People are stupid, or maybe just weird. So far as
I’m concerned, that’s a good thing.
I’ve been a naughty dog — check out my
file at Sangamon County Animal Control. In October 2004, officials at St.
Francis Cabrini
School called animal control because I was wandering through the school
parking lot. They described me as friendly at the pound, but I do have a
mean streak. In May, I got loose again and attacked a poodle.
My owner, George T. Young III, denied that it was me,
but I had blood on my neck when animal control arrived, and a witness made
a positive ID. Even so, animal control issued no citations. Instead, the
doggie police sent my owner a letter asking him to be aware of my
whereabouts, but it didn’t do much good. A month later, I again got
loose from my owner’s house, at 3056 Louise Lane. Once again, animal
control told my owner to be more careful.
Even I could see that letters and fines and cajoling
wouldn’t work.
For at least three years, my owner has kept dogs that
get loose and bite. In 2002, a pit-bull mix got out and attacked a beagle
named Lucy, who was in her owner’s yard and minding her own business.
Lucy ended up with stitches and a drainage tube in her chest. My owner was
cited for not restraining his dog. In 2003 alone, animal-control records
show, at least four dogs in the neighborhood were attacked by dogs that
lived at my owner’s house. In one of the cases, a retriever had its
snout ripped open when a pit bull kept by my owner tried to drag it through
a closed gate. As in the other cases, the pit bull had gotten loose. After
biting yet another dog a couple months later, my owner allowed animal
control to send his pit bull Sadie to doggie heaven. Animal control
didn’t report any problems at my address for more than a year
afterward.
Then I came along.
Last fall, I scored a human being.
In September, Eugene Gallant, who lives a few doors down, was
walking Pogo, his mixed-breed dog, at St. Francis Cabrini School. Pogo was
on a leash when I came charging. Before slipping his collar and running
home with me in hot pursuit, Pogo, terrified, tried leaping into
Gallant’s arms. I lunged but missed. Instead of Pogo, I sank my teeth
into Gallant’s left hand. Pogo’s fine, and so am I. But Gallant
got 18 stitches, then spent two days in a hospital fighting an infection.
Gallant doesn’t think I meant to hurt him, and
who am I to argue? But he’s sued my owner, asking for more than
$50,000. If I could talk, I’d say “ka-ching”—
besides pain, suffering and medical bills, James Rammelkamp,
Gallant’s lawyer, says that he’s going for punitive damages
because my owner has a history of letting his dogs run loose. My
owner’s lawyer is blaming Gallant — if he hadn’t gotten
in the way of fighting dogs, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt. But
Rammelkamp seems like a serious attorney. “That’s a
stretch,” he says with a straight face.
My owner, bless his soul, says it’s a case of
mistaken identity: He insists that I’ve never bitten a person or
another dog. He blames Sadie for earning him — and me — a rep we just can’t shake.
“I had one bad dog — I admit it,” he says. “Every
time something would happen that had to do with a dog, whether it was red,
purple or green, animal control was at my door. The [animal control]
records is wrong.”
Yes, Sadie was a veritable Houdini when it came to
escaping her pen, but I’m different, my owner says. I’m an
inside dog. Sure, the doggie police arrested me for wandering the school
parking lot, but folks at Cabrini fell instantly in love and took me from
classroom to classroom for show-and-tell, my owner claims. Dogs can’t
laugh, so I won’t. Let’s just say that the idea of
teachers’ showing off a stray pit bull to preschoolers doesn’t
make much sense.
Dogs that seriously injure people in Illinois can be
declared vicious, but that hasn’t happened to me — after all,
Lucky isn’t just my middle name, it’s my only name. After the
attack on Gallant, animal control officials ruled that I was merely
dangerous. That means I’m supposed to be neutered and microchipped. I
also have to wear a leash and a muzzle and be under an adult’s
supervision when I leave the house.
My owner has refused to neuter me. “Why
don’t you cut your own balls off?” he suggested when an
animal-control officer offered to refund fines and boarding fees if I got
fixed. The punishment is light and far from certain if my owner breaks the
rules. Under the state’s dangerous-dog law, it’s a misdemeanor
if I get loose again and seriously injure a person or another animal, and
that’s only if the state can prove that my owner knowingly
didn’t follow all of the rules. If he can convince a judge or jury
that I got loose by accident, he’s off the hook. Only if someone dies
will he be guilty of a felony, and then only if the state can show that it
wasn’t an accident.
I’m one strike into a three-strikes deal. I
can’t be declared vicious unless I’m found dangerous twice more
— or unless someone gets seriously hurt. Even then, I won’t go
to the big doghouse in the sky. But it won’t be much of a life.
A dog that’s been declared vicious must live
inside a pen or other enclosure with 6-foot-high walls. If it’s a
room, the room must be locked, and you can’t leave for any reason
other than to receive veterinary care. No going for walks, no fetching
balls, no sniffing hydrants or playing with other dogs. Sheri Carey, an
assistant state’s attorney who knows all about me, says that the
county didn’t go for the “vicious” label in my case
because there would have been problems proving that it was really me.
OK, my brain is one-twentieth the size of a
lawyer’s, but I think they had a pretty good case. There were other
witnesses besides Gallant, who got a good look and made a positive ID. One
neighbor who went outside to see what all the barking was about recognized
me, saw me bite Gallant, and watched me bolt after Pogo. After rushing to
help Gallant, the neighbor saw me running loose in the street and looked on
as my owner retrieved me and took me home. My owner didn’t appeal the
“dangerous” designation or contest the ticket.
I’ve been keeping a low profile ever since
— Gallant wonders whether I’m staying elsewhere. He’s
right. My owner says that he’s given me to his brother, but he
won’t reveal my new address. Animal control can’t be sure of
where any dangerous dog is living. “There’s no tracking for any
of them,” says Greg Largent, director of operations for the Sangamon
County Animal Control Center.
Animal control has my microchip number, but I’m
the exception. County officials don’t know the chip numbers of the
other nine dogs declared dangerous since the Legislature passed a law in
2003 that was supposed to get tough on biters and their owners. Although
animal control can order a dog owner to install a microchip, nothing
compels an owner to disclose the chip number so that a dog can be easily
identified if it bites again — or so says Largent, who’s the
county’s chief enforcer.
“The law has got some serious problems,”
he says. “Unless it was microchipped here, I don’t have the
chip number, in most cases.” But Carey, the prosecutor, says that
lawmakers closed the loophole last year so that the county gets chip
numbers. Ledy VanKavage, a lobbyist for the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, says the same thing.
Sheesh — the front paw doesn’t seem to
know what the hind paw’s doing around here.
I’m not the only dog in Sangamon County doing
fine after biting and scaring the bejeebers out of people. Sampson, a
German shepherd who lives in the 6600 block of West Iles Avenue, was
declared dangerous — but not vicious — in June 2004 after he
bit a jogger in the leg. The wound required stitches. Letter carriers in
the neighborhood weren’t surprised. Two years before the jogger was
injured, a postal carrier told animal control that Sampson was so mean that
he wouldn’t get out of his Jeep within a half-mile if the dog was
loose. Another carrier told investigators that Sampson had attacked his
vehicle and left bite marks on the fenders.
Close calls aren’t enough — someone has to
be badly hurt before dogs such as Sampson and I get in serious trouble. “The law says
the dog has to inflict serious physical injury — if you just had a
few stitches, the dog’s not going to be declared a vicious
dog,” explains Largent, whose agency responds to at least one bite
case a day. “The dog has to damn near kill a person to get it
declared vicious today.”
If I lived someplace else, I might be dead. In the
state of Washington, for example, the owner of a dog that bites must either
post a $250,000 bond or obtain that much liability-insurance coverage if
the injury requires more than one stitch. It’s a de facto ban on
biting dogs because few, if any, insurance companies will take the risk,
say the people who pressed for the law. It doesn’t kick in if someone
was trespassing or provoking the dog. “It’s common sense,
without the emotion,” says Glen Bui, vice president of the American
Canine Foundation — and he owns six dogs, including a wolf hybrid, a
pit bull, and a poodle.
Where I live, folks can keep dogs that have disfigured
people, with no insurance at all, regardless of whether their dogs have
been declared dangerous or vicious. I think animals are more important than
people, and who can blame me? No law mandates that a dog be euthanized if
it maims or kills a person. However, a farmer who catches a dog attacking a
chicken may legally kill a dog on the spot, no questions asked, even if the
chicken lives.
Forget my owner: VanKavage, who owns pit bulls
herself, is my best friend. No way, says the ASPCA lobbyist, should the
owner of a dog declared dangerous or vicious be required to get liability
insurance. That just isn’t workable, she says, citing the exact same
reason Bui says it is workable: Insurance companies, VanKavage says, won’t
insure such a dog, which means euthanasia. There are already plenty of laws
to take care of dogs that bite, VanKavage says. The problem, she says, is
that animal-control officers don’t use them.
To VanKavage, every dog’s life is precious
— she also says that life without parole in a pen for a vicious dog
is better than being put down. I don’t know about that, but I’m
right with her when she says that it’s the owner’s fault, not
the dog’s, when someone gets bitten.
When the Legislature changed dog-control laws in
2003, lawmakers said that they were getting tough, but I can’t see
how. Three of the seven dogs declared vicious in Sangamon County in the 17
months before the law changed were euthanized. The other four vicious dogs
must live in enclosures approved by animal control, which didn’t
declare any dogs dangerous before the law changed. Just two of 15 dogs
declared vicious or dangerous since the law changed have been put down.
Those two were euthanized after their third dangerous strikes in less than
seven months, so they faced life sentences in a pen. Animal control
doesn’t have the power to approve enclosures for the dozen surviving
dangerous dogs, me included.
As a dog, I have rights — or, at least, my owner
does. Lawmakers three years ago changed the standard of proof in
vicious-dog cases from preponderance of evidence to clear and convincing
evidence. The difference can be huge. “Preponderance” meant
that the doggie cops needed to show it was more likely than not that a dog
needed confinement — if 51 percent of the evidence is against a dog,
it loses. “‘Clear and convincing’ is 70 percent,”
Carey says.
The folks who pick up the carcasses and impound the
biters and sometimes wield the euthanizing needle say that they don’t
have enough discretion or power. Largent and other animal-control officers
are asking lawmakers to restore their authority to declare a dog vicious
and order it confined. They say that it’s too difficult to get a dog
declared vicious in Illinois. “If you look at the Animal Control Act,
there’s an almost infinite number of excuses that could be conjured
up by an owner to prevent a dog from being declared vicious,” Largent
says.
For example, the law says that a dog can’t be
declared vicious if the person who was bitten had at some time in the past
abused, assaulted, or physically threatened the animal or its offspring.
“So, the dog remembers that you walked up to it and smacked it across
the mouth six months ago — if it decides to maul you, it’s
justified,” Largent says. “There’s so many excuses as to
why a dog did what it did. It’s hard to get into the mind of a dog
and ask it what it was thinking at the time it committed its offense.
“A dog should be held accountable for its
actions.”
Leash laws, schmeash laws. I’m on the lam
today to check out the Legislature, where no fewer than a half-dozen bills
have been introduced to keep people safe from dogs like me. Many people are
afraid of pit bulls, but I feel pretty safe here. After all, I look just
like a lobbyist.
My ancestors and I have been man’s best friend
for at least 10,000 years, and politicians have probably been around even
longer than that, but lawmakers still can’t figure out how to deal
with us. Rep. Mike Boland, D-East Moline, who is sponsoring a bill that
would make felons of dog owners whose intact pets seriously hurt someone,
compares dog legislation to laws about guns. “It’s a tough
issue for government,” he says. “People are very suspicious of
government doing anything. They look at it as a personal property
issue.”
Proposals run the gamut. Some lawmakers want to give
local governments the power to ban pit bulls and other breeds with a
reputation for being dangerous. One bill would prohibit felons from owning
dogs that aren’t spayed or neutered, on the theory that intact dogs
are the most aggressive and can be used as weapons. Another bill would
allow $5,000 fines for owners of dogs declared vicious, and still others
would allow local governments to ban pit bulls or other breeds with
reputations for being dangerous.
Feeding the frenzy are some attacks last year that
make me look like Fluffy the Declawed Kitty. Boland’s bill was
prompted by the fatal mauling of a 14-year-old girl who was attacked by
three pit bulls and a mixed-breed a year ago. In November, police in a
Chicago suburb shot and killed three pit bulls that mauled a pair of
10-year-olds who were selling Girl Scout products. One of the children
ended up in critical condition. The dogs also bit four adults, including
their owner, who nearly lost a thumb. The dogs charged through an open door
as the children were walking past the house.
What’s baffling is how much dog lovers disagree
on what’s best for me and my human friends.
For instance, animal-control officers want the power
to declare dogs vicious without going to a judge, a notion opposed by the
ASPCA. Boland and VanKavage, who appeared at a Jan. 24 press conference and
boasted that Boland’s bill had the support of the Illinois State
Police and the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, were blindsided a
couple of hours later, when a lobbyist for the Illinois State Veterinary
Association said that veterinarians opposed it. Boland and VanKavage had
just told the agriculture committee that because most serious dog attacks
are committed by intact animals, it makes sense to make criminals of owners
of unfixed animals that hurt people.
It’s not that simple, responded Terry Stezco,
lobbyist for the veterinarians. “Just to address that one factor is
not enough,” Stezco told lawmakers. “The fact that a dog is
intact has no relationship to irresponsible or responsible
ownership.”
Lawmakers need to adopt a more
“comprehensive” law, Stezco said. Then a committee member
suggested making criminals of the owners of biting dogs even if the animal
in question is fixed. That would have been one of the toughest dog laws in
the nation, and it wasn’t likely to go anywhere, especially in a
committee dominated by farming interests. With things quickly spinning out
of control, the committee tabled the bill.
Afterward, Stezco refused to say just what
“comprehensive” means or which of the half-dozen pending dog
bills veterinarians favor. “I’m not at liberty right now to go
into specifics,” Stezco said when I asked him what vets would like to
see. “We’re trying to develop our position.”
Talk about dogs playing poker.
Perhaps the strangest political bedfellows are Jeff
Armstrong, founder of Parents Against Irresponsible Dog Owners, and the
American Canine Foundation, for which he is a consultant.
Armstrong is a big deal in doggie politics; VanKavage
has his number at her fingertips, and Largent has set up a meeting with him
to push for getting courts out of the vicious-dog-designation business. In
2001, Armstrong’s son Ryan, then 8, was attacked by a rottweiler near
Chicago. The dog, which partially severed the boy’s thumb in the
attack, had been involved in two previous attacks, but its owner was fined
just $200. The bill lawmakers passed in 2003 is known as Ryan’s Law,
and Armstrong now says that it wasn’t enough. Among other things,
Ryan’s Law allows criminal prosecution of the owners of dangerous or
vicious dogs that strike again, but there’s not much anyone can do
the first time someone gets hurt.
After his son was nearly killed, Armstrong says, his
first reaction was to ban pit bulls and other breeds with bad reps.
“In the beginning, I wanted them all off the earth,” he says.
Five years later, you’d think that he had a kennel full of dogs that
look like me. Banning breeds, Armstrong says, does no good. For one thing,
it’s impossible to define just what a pit bull is. For another,
courts in some parts of the country have overturned breed bans on
constitutional grounds. “If it ain’t going to work, why am I
wasting my time?” he asks.
Armstrong is now in lockstep with Bui, the American
Canine Foundation vice president and dog lover who favors tough leash laws
— $250 for a first offense isn’t out of bounds, Bui says
— and mandatory liability insurance for owners whose dogs are
declared dangerous or vicious.
“Glen and I are pretty much on the same
page,” Armstrong says. “I think people have to be held
accountable. You’ve got to hit them hard and hit them hard fast and
hit them in the pocketbook. That’s the only thing we can
do.”
Woof.
A dog's life
Pit bulls and shepherds and chows — oh my! Being vicious isn’t easy, and I should know.
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