This piece was originally published in the News & Record on December 13, 2006.
The morning before Thanksgiving - very, very early the morning before - our younger dog, Cosmo, woke us with increasingly insistent barking. We hushed him and continued to snooze... until, that is, the door bell rang, alerting Cosmo and his sister, Emmie, that it was time for full-blown, outdoor, cat's-in-the-driveway barking.
From our upstairs window, we saw a police car parked in front of our house with the spotlight trained on our door. Ringing the bell was an officer clutching his 12-gauge. The officer apologized for the early wake-up call and explained that a neighbor thought a pit bull terrorizing the neighborhood might be ours. The still-unceasing yapping of our mixed-breeds proved otherwise.
Just then, the aforementioned pit bull came tearing around the corner; the officer asked, then quickly entered our house. The dog's ribs were showing clearly through its skin as it jumped up, pawing at the storm door. And that's how we found ourselves, three grown adults, trapped inside a house by a hungry pit bull.
Eventually, my husband distracted the dog by pounding on a window just long enough for the officer to stick a huge bowl of kibble on the door stoop. We hoped the food would keep the dog occupied until animal control could save the day, but no such luck; the kibble was gone and the dog was back to barking in record time.
After 20 or so minutes and a dozen apologies, the officer snuck out of our house through the backyard, climbed on top of his cruiser and lured the dog into his backseat. I hate to think of the state of his upholstery between the oversized bowl of kibble on an empty stomach and the dog's sharp teeth.
The problem remains that not only was their a lose, emaciated dog in our neighborhood but that the dogs was wearing a collar and therefore had an owner. (Of course, getting close enough to the dog to determine who that owner might be was its own problem).
My anecdotal dog expertise comes from my own dogs and those of my friends and family. Except for a cocker spaniel with a mid-life crisis, these are all dogs which would sooner lick a person to death than bare their teeth. Maybe that's because they happen to have the genetics of kinder, gentler breeds. Or maybe, as I tend to believe, it's because they've been well fed and cared for.
It seems to me that the bad rap given to dogs like pit bulls, Doberman pinschers and German shepherds is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they have a reputation for being aggressive, so people who want aggressive dogs buy them and raise them to be as such, thus adding to the reputation. Starve and mistreat a notoriously sweet dog like a labrador and you're likely to see the same behavior.
Conversely, buy a pit bull and treat it with loving kindness and you might just find yourself with a hulking lap dog.
In a city where we have little need for herding sheep, dogs serve solely to enhance the lives of their owners. But whose lives are they enhancing when they're angry from abuse or hunger, or when their lives are spent in the six foot circle allowed by a lead in the yard?
Neglected, malnourished dogs add undue danger to neighborhoods, divert our police force from crime and fill our animal shelters with animals that will most likely be euthanized.
This is not a complex problem to solve, however. All it takes is a little food and a lot of loving attention for our four-legged family members
2 comments:
A word of praise to the GPD officer who went beyond the call of duty to secure the dog in the back of his patrol car. There's lots of stories from other cities out there where in a similar circumstance the cops just shot the shot the dog, end of story.
Good job GPD!
You know, I thought the same thing - pretty innovative!
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