Put bite on dogs' owners

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By ELIJAH GOSIER

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 13, 2001

Two things usually bother me in the aftermath of dog attacks: One, the dogs are often put to death; two, the owners aren't.

That obvious overstatement aside, the owners of dogs that commit crimes get off too easy. The justice system for dog misbehavior, which heaps the bulk of punishment on the dog, is misplaced and misguided.

My good friend Larry seems intent on proving me wrong. Every time he reads about a vicious dog attack, the dog is a bullmastiff by the time he relates it to me.

I am a bullmastiff and American bulldog loyalist, and have been for 20 years or so. I appreciate their power, aesthetics, their loyalty and stability, and it doesn't hurt that a burglar looking through my window would probably decide to try another house. In all those years of owning and -- I'm embarrassed to admit -- a couple of years of showing bullmastiffs, I have heard many bullmastiff stories, but never one that included a bullmastiff mauling someone. I vouch sincerely for their stability.

"I thought you said bullmastiffs aren't vicious," Larry begins. Then he'll tell me about the one that killed the little dog in Seminole, or the one that killed the woman in the hallway of a San Francisco apartment building, or the one that attacked a girl in New Port Richey, or the ones that attacked a member of their family in Homosassa Springs, or ...

Somehow, the Neopolitan mastiff in the Seminole attack, the Presa Canarios in San Francisco, the pitbull terriers in New Port Richey, the Rottweilers in Homosassa Springs and all the others are bullmastiffs when he confronts me with their deeds.

"Bullmastiffs are not vicious," I say again to the disbelieving expression on his face.

No amount of telling him puts a dent in that "Yeah, right" expression.

Maybe that's because Larry, a perceptive man, knows I'm not telling him half the story, and that the part I'm telling him is a bit misleading.

That's a trap dog owners in recent years have been falling into. As more and more municipalities seek to solve the escalating problem of dog attacks by declaring some breeds vicious and outlawing them, dog owners often find themselves trying to defend the temperament of their favorite breeds.

The truth, known by anyone who is familiar with dogs, is that a dog of any breed can be vicious. From the most functionless ball of fur to the burliest worker, each of the breeds strutting the rings at Westminster this week can do harm, given the right circumstances -- or the wrong owner. The difference among the breeds is primarily in the amount of damage they can inflict.

It's also true, experts generally agree, that no dog, except for the occasionally defective one, is inherently vicious.

That notion meets skepticism from T.D. Hawkins of Seminole. He is convinced Neopolitan mastiffs have viciousness bred into them, a conviction that is understandable after what happened in December as his wife walked their 1-year-old Pomeranian, Tassie.

As she passed a neighbor's property, a Neopolitan mastiff jumped a chain link fence and attacked her dog, killing it. The owner was fined $90.

Glen White, who goes into bay area homes to train problem dogs, said each has a different temperament and disposition. "I've had chihuahuas out there trying to bite," said White, president of All-American Dog Training Academy.

White says misguided aggression and viciousness in dogs generally can be traced to their owners. He said it is critical that dogs be trained and socialized when they are young, from three to six months old.

"Never, never train a dog to bite," he said, "unless it's for the military or police work. Instead, train the dog to bark or alert."

White's common-sense guidelines are just the tip of a dog owner's responsibilities. It is easy to forget sometimes that the face-slurping, snoring, playful animal in your home has the potential to hunt and kill its food and establish and defend its territory. Not strong on situational analysis, dogs sometimes misinterpret an entirely innocent act by another animal (humans included) as a threat or encroachment, and they respond without a lot of deliberation.

That is why leash laws are good in urban settings.

That is why irresponsible owners should have to pay more than a fine for the crimes they allow and influence their dogs to commit. A dog, whether we want to see Poochie in that light, is a deadly weapon. Unattended, unsecured or mishandled, it can be as lethal as a loaded weapon similarly misused.

Shouldn't the owner be held to the same or a higher level of responsibility and culpability? Shouldn't the crimes of a dog be the crimes of its master?

That seems a leap too far for T.D. Hawkins to make. "Owners should be responsible for the actions of that dog if they are indeed negligent," he said.

The frequency of dog attacks -- and my friend Larry's accusatory revelations -- indicates a need for deterrent measures.

Dog enthusiasts see a disturbing pattern of officialdom taking the easy, but wrong, way out: Ban the breed, destroy the offending dog.

More effective would be a pattern toward placing the punishment where the crime lies. Owners whose animals commit crimes enable those crimes to happen through their negligence and sometimes through their active influence on the animal. They should pay.

Maybe then people would stop buying dogs for all the wrong reasons and start taking responsibility for for them.

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