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Who's Really Dangerous?

Unless you work in animal control, animal rescue, or your dog has gotten into trouble with the law, you might not know about dangerous/vicious dog legislation. In fact, many animal control and animal rescue workers know little or nothing about it, which I suppose is a good thing, since it points to the fact that dangerous dog cases don't come up all that often, even for people who deal with dogs for a living. I had my introduction to this type of legislation in 2008 when I became involved in a case in Michigan where Rogue, a Siberian husky, was accused of killing a neighbor's Shih-Tzu.

When law enforcement responded to the neighbor's report, they found Rogue tethered in his yard; the Shih-Tzu had also been tethered. No one saw Rogue kill the dog, and no one saw him off his tether, which would have been necessary for him to reach the smaller dog. One witness claimed to have seen Rogue carrying the deceased animal in his mouth, and its body was found in his yard. The neighborhood in rural Cass County had plenty of stray dogs and coyotes that might have killed the Shih-Tzu, or at least participated in the killing, but Rogue was accused, and as it turns out, in dangerous dog cases, that's usually all that matters. A judge declared him dangerous shortly thereafter.

Had this been a human homicide case, there would not have been enough evidence to convict Rogue of his 'crime' unless the fatal bite marks on the little dog's body matched the configuration of Rogue's teeth, but no such examination was conducted - not surprising, given what such a thing would cost and the fact that Rogue was, after all, 'just a dog'. He was sentenced to death, and then began the long, legal battle to save his life. For nine months he sat in the Cass County shelter, where he became underweight and contracted heartworm disease - an easily prevented condition, but why spend the money on prevention when he's just going to be killed anyway? Various rescue groups became involved, due largely to two factors: one, Rogue was a purebred dog, and people care more about purebred dogs than mutts, and two, he belonged to a boy with Asperger syndrome, a mild form of autism, and when his dog was confiscated by Animal Control, he had attempted suicide, coming after one of the boy's brothers had already passed away. The rush was on to save not only a dog's life, but possibly a boy's as well. The boy's single mother went to court again and again, attempting to comply with the requirements of Cass County's dangerous dog ordinance, but she found she was unable to do so. She turned to area rescue groups for help.

When it became clear that none of the husky rescues in the Midwest were going to be able to get Rogue out of the shelter, rescuers began searching for help out of the area, and eventually they found me, all the way in Washington, some 2,300 miles away. I quickly familiarized myself with Cass County's legal requirements for the possession of a dangerous dog: a liability insurance policy, signs posted on the property to warn neighbors, a fully secure pen or an indoor area where the dog would be kept, a special license, and the stipulation that the dog could never be outside of its secure enclosure without a leash and a muzzle. When I looked at my own city's requirements, I found that they were essentially the same, with the exception that the amount of the liability insurance policy was different. I found it a little odd that the laws of two jurisdictions separated by thousands of miles would be so similar on such an obscure topic, but I didn't think about it too much, because I had a dog to save.

I began by calling Cass County's head of Animal Control, and I called him over and over again until he spoke with me. He passed me off to the County Prosecutor, who handed me off to an Assistant Prosecutor, who I then called every day and asked when I could take the dog. In the meantime I got myself into compliance with the dangerous dog regulations - I purchased a $500,000 liability insurance policy that exceeded either jurisdiction's requirements, I designed, purchased, and posted signs around my property (feel free to download my design if you need one), and I called my City Attorney and Police Chief to request a dangerous dog license.

It was days before I could get the Chief on the phone, and when I did, he informed me that he was totally unfamiliar with the dangerous dog law and would have to review it. He was also concerned that if he gave me the license, he and the city might be liable if the dog ever had another incident, as they would have knowingly allowed me to harbor a 'vicious animal' inside city limits. He also expressed that if the permit was in the public record he might have to deal with complaints from concerned citizens. I gently explained that if I was in compliance with the law, he had no choice but to give me the permit, and also that time was of the essence - a new date had been set for Rogue's execution. That didn't seem to do much to speed things up, but I did manage to get him to schedule a site visit. When he arrived, one of the first things he pointed out was that I didn't have a secure pen - an enclosure with a concrete or brick floor and a fully enclosed top. I explained that the law allowed the dog to be kept indoors or in a secure pen, but he wasn't interested. He said I had to have the pen, period. Apparently what the law actually said was less important than what the Chief thought he remembered reading, so I dropped about $1,000 into building a new enclosure that I didn't need and wouldn't be using. I asked the Chief to come back and inspect the pen, but he had vacation plans and wasn't going to have time to come out before Rogue's execution date. And of course I still didn't have a guarantee from Cass County that I would even be able to take the dog from their shelter, secure pen or no secure pen.

The pen - that damned pen. The law requires that a dangerous dog be kept indoors or in a secure pen, which has a concrete or brick floor to prevent digging, and an enclosed top to prevent the dog from climbing or jumping out. The law says very little, however, on what materials should be used to construct the pen, so an enclosure that complies with the law could be far from escape-proof. Chain link, for example, while the standard material used in fences containing animals, might as well be paper if you're housing larger dogs with powerful jaws. In contrast, a veritable fortress that no dog could ever escape from might fail to meet the legal requirement. I could construct a circular wall one hundred feet high, sinking another hundred feet into the ground, made with concrete and steel one hundred feet thick, with no windows or doors, accessible only by helicopter or crane, and it would not qualify as a secure enclosure under any dangerous dog law I have ever read. Likewise an enclosure suitable for containing a Siberian tiger - an animal that we all know is dangerous - might not be legal to contain a Chihuahua if the animal had been declared dangerous for biting someone, and in fact, in my city it would be easier in terms of the law for me to keep a tiger than a dangerous dog. And none of that mattered, because I wasn't trying to save a Siberian tiger, I was trying to save a Siberian husky so that an autistic child wouldn't kill himself.

So I called the Chief again and again, leaving one message after another, eventually suggesting that he re-read the law and skip the inspection, since it wasn't actually required that I even have an outdoor pen. I begged him to call the Assistant Prosecutor in Cass County and tell him I was in compliance. I still don't know if he ever did or not. But I called. I called that guy two or three times a day. I wouldn't leave him alone. As the clock ticked down, I was finally told that the decision of whether or not I could save Rogue would be up to a judge. Unfortunately, the judge was on vacation. Suddenly I was struck with the image of a fat judge and our police chief relaxing side by side on a beach somewhere while a terrified dog was being killed in the back room of some shithole animal shelter.

There was, however, some good news; a substitute judge was available while the regular judge was out of town, and he would review the case on Friday. Rogue was scheduled to die Wednesday morning, which left a very narrow window for taking any kind of legal action following the judge's decision. All I could do was wait, and hope for the best.

I called the Assistant Prosecutor several times on Friday to find out what the judge had decided, but was unable to reach him on the phone. When I finally heard from him Monday night, the conversation went something like this:

• "Mr. Markwell, the judge rendered his decision and decided that you can take the dog, but you have to take physical possession of him in person, and you have to do it before Wednesday morning or he'll be euthanized. Unfortunately I don't think that leaves you enough time to drive here from Washington."
• "I'm staying in a hotel down the street from you. I'll be at the shelter in the morning to pick up my dog."

Knowing that shelter staff sometimes 'make mistakes' and might 'accidentally kill a dog that doesn't belong to them even after a judge told them not to' I called the shelter and left messages instructing them not to do anything with Rogue until I arrived. I spoke to the head of Animal Control the next morning and arranged a pickup time. At 10 AM I met my new dog, an all-white Siberian husky, for the first time; I never met any of the people I'd had to deal with to secure his release. I leashed and muzzled Rogue, put him in my truck, and we got the hell out of Cass County.

Once out of Cass' jurisdiction, the dangerous dog laws weren't enforceable, so Rogue had his first walk in nine months, on a long leash, with no muzzle. He didn't bite anyone. He didn't kill any other dogs. We hit the road and went to Ohio to meet the director of the husky rescue that had contacted me for help. Rogue didn't bite her, either. Next we went to Wisconsin to meet some supporters of the Sanctuary, one of whom was blind. Rogue didn't bite her, or her husband, and didn't kill either of their dogs. And on our drive back across the country, through ten states and several national and state parks, Rogue never bit anyone, and never killed anyone's dog, or cat, or chicken, or did anything that would lead anyone to believe that he was anything other than a perfectly normal, ten-year-old dog.

Back in Forks, I called the Chief a few times about the dangerous dog license, but he never got back to me. I took another look at the law, and it turned out that while Cass County had required my city's permission for me to take possession of Rogue, my city actually had no authority to say yes or no, and in fact, could not even legally declare Rogue dangerous, because in Forks, only dogs declared dangerous by the Forks Police Department or under the Revised Code of Washington can be declared, and Rogue was declared in another state.

I was required to provide Cass County with proof that Rogue had been neutered, but since he had tested positive for heartworms, he couldn't undergo surgery. I called them and let them know, and three months later, when he was free of the parasites, I had the operation done. I didn't bother to send proof back to Michigan. If they want to come to Washington and check for testicles, they're welcome to.

A few months passed and I bumped into the Chief somewhere or another, and he asked if I'd been able to get that dog from Michigan. I told him I had, he said he was glad it had worked out, and no further discussion ever took place with regard to his license. Shortly after that I dismantled the secure enclosure, of which Rogue had never seen the inside. Eventually we got a new police chief, and later, an even newer one, and Rogue is off the hook for now, unless we move out of Forks into unincorporated Clallam County, where he can be declared dangerous again, simply because he was declared once before, years earlier, by someone else, thousands of miles away, for something he may not have even done.

All told, Rogue's rescue cost around $5,000, and that was after our insurance brokers all waived their commissions. (Give them your business; they now have all of our policies.) And thus went my entrée into the incredibly stupid and frustrating world of 'dangerous dogs'.

It turns out that the similarities between Cass County and the City of Forks' dangerous dog laws were not a coincidence - these laws get copied and pasted from one jurisdiction to another all over the country, to the extent that they vary from one another only slightly from one code to the next. According to the vast majority of these laws, a dangerous dog is defined as a dog that bites a person without provocation, or that kills a domestic animal while not on the dog-owner's property. The law further defines a dog as 'potentially dangerous' if it injures a domestic animal while off the dog-owner's property, or chases or attempts to bite a person without provocation. If a dog is declared potentially dangerous and is then involved in a second incident, it is declared dangerous. If a dangerous dog is involved in a second incident, or ever found to be outside of the home or its secure enclosure without a leash and muzzle, it is impounded and put to death.

The way that different jurisdictions deal with dogs after they've been declared is a little more variable. Some simply ban the dog, as was the case with Snaps in King County, while others prescribe requirements for keeping the animal - the insurance, secure enclosure, signs, license fee, and leash and muzzle. The problem is that in most cases, the law only gives the appearance of providing a legal remedy to the situation, because most individuals can't get the liability insurance, not only because it's too expensive, but simply because they're individuals as opposed to corporations. When I got the insurance policy to cover Rogue, I purchased it for Olympic Animal Sanctuary, not for myself, and the policy covers the organization's entire operation, not just Rogue. But most of the dangerous dog policies out there, apart from being total crap in the first place, cover the individual dog; it's typically not as simple as adding a feature to your home owner's policy, and in fact, your home owner's insurance will likely drop you if you do bring home a dangerous dog. And all of this might not seem so bad to a lot of people if the dogs that were being declared dangerous actually were dangerous, but in the majority of cases they aren't. When it comes to the dogs I personally live with and care for, not only are dogs that have been declared dangerous no more dangerous than the average dog, they tend to be the least dangerous dogs I work with, which begs the question, what do dangerous dog laws even accomplish?

Doc is a border collie mix who, according to his family, never bit anyone. It was one of their other dogs who bit a jogger several months ago, and that's what they told Animal Control, but the jogger swore it was Doc. Since the bite was only a nip and did no damage, Doc was declared potentially dangerous. When his home was burglarized and he escaped, he was declared dangerous. The county rejected the $6,000/year liability insurance policy Doc's family purchased in their attempt to keep him, the insurance company refused to refund the money, and as the family was unable to get into compliance with the county's dangerous dog laws, Doc came to live out his life with me at Olympic Animal Sanctuary after spending six months impounded at the shelter, while the dog who actually bit someone still lives with her family, without a single restriction placed on her.

On its surface, the purpose of dangerous dog legislation seems to be to protect the public from animals that have a known propensity to attack either people or other animals - sounds like a good idea. Presumably these laws are keeping vicious animals off the streets, keeping children and the elderly safer, protecting livestock and family pets. Unfortunately no one has ever managed to quantify any benefit to having the laws, and statistically they've had no effect of any kind. People are still being bitten by dogs, and other animals are still being killed by them, and that's the case for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the laws punish dogs for their behavior instead of punishing the people who allowed them to behave that way.

A few months ago in Sequim, Washington, an elderly woman was walking her small dog when two, seven-month-old pit bulls attacked. In her attempt to save her little dog, the female pit bull bit off the woman's finger. The small dog survived the ordeal, but the finger could not be reattached. The dogs were impounded by Animal Control and declared dangerous. The male dog hadn't bitten anyone, so he should never have been declared, but thanks to the way the dangerous dog law in Sequim is written, if the dog's owner doesn't appeal the declaration within ten days, it becomes permanent and irrevocable.

In the shelter, the dogs were placed in quarantine, where they lived in four-foot by four-foot cages. Their owner never appealed the dangerous dog declarations, but he did ask for an extension of the impound period while he tried to get into compliance in order to get at least one of the dogs back. When he was unable to do so, he agreed to transfer ownership of the dogs to me, but after a few weeks in those tiny cages, the dogs were breaking down psychologically. Before I could get through all of the red tape to get the dogs out of the shelter, the male dog, who had never bitten anyone, bit a shelter employee. The bite wasn't severe, but at the urging of other staff members, he went to the hospital, the doctor reported the bite, and the male dog was killed.

I tried to save him; I pointed out to Sequim's animal control officer and the City Attorney that the dog should never have been declared in the first place, but because the law doesn't allow an appeal after the first ten days and the paperwork was already filled out, there was nothing that could be done. A dog was killed for doing something he never would have done if he hadn't been wrongfully declared dangerous and impounded in the first place.

The female dog, Alana, who actually had seriously injured someone, was free to go as soon as I had a dangerous dog license for her from the City of Forks, but as she was declared dangerous under the Sequim Municipal Code, not the Revised Code of Washington, Forks didn't have the authority to declare her dangerous and issue the license. So we found ourselves in a situation in which Sequim would not release the dog to me unless Forks circumvented the law, and because the Forks Police are a reasonable bunch and we have a good relationship, that's what they did. They didn't break the law - it was more like me going to the police and asking for a speeding ticket because I drove a little too fast in a different city, and the police saying, 'Sure, why not?' They issued a license, took my money, and I saved Alana. Everybody won, except the old woman who lost her finger, the shelter employee who was bitten by a dog that should never have been there, and the dog that was wrongfully put to death, and by the way, the original owner of the dogs has four more of them that frequently escape his yard, and he's free to keep them without any restrictions until they bite someone or attack someone's pet, which they will do any day now.

The Sequim dangerous dog law is the type of law that makes me want to go to law school, because I'm pretty sure the law itself is illegal. Hypothetically, a vindictive neighbor could accuse your dog of biting him, the animal control officer could declare your dog dangerous, and if you didn't appeal the declaration within ten days, you'd have to either get into compliance or allow your dog to be killed (assuming I didn't take the dog). There are a lot of reasons a person wouldn't appeal the declaration: you're out of town when the declaration is made, you don't speak English, you have a warrant for some other offense, you get hit by a truck and spend a few weeks in the hospital. The law doesn't provide any exceptions for you, and because this isn't a criminal charge, it's merely a declaration being made against your property, you don't have the benefit of being presumed innocent until proven guilty. In fact, it's the opposite - your dog did it unless you can prove he didn't.

So what if you do appeal the declaration within ten days? Your dog is still impounded, and if he bites someone at the shelter it won't matter that you won your appeal, because he'll just be declared dangerous for the incident that actually did occur. And if you lose your appeal, he'll be dead. If you want me to take the dog, that's another problem, because according to the Sequim Municipal Code, you aren't allowed to transfer ownership of the dog until you're in compliance with the law yourself - a step we managed to skip with Alana after I told the City Attorney of my plan to add her owner to my insurance policy for one day and post warning signs on his property. And those are all problems that can come up when things are done according to the law, while it turns out that a lot of animal control officers and police don't pay much attention to what the law prescribes when it comes to dog bites.

A college student in eastern Washington contacted us after his dog had slipped past him in his doorway and bitten a repairman. The Sheriff told the kid that his dog was declared dangerous and to keep him in his apartment for ten days. He handed him a print-out of the relevant section of the Revised Code of Washington and left. He never actually saw the dog. He gave the kid no paperwork to sign. At the end of the ten days, the college student called the Sheriff to find out what came next, and was told, "I don't have anything else for you." He was essentially told to comply with the state's dangerous dog law, but no declaration was ever made and the Sheriff made no attempt to actually enforce the law. There was, in fact, no way to even prove that the dog the kid had was the same dog, because no photos were taken and no microchip was implanted as a means of proving identity. We had initially wait-listed the dog and were planning to take him as soon as we were able, but after learning more about the situation we realized the dog was never declared dangerous and the kid was free to keep him, especially since he was graduating and moving to a new city in about a month.

Romeo bit a man who thrust his gloved hand into the dog's face without warning; the law says that when a dog bites unprovoked, the dog is declared dangerous, but certainly this was a provoked bite, right? The man called the police, and instead of impounding the dog for ten days, which the state law requires in order that the dog can be observed for symptoms of rabies, the police chief simply told Romeo's owner to have him put down and bring him documentation from the vet. With no dangerous dog declaration, no written order, and no obligation to do anything at all, she transferred the dog to me instead, and now he can't be declared dangerous because the police didn't follow due process.

A dachshund was playing with a young child in her yard when the autistic girl from next door and her small dog paid a visit. The visiting dog attacked the dachshund, the little autistic girl tried to break up the fight, and the dachshund bit her by accident. The animal control officer responded and told the dachshund's owners that they had to have the dog put down; they told her that I had agreed to take the dog, but she said it wasn't an option and ordered them to have the dog killed. The law required that the dog be impounded for ten days, declared dangerous, and that the owners would then be required to comply with the dangerous dog law, or give the dog to someone who was already in compliance (me). Instead, the officer lied to them and bullied them into killing their dog. She broke the law, skipped the paperwork, and a dog died for what was arguably a provoked bite. The second dog, which should have been declared potentially dangerous for attacking another dog off of its owner's property, experienced no repercussions.

The following paragraph is retracted. Click here to read why. A source of ongoing controversy at a local shelter is a dog in foster care that staff and board members were led to believe was potentially dangerous and not legally adoptable; it turned out that the so-called declaration was merely the words "potentially dangerous" written on the dog's shelter intake card. No actual paperwork was filed, and when asked if the dog was potentially dangerous or not, the animal control officer repeatedly dodged the question, answering simply that the dog should not be adopted.

As it turns out, our county law prohibits any dog that has ever bitten anyone from being adopted, and the law defines a bite as any act in which the dog takes hold of a person or a person's clothing in its mouth. Furthermore, no one needs to be wearing the clothing at the time. Essentially, under county law, no dog can be legally adopted from the shelter, because every dog, at one point in its life, has bitten someone in play or tugged on someone's pant leg or shoelace.

While hysteria and paranoia over being sued drive law enforcement to, as one animal control officer I know likes to say, 'err on the side of caution', with no regard for actual evidence or lack thereof, and equally little regard for what the law actually says, the pendulum swings the other way as well. Expensive dogs and pretty dogs catch all kinds of breaks. An animal control officer in Renton, Washington told me how he pepper sprayed pit bulls in his shelter on a daily basis in order to get them out of their kennels for cleaning; besides committing animal cruelty, he made no effort to secure placement for the dogs in an appropriate facility, opting to kill them after they were released from evidence. But when Alex, a white Siberian husky with beautiful blue eyes, was declared dangerous for killing two dogs and maiming a third, the officer didn't hesitate to contact me and ask me to take him.

Midas, a Norwegian elkhound that was thrown over the back fence one night at the Washougal, WA shelter, bit nearly everyone on the staff and was declared dangerous under the local ordinance, but was given one second chance after another when it came to subsequent bites, while Tina, a homelier mutt, was killed after fewer incidents. In fairness to the shelter, this was not their choice - they tried to save both of the dogs, but the cops had their way.

I work with police and animal control officers all the time; some of them are great, and some of them are awful. I like my local cops; they let me do my job, ask for my help when they need it, and when I need their help, they give it. We treat each other with respect and we have a mutually beneficial relationship that also benefits the community at large. That's the way it's supposed to be. (And I'm not just kissing ass because I have to live with these guys - it really is the truth.) I have similar relationships with most of the law enforcement agencies in the county and with a few others around the country, but too often, instead of working with law enforcement to find mutually agreeable solutions to difficult problems, I have to fight them. In my arsenal I have media pressure, political connections, the tide of public opinion, and in their arsenal, they have, well, an arsenal, and at the end of the day, no matter what the law says and no matter what the people want, the guy with the gun makes the rules. I can't begin to describe the way that makes me feel, nor will I, lest I digress into an anarchist rant. (And no, I'm not an anarchist, in the event that any of my critics would attempt to use that statement against me, assuming they know how to read.)

In the end, you never know how things are going to go. In Ellensburg, Washington, a dog was killed because the authorities chose to make the law up as they went along (read more). In Virginia, a dog was spared being declared dangerous on the condition that I took him in. The director of the SPCA of Tennessee, a Salvadoran immigrant, was threatened by police and harassed by the media when a coonhound jumped the fence at his foster home to attack another dog and accidentally bit someone in the process; she boarded the dog at her vet's office while she searched for a permanent home for him, and was told that if she attempted to move him to any other location inside of Tennessee she'd be thrown in jail. Roscoe lives with me now, and he's permanently banned from Tennessee.

Some time after Jimmy, a Dutch shepherd mix was declared dangerous in San Mateo, CA for killing a cat and a rabbit, his owner, Doug, needed to move to a new city. Animal Control called the authorities in the new town and made sure they knew about Jimmy's trouble with the law; Doug was subsequently prohibited from bringing him along when he moved, and had to place him here.

A dog named Jack is alive today because his owner failed to have him declared dangerous when he moved to Port Angeles from Alaska, where Jack had been declared for attacking someone on command. In Port Angeles he mauled his owner's eleven-year-old son, nearly killing him, but as he wasn't on record as a dangerous dog, it was considered a first offense, so he came to live with us. He's not declared dangerous in Forks, because Port Angeles processed him under their own code instead of the state code. Just the same, given his history, we make sure he doesn't have access to the public, but the law doesn't say we have to.

The laws don't work. Cops don't follow them, people don't understand them or even know about them, they still get bitten, and animals still get killed. The responsible parties walk away, and the dogs get the needle for simply doing what dogs sometimes do. All that's done in response to a dog bite is done merely for the sake of doing something, so as not to be accused of doing nothing, when in many cases, nothing in particular would have been more appropriate than the particular something that was done. The principle work of lawmakers, law enforcement, and animal rescuers has deteriorated from such noble pursuits as the protection of the populace and the preservation of life into avoiding getting sued. With such skewed priorities and such impure motivation behind the formation of dangerous dog laws, it's no wonder they're failing to accomplish their supposed purpose.

Where that failure is perhaps most apparent is in the fact that the overwhelming majority of bites are never reported, and often that's a direct result of dangerous dog laws. The purpose of the laws is to protect the public from dangerous animals, but it's also to keep track of bites in order to stop the spread of infectious diseases, so when people fail to report dog bites for fear of what will happen to the dog, they're also failing to report potential cases of rabies, and they're failing to seek medical attention for wounds that might become infected, and even prove fatal. Even in cases where people are bitten by their own dogs, they are often afraid to see a doctor for fear of what might be reported to Animal Control.

Several years ago a friend of mine was bitten by some of my dogs; it was my fault, and it should never have happened, but I screwed up and my friend ended up with some punctures in his legs. Needing medical attention, but fearing that my dogs would be killed, he made up a ridiculous story about being bitten on a trip to Mexico. It then occurred to him that if he said he was bitten by a stray, he might be subjected to any number of unnecessary and unnecessarily painful procedures due to the potential for rabies, so he told the doctor that the bites were from a friend's dogs, in Mexico, but that the dogs had only recently been moved to Mexico and had been vaccinated in the States less than a year earlier. He'd have told the doctor that his own dog had bitten him, but he was afraid there might be consequences for his parents' elderly Labrador. A similar situation happened with a volunteer at the Sanctuary, who had her pants 'Incredible Hulked' by one of the same dogs that bit my friend. I believe she told the doctor the dogs were Canadian.

How did this situation get to be so utterly stupid, and what is it about dog bites that makes them so special in the eyes of the law that we have to take such a uniquely ineffective approach in our response to them?

With any other circumstance that leads to one person being injured due to the action or inaction of another, the law tends to have the same remedy - the culpable party is charged, tried, convicted, and penalized. Typically, subsequent convictions bring stiffer penalties. Responsible people correct their behavior, while irresponsible people find themselves incarcerated for increasingly lengthy terms. It's not a perfect system, but surely it's a better one than one that allows the guilty to walk in favor of what can at best be described as a symbolic animal sacrifice made in the name of Doing Something.

So here's an idea - when a dog in your physical custody bites someone unprovoked or attacks another animal, if found guilty of causing or allowing the incident to take place, you get fined $500, and the victim is free to sue you. Your next offense will cost you $1,000, and the one after that will cost $5,000. Eventually you'll be doing jail time. Getting rid of your dog and replacing it with a new one won't help, because the offense is charged to you, not the dog. Of course, you always have the option of giving up dogs altogether if you find yourself so incapable of keeping them responsibly that they become a massive liability for you, and if you do take your dog to the shelter, the experts can assess her behavior and decide if she's adoptable or not - no reason for your dog to be labeled a monster for the rest of her life as a result of your negligence. (I know, there are major problems with shelter assessments, but I'll get into that another time.)

Dogs that bite can still be impounded and observed for signs of rabies, and vaccinations can be required before they're returned home. And if they happen to bite a shelter worker during the impound period, that's the shelter's problem, because they're the legal custodians of the dogs.

I know I'm being idealistic, but it doesn't seem that difficult to me. There's recourse when a dog bites someone, and that recourse actually deters people from allowing the situation to repeat itself. Isn't that the whole point? Clearly I've missed something, but it all seems like such knee-jerk, reactionary, hysterical overkill, and considering the facts - that the overwhelming majority of dog bites aren't serious, that we kill millions of dogs a year while they kill about thirty of us, that we're constantly looking for new reasons to kill them off - I keep coming back to the same question: who's really dangerous?

Posted on April 26, 2011