog’s jump was pointless to it but it was a Godsend to me.

When the Justice of the Peace saw the picture, he flinched and asked me; “Is this the dog that bit you?”  I relied that it was.  The JP then  looked at the woman and asked angrily after showing her the picture I took of her dog, “IS THIS YOUR DOG?” 

She whimpered, “Yes it is Your Worship but I don’t have the dog anymore.” The JP then asked where it was. She replied, “I gave it to the vet.”

The JP ordered the police officer to phone the vet and find out if what the woman told the court was true. He came back five minutes later and said to the JP. “The vet told me that Ms. Jones is going back to the Vet after this hearing to take her dog back home.”

I can’t even begin to describe to you the expression I saw on the JP’s face.  He said angrily, “Madam. I am adjourning this trial to the following date.”  He asked me if that date was satisfactory to me and I smiled and replied, “The date is no problem to me whatsoever, Your Worship.”

The woman didn’t have a car so she had to take a bus to get to and from the court. This meant that she would also have to make another trip by bus to the court and back home again.

That was number two of my revenge. Hang in there—the best part is yet to come.

At the second and final hearing, the judge asked her where her dog was. She told him it was back with the vet and that her dog is dead. The JP then asked the officer to verify her story.

He came back and said the following to the judge, “The vet told me that Ms. Jones told him to euthanize her dog and he did that.” 

That was number three and the last one of my revenge against this woman. Quite frankly, it was unexpected. However the dog was a vicious dog.

The judge then said to Ms. Jones, “Madam.  I am going to dismiss the charge against you but if for some reason or other, your dog miraculously comes back to life again, I will have you back here in my court to face another charge and my anger again.”

When the woman and I were walking out of the courtroom, she said to me in an angry voice, “I’m going to have my lawyer sue you for what you have done to me.”

I laughed in her face and said with a big grin on my face, “Tell your lawyer that I eat lawyers for breakfast.” Needless to say, that was last I heard from this woman.  Her lawyer (if she really had one) never called me.

By 2016, there have been 18 deaths from dog attacks in the previous four years alone and many of the victims were children. The traditional hand-wringing, furrowed-browed, empty rhetoric about dangerous dogs has failed to prevent these atrocities. At what point will the headlines and soundbites become tangible steps to protect our children from further attacks?

        

Time and again, dog owners would reassure us that their pet are harmless and I would respond by apologetically explaining the source of my anxiety. Most dog owners were sympathetic and put their dogs on a lead when they saw me coming, but it’s the irresponsible owners who are the blight of common public places. 

Like the one who was nowhere to be seen when their large Labrador came bounding towards us, jumped at my two-year-old and knocked him flat on his back. When the owner finally caught up, her response to my bawling toddler was, “There’s no need to cry, he wouldn’t hurt you”. She failed to grasp that her dog had hurt him. “How would you feel”, I replied, “if a giant bear pounced on you, knocking you to the ground?” 

For irresponsible dog owners, allowing animals to terrorise and intimidate others using shared public spaces is fine as long as no blood is actually drawn. 

It’s hard to have a rational conversation with dog owners who are hostile to idea that small children should be allowed “off a leash” but their animals are not. But if parents let their toddlers wander around sniffing peoples’ groins and defecating on beaches and parks, pretending not to notice, we’d be reported to social services.

Most dogs don’t attack. Some do. Almost everyone I know can recount an incidence of low level aggression involving a dog, be it the biting of another dog in the park or turning on an excitable child. Only the most serious cases are reported in the media.

Having grappled with it throughout my child’s early years, I realise that my anxiety around dogs and small children isn’t only a manifestation of an early trauma. It was also informed by my maternal instinct to protect my child from danger in the face of the complacency of others. 

How many more babies must die before we review the Dangerous Dog Act and expect pet owners to behave in a respectful and responsible way? Probably a great many more years.