Pit bull attack gets a reaction

This is Madison Park, a great walking neighborhood. A place, in fact, where residents and visitors expect to be able to stroll on a lovely summer’s day without fear or concern. So when an incident occurs that shows us our tranquil little community is not always as safe and comfortable as we’ve complacently believed, it’s a bit shocking. And it’s definitely a story.

The recent report of multiple attacks by a neighborhood pit bull on unsuspecting passersby presents us with a jarring case in point. While the attacks themselves are certainly alarming, their possible cause and what’s happened (and what hasn’t happened) in their aftermath are proving to be additional sources of concern for victims, neighbors, and dog lovers alike.

The registered owner of Honey, the Pit Bull in question, has not provided us with any insights into his own thinking. Though his wife requested that we delay posting our story for 24 hours so she could provide us with a written statement, she did not do so. The owner’s son, however, has responded; and what he’s had to say about the case, as quoted in our original story and in comments he later posted to the blog, is controversial at best.

First, the issue of responsibility. The son, who was the caretaker for the dog while his parents were away on vacation, admits that both Honey and a companion dog were left on their own at the Washington Park house for at least a week, with only daily visits by him to check on their condition. He told us that Honey had been well secured but had dug a “seven feet by four feet” hole in order to escape from the fenced back yard.

One of Honey’s victims (we’ll call her Jane) has a problem with the owner’s assumption that a Pit Bull left on its own for an extended period would not pose a potential threat. “Dogs get out,” she told me, “and a Pit Bull is a risky type of animal.” Jane noted that Pit Bulls have been bred to fight. “It’s in their DNA to attack,” and an attack is a particular risk when the animal is frightened, she said. Given the dog’s history, “she was probably always scared in situations where she was uncontrolled. She seemed frightened, and she attacked.”

In spite of having been injured, Jane is somewhat sympathetic to the dog’s owner, who she believes certainly didn’t want this outcome. But she’s particularly sympathetic to the dog: “Her situation was created by a human who abused her in the first place and then by an owner who allowed her to get out and become frightened,” she said. “The dog is a victim here too.” She believes that Pit Bull owners have a responsibility to protect the public and says the City should impose special requirements for people who want to keep Pit Bulls.

The most seriously injured victim of the attacks, whom we are calling Carol, totally agrees with that last point. She thinks Honey’s owner acted irresponsibility and that the City compounded the problem by what happened after the attacks. "They should never have let that dog out," she told me. As we reported, the City returned Honey to the owner’s son ten days after having impounded her. According Seattle Animal Shelter supervisor Ann Graves, the City had to do so because there is no law allowing for a dog to be held while the Shelter’s “dangerous animal” assessment is underway. A ten-day quarantine period is required under the law in order to check for rabies, but that’s it.

In this case, the “dangerous animal” investigation was only completed last week, the recommendation that Honey be declared dangerous is still under review by the director of the Animal Shelter, and due process for the dog’s owner may take several more weeks to play out, according to Graves. In the meantime, Honey is somewhere in West Seattle and under no special restrictions resulting from the attacks. Carol’s response to all this: “I think the City screwed up. If that’s the law, the law needs to be changed.” She said she’s talked to people living near Honey’s house and they told her that the dog was loose on other occasions. Neighbors confirmed this when we asked, but noted it was unusual for Honey to be out unsupervised. What was usual, they said, was for Honey to be off leash whenever she was out with her family. One neighbor told us that “it was terrorizing” when it happened, so she and her kids avoided being in proximity to the dog.

The owner’s son, who says he now has the dog in his care fulltime, questioned why this is a story for the Madison Park Blogger, given that the dog is currently living with him in West Seattle and is no longer a danger to anyone in our neighborhood. From Carol’s perspective, that question totally misses the point. The issue now is whether people in West Seattle are safe, she says.

Ultimately, the City’s process will result in a decision in Honey’s case, likely one that will force her owner to either euthanize the dog or place her in a secure facility. “Owning a dangerous animal in the City is against the law,” says the Animal Shelter’s Graves, so once such a determination is made—assuming it is upheld if appealed—the dog can’t remain inside Seattle’s boundaries. Criminal charges are also a possibility, she noted.

In the meantime, we understand that some of the victims have approached the City to discuss changing current law. It’s possible, we’re told, that at least one member of the City Council may get involved in this case. Since the Pit Bull story broke, we’ve noticed a fair number of hits to our website coming from the “Seattle.gov” server, so someone in the City is apparently paying attention. “These attacks do raise a question for the community,” said Jane, Honey’s second victim. “This was a more frightening experience than I ever would have expected it to be,” she told us. “I feared for my life, and it affected me for days.”

[Editorial aside: We promised we would be discussing both “breedism” and Pit Bull attack statistics in this posting. However, the son’s owner, in the “Comments” section of our last posting, seems to have retracted his earlier statement that the “fuss” over the attacks was because of the dog being a Pit Bull and not because of the severity of the attacks. So we’ll leave a discussion of “breedism” aside.

With regard to attack statistics, it appears that DogsBite.org has the most authoritative information available on the internet, although its information is based on media reports. The site states that in 2009 there were 32 fatal dog attacks in the U.S., with 44% of these being by Pit Bulls. The site notes that over 500 cities and other jurisdictions in the country ban Pit Bulls. “Unlike other dog breeds, Pit Bulls frequently fail to communicate intention prior to an attack. They possess a lethal bite style (hold and shake) and a ruinous manner of attack.” For the first six months of 2009, apparently the most recent statistics available, there were 318 Pit Bull attacks reported in the media, involving 388 victims. Of these, 64% suffered severe injuries, 4% having one or more body parts severed, and 2% being killed outright. Children under the age of 5 suffered 84% of the most severe injuries.

This is a quote from Farber Law Group, a local firm specializing in personal-injury work: “The data also show that 68% of the Pit Bulls that attacked were not on their owner’s property [and that] Pit Bulls escape their owner's property and bite people at a higher rate than other dog breeds.”]

Photos of the friendly and not-so-friendly Pit Bulls, above, are culled from the internet. The friendly-dog photo is courtesty of Missouri Pit Bull Rescue.