Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 08:20:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kit Donner
Subject: Unmanageable and dangerous dogs
Dan –
Good luck with both getting your life back together, and with hopefully doing something responsible about your unmanageable dogs.
You may not want to hear my suggestions, if so stop reading now.
I recommend that you call Chatham County Animal Control and ask them to pick up the dogs as surrenders (not strays) and give the Animal Control Officer a candid history of the problems.
I love dogs, and I wish they all got the chance that they deserve. But dogs that bite people and kill animals are too much of a risk. For anybody. The next logical step from a dog’s point of view is killing a baby or a small child. Or almost killing a child. Or a frail or otherwise helpless adult even. Especially when there is more than one dog. The child runs and squeals and isn’t nearly as hard to catch as a squirrel. Dogs that kill are more dangerous to humans than wolves. You admit that you are not successful at restraining the dogs but even if you (or someone else) were able to guarantee that the dogs never left your (or their) property that would not guarantee that there would never be a child or frail adult that was at risk.
You could also accomplish the same thing by taking the dogs to a veterinarian and giving him / her the same information. But that would require you to transport the dogs and possibly handle the dogs in a possibly crowded waiting room.
You might even find a veterinarian that would make a house call under the circumstances, but I think Animal Control would be a better choice. Animal Control has the right training and equipment and experience using it.
I would offer to pick up the dogs and spare you the trauma of knowing what is going to happen to them, except that I can’t take the risk of having them kill a child while they were in my custody however temporarily.
I will probably get a lot of negative responses to this posting, but I would rather deal with people angry at me because I was willing to speak up, than read about a dead or mutilated child because I was afraid to speak up.
Please understand that it saddens me greatly that the situation was allowed to get to this point, but no one can turn back the clock and do now what should have been done the first time a human was bitten or an animal was killed. So there aren’t any better choices left anymore.
If any reader ever has a dog that bites a person or kills a cat, another dog, poultry, livestock, or any similar animal, get the best professional help you can right away! Don’t make excuses. Don’t try to fix the problem by trial and error. Don’t wait until it is too late. If you are unable or unwilling to make sure that the dog learns thoroughly and immediately that biting humans or killing domestic animals is always totally unacceptable, then you need to take the only other solution and call Animal Control or your veterinarian (or do the job yourself if you can do it safely and humanely).
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