She waited while county animal control officer Mitchell Levy snapped photos of the wound. She accepted a form to fill out detailing the incident. She nodded when it was explained that the dog, a Welsh corgi mix resting under a nearby tree, would be quarantined and checked for rabies.
And then she had a not-so-simple question.
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| Animal control officer Mitchell Levy takes photos of a dog bite suffered by Daniel Rivera, 11, in City Heights recently. |
“No más perro?” (translated to mean "No more dog?") She was worried about a repeat attack on her son or somebody else.
[NOTE: I think she should be more worried about getting proficient in English. What if the animal control officer speaks English and cannot understand what she is saying? I know if I were bitten by a dog in Mexico, I'd certainly want to be able to tell the animal control officer what had happened - and they would certainly expect me to be saying it in Spanish. But that's another argument for another blog, I suppose.]
It’s a common concern in the wake of last month’s mauling of a 75-year-old woman by a neighbor’s pit bulls in Paradise Hills. That was one of nearly 2,700 bite cases reported to the county Department of Animal Services during the fiscal year that ended June 30 — roughly seven every day.
The Paradise Hills case touched off a debate here, as it has in cities across the country over the last 30 years, about pit bulls. And it raised questions about how much is being done to protect the public from vicious dogs.
One of the pit bulls in the mauling had bitten another neighbor six months earlier, causing a minor wound. The owner had essentially been given a warning and was allowed to keep the dog.
In emails and phone calls to government officials and the local media, and in comments posted on various websites, some residents expressed outrage about that. In their minds, one bite is too many.
Under county law, though, it takes two bites within a four-year period (or one bite causing “substantial” injury) before authorities can move to declare a dog dangerous and put restrictions on it, up to and including the death penalty.
“Minor bites happen all the time,” said Dawn Danielson, director of animal services. “Declaring a dog dangerous based on a singular incident would be analogous to putting someone in state prison based on the first minor infraction.”
She said most owners learn from a first incident “and take corrective measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Most people want to be responsible pet owners but accidents happen.”
In the case of the corgi, the mother’s question — No más perro? — seemed especially potent a few minutes later when Levy returned to his truck and logged onto a laptop computer to check the dog’s history.
Turns out Sparky bit another boy, this one 8 years old, about three weeks earlier. The dog was quarantined, didn’t have rabies, and was returned to the owner on July 2 with a warning to prevent a recurrence.
Four days later, Sparky bit the 11-year-old boy.
'All dogs can bite'
The number of bites reported to animal services, which covers unincorporated areas of the county and the cities of San Diego, Carlsbad, Del Mar, Encinitas, Santee and Solana Beach, has gone up steadily over the past four years, from 2,434 in the 2007-2008 fiscal year to 2,699 last year.With almost 140,000 licensed dogs in the service region — an estimated 70 percent of dogs aren't licensed — just a small number are biters. To the victims, though, that's little consolation.
Pit bulls are the most prolific biters. In the last fiscal year, they were responsible for 389 bites. (The county has a separate listing for the American Staffordshire, a breed commonly identified as a pit bull. It was responsible for 10 bites.)
Labrador retrievers (199 bites), chihuahuas (174) and German shepherds (136) were next on the list. That ranking of the top four has held steady for the past four years.
When animal control officers like Levy respond to bite cases, they aren’t focused on breed. “All dogs can bite,” Levy said, and the numbers back him up: 125 breeds were responsible for at least one attack last year.
[NOTE: Ok, Mr Levy. Tell me how many bites that involved stitches, broken limbs, chunks of flesh missing, etc. were done by pit bulls and how many of these extreme cases involved poodles, dachshunds, shelties, miniature pinschers, shih tzus, corgis, irish setters, brittany spaniels and other dogs that y'all love to lump into the 'all dogs can bite' category when defending pit bulls?
Look at the photo and the minor bite on this child. I guarantee that if it had been from a pit bull it would look like you'd used a weed whacker on his leg and ripped out handfuls of flesh.]
Their first concern is getting the dog under control to prevent more bites and into quarantine to watch for rabies, which can be fatal to humans. A biter that’s running loose is a higher priority than one that’s locked in a yard or house, regardless of breed.
When Francisco Ortega’s right arm was seriously damaged by a neighbor’s pit bull on Memorial Day in Logan Heights, he went by ambulance to the hospital but nothing happened to the dog right away. That left his family angry, confused and frustrated.
“I think animal control needs to be more active and involved in following through,” said Ortega’s daughter, Lupe.
Lt. Dan DeSousa of animal services said the dog was on a chain in the back yard when it bit Ortega, 76, who was visiting the owner. It didn’t appear at risk of escaping, so other calls took priority, DeSousa said.
There are always other calls. Dogs in distress, a rattlesnake in a garage, a cat out of control in a hotel room — all were calls that Levy handled on a recent weekday shift. There are just 31 animal control officers to cover the service region, roughly one for every 80,000 residents. They can’t be everywhere at once.
They, too, get frustrated in bite cases. Hundreds of times each year, when they go to investigate, the dog is gone and can’t be identified, let alone monitored.
Other times, according to Levy, people report that a biter has caused problems before, but when the records are checked, no other incidents are on file. (That happened in the Ortega case.) If bites aren’t reported, he said, they can’t put the owner on notice.
The day after Ortega was attacked, an officer interviewed him at the hospital. Two days after that, the officer went to the owner’s house to put the dog under quarantine. A day later, the owner requested the pit bull be euthanized.
Another source of frustration and confusion is what the officers are allowed to do after a bite. They can’t issue a citation without seeing the violation first hand, unless the victim or another witness is willing to sign the ticket, said John Carlson, deputy director of Animal Services.
Many are reluctant to do so, unwilling to get a neighbor in trouble or fearful of reprisals. “We could press charges but we have to live next to them,” said an Encanto woman, explaining why she refused to proceed with a case (and why she asked that her name not be used) after her neighbor’s pit bull came onto her driveway and attacked her Terrier - Bulldog mix last November.
“It’s dangerous all the way around,” she said. “Does a dog have to kill a person before anything gets done?”
The result is that citations for attacks are rare — 290 were issued last year, even though almost 10 times that many incidents were reported.
Dogs on probation
The county’s Dangerous Dog Task Force gets involved after two bites in four years or one bite involving “substantial” injury.Most of the time when the task force proposes penalties, the owner complies without going to trial, Carlson said. Restrictions can include muzzling the dog when it goes out in public, extra liability insurance and construction of a more secure enclosure in the back yard.
There are 113 current probation cases. Most are for individual dogs, but a dozen are for an owner’s property. DeSousa said those are where an owner surrenders a dog involved in an incident, then gets another dog and allows it to cause problems, too.
“Rather than regulate each dog, the properties are declared to be a public nuisance,” he said.
In extreme cases, a dog that’s been declared dangerous can be euthanized. Four were put down that way last year. An unknown number of others were voluntarily relinquished for euthanasia by their owners after bite incidents.
So what’s likely to happen to Sparky, the corgi mix that bit two boys in City Heights? He eluded capture when Levy, the animal control officer, went there on the day the 11-year-old was attacked.
Officers returned several times on subsequent days. They issued the owner a citation for the bites and other violations. But the dog was missing.
According to the owner, Sparky ran away.
(Sign on San Diego - July 16, 2011)
