Friday, July 01, 2011

Dog on Dog Attack Update

The attacking dog and his owner have been identified. The dog is currently in the hands of Animal Control. The Health Department is pursuing a Dangerous Dog designation. This could end a few different ways (depending partly on whether the owners fight the designation). Here are two possibilities:

1. The owners could show that they could keep the dog contained in the future;
2. The District could take the dog away completely, and he would likely be put down.

Apparently this particular intact adult male pit has been passed around a bit and the current owners don't have any paperwork on the dog (i.e. they can't prove that he's had his shots).

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are criminal charges going to be filed against the owner?

If not, why not?

Anonymous said...

does the dog have a name? i ask because my neighbors used to have an unfixed brown male pit that was extremely agressive that quietly disappeared a year or so back and wonder if it could be the same animal.

Rob said...

I feel bad for the dog, because he's kind of a secondary victim in all this. A nice victory for the rule of law and maybe "new media" if info on the web led to the ID of the owner.

CKS said...

I think I know this light brown, intact pit. My dog got into a scuffle with it a few weeks ago and I ended up paying for this dog's vet bills (because my dog started the scuffle). If it is indeed the same dog... his rabies shot is up to date. I paid for it! Happy to discuss with the owner of the recent bite if needed: 917-291-1885

Anonymous said...

Yeah there REALLY needs to be more being done against the "owners" than this update indicates (in fairness, i assume that's all the info you have). It'd be a shame if the dog had to be put down as opposed to rehabilitated somewhere--will they not even think of giving him to a shelter/rescue first? I'm curious how this works.

Anonymous said...

Restitution for the medical bills at a minimum.

Annoyingmous said...

If I were a betting man, then based on the behavior of the person with the pit at the time of the attack, I'd bet that they won't contest the Dangerous dog designation at all, but instead will simply move on and get another dog and be an irresponsible owner with that dog as well.

Anonymous said...

I know in some states if you've been cited for having a dangerous dog, you can be prohibited from getting another one. Obviously, even if this were the case in DC there'd be an enforcement issue, but it might be a start.

Anonymous said...

If you can, take a picture of any owner walking a dog w/o tags.

Anonymous said...

Who cares about this, they're just dogs.

Anonymous said...

Who cares about this, they're just dogs.

Yes, let's talk about raccoons instead.

Anonymous said...

When is this city going to enforce the leash laws?

Anonymous said...

They need to throw the book at this "owner". Not that "the book" when it comes to animal welfare laws is all that heavy- sadly.

I just wish the city would start protecting the animals who have no choices and the owners who are responsible.

Enforcement is a huge issue. I am literally afraid to walk my dogs for fear of running into someone with an off-leash dog (and not just because of this particular incident). I used to live in Shaw and it's not just young kids with pit bulls doing it. It's yuppie couples with labs too. Both instances are dangerous for me as my dogs are not friendly toward dogs they don't know. I have them well-trained and under my control at all times, but there is not much I can do if an off-leash dog comes running up to us...