MASSACHUSETTS -- Selectmen will have to weigh two hours of testimony before they determine the fate of a local pit bull that bit one resident in the leg and menaced another.
About 20 residents gathered in Town Hall last night to hear from Joyce Gilmore, who told selectmen how she was attacked Sept. 26 around 2:45 p.m. while she was on the dog owner's property at 21 Hastings St.
Gilmore, who lives next door at 23 Hastings St., filed a complaint with selectmen, detailing her account of the incident and asking that something be done to ensure the public's safety.
"Dogs that are protecting bark. Dogs don't necessarily bite. He came at me, and he just bit," she said at the hearing.
Selectmen must now determine whether the dog is a public threat, and if so, what must be done, a decision they will likely make at their meeting Monday.
"We need a little time to think this through," Chairman Michael Goddard said after hearing testimony.
Until then, the board ordered the dog's owner, Jessica Shepherd, to keep the dog, named Ghost, muzzled while outside.
State law gives selectmen the authority to order the dog be restrained, muzzled, banned or destroyed.
Janet White of Washington Street testified that Ghost often wanders onto her property.
Days before the attack on Gilmore, White said she chased the dog off her property with a plastic pitchfork. All the while, the dog growled and bared its teeth, she said.
Two years ago, she said, the dog pushed her then-8-year-old grandson to the ground while in her yard.
A police report says White called police May 10, 2010, to report the dog was running around and "messing in her yard."
"I don't know the dog very well, but he's very aggressive," she said. "I'm an animal lover, and I wouldn't complain about a dog that just comes into my yard, but he is very aggressive."
White said she would like to see the dog placed in another home that offers more space, like a farm.
Shepherd's home is in a neighborhood of businesses and homes.
Shepherd, a mother of three, went to bat for her pet last night, calling him "a protective family dog." She said she does not consider him dangerous.
To support her claim, Shepherd presented selectmen with recent photographs of the dog laying with her sleeping children, as well as a pet cat.
Mendon Animal Inspector Kevin Sullivan said last night that he does not consider the dog a threat.
"(Gilmore) was cutting across, trespassing across a yard. I don't feel it was negligence on the part of the pet owner," he said.
Sullivan said he ordered the dog quarantined for 10 days after the attack.
The animal was restrained on a rope "runner" that allowed him to reach as far as 20 feet away from the house.
Gilmore said she was passing through Shepherd's backyard, as she often does, to get to an auto body shop nearby.
In her opinion, Gilmore said, she was not trespassing, as the backyards in that area are continuous spaces through which neighbors often walk.
"I never thought of myself, after being there for 42 years, and having been back and forth on the yard. ... I never thought of (it as) trespassing," she said.
(Milford Daily News - Dec 1, 2011)
