CONNECTICUT -- Two dogs were put to death Monday after viciously mauling two other neighborhood dogs, leaving one dead and the other critically injured.
The incident took place as the town council considers a vicious-dog ordinance. Tuesday night, the council voted to hold a Feb. 16 public hearing on the ordinance, which would place new restrictions on dogs and their owners.
Under the proposal, dogs deemed vicious would have to be leashed and muzzled while off their owners' properties and owners would have to carry $100,000 worth of liability insurance and post their properties with warning signs.
The owner of the dogs put to death, Keith Kavarsky, 28, of 97 Ledge Drive, was cited for two counts of damage to person or property, two counts of allowing a dog to roam, two counts of being a nuisance and one count of failure to vaccinate an animal. He was fined $455.
Capt. Larry Schubert said Kavarsky told police he let his dogs -- a mixed-breed 8-year- old German Shepherd named Ashley and a mixed-breed, 7-year-old Doberman pinscher named Tesla -- out Monday about 2 a.m. The dogs ran off, Kavarsky said, and he went to bed.
Animal control officer Janice Lund said that about 7:15 a.m. Kathy Sudol of 102 Ledge Drive let her 14-year-old Shih Tzu dog, Coco, out. About 8:15 a.m., Sudol found the mutilated body of the small dog in a neighbor's yard, with Ashley and Tesla standing over it. The neighbor's yard is across the street from Kavarsky's home.
Kavarsky's dogs, which were acting aggressively, would not let the owner and her husband near the Shih Tzu's body, and chased the Sudols back to their home, where they called police.
Before police arrived, Kavarsky's dogs apparently attacked another dog, one owned by Rita Desrochers of 127 Ledge Drive. The 15- year-old cocker spaniel named Barney was critically injured, receiving several bites.
Police said they followed the attacking dogs to Kavarsky's home. The dogs acted aggressively toward police officers before Kavarsky, who was asleep, was awakened, police said.
Lund said a remorseful Kavarsky voluntarily had the dogs put to death, taking the dogs himself to town veterinarian Mark Russak, who gave the animals lethal injections.
The Sudols told Lund they believe Kavarsky's dogs killed another Shih Tzu they owned in 1995. No one ever filed a complaint about the dogs, however, said Lund.
Lund said that when people fail to report incidents involving aggressive animals, it limits what action the authorities can take in the future because the dogs appear to have no history of aggressive behavior.
Both of Kavarsky's dogs were licensed, but because Tesla's rabies vaccination expired in July, its body was being tested for the disease.
``You don't know what dogs are going to do once they form a pack, and it looks like that's what happened here,'' said Lund.
The cocker spaniel was being treated Tuesday at an animal hospital in Rocky Hill.
(Hartford Courant - Jan 20, 1999)
