And she wonders why city bylaw officers don’t seem willing to do anything to stop it.
After reading about the attack on Bella — a miniature schnauzer-Yorkshire terrier mix — in Monday’s Citizen, Hoda Shawki said she’s convinced the aggressive dog is the same one that went after Clementine in August 2012 and attacked her again this past August, inflicting serious injuries.
As with Bella, who required $4,000 worth of surgical repairs, both attacks on Clementine occurred on Central Experimental Farm property, and the German shepherd’s owner, a middle-aged white woman, did not have her dog on a leash.
“It’s an aggressive dog,” said Shawki, a senior policy analyst with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
Though no one seems to know the female owner’s name, “I would find it very difficult to believe that it’s just a coincidence that there are two aggressive dogs going (to the Experimental Farm) regularly with a female owner and attacking small dogs. It’s very unlikely.”
Shawki and her husband, Matthew Redding, first encountered the woman at the Experimental Farm in July 2012, shortly after adopting Clementine from a shelter in Navan. She approached them with her German shepherd on a leash.
“She said, ‘By the way, I just want to let you know, my dog is a big hunter, and he goes after small dogs,’” Shawki recalled.
“Basically, what she was telling us was, ‘Don’t be here.’ We didn’t take her seriously. This is federal property, it’s open to the public. Anybody can go there. Why should it be any more dangerous that any other park?”
But the following month, while they were walking Clementine off leash at the Experimental Farm, the same German shepherd suddenly appeared. “We didn’t see it coming. It went after our dog,” Shawki said.
“Everyone screamed at the dog. Finally, he let go, but he had already bitten our dog.”
Clementine, who weighs about 15 pounds, required surgery to repair the wounds.
Then, a few weeks ago, it happened again. Redding was walking Clementine and his mother’s dog at the Experimental Farm when the same German shepherd, again off leash, went after Clementine a second time.
“He attacked more aggressively this time,” said Shawki. According to her husband, the large dog grabbed Clementine in his jaws, lifted her and swung her around. “Then he let go of her and went after my mother-in-law’s dog. But they managed to stop him.”
“It looked really, really bad,” Shawki said. The surgical bill was $1,550, and Clementine looked a lot like Bella does now, with drainage tubes protruding from various parts of her body.
After the second attack, Shawki filed a report with the City of Ottawa’s bylaw enforcement department.
“They said unless you can give us the name of the owner or an address or something, nobody can do anything,” she said.
“I told her this has happened to us before. It might be happening to other people. Can’t anybody at least say something publicly?” Shawki said. But the bylaw official told her dog-on-dog attacks happen all the time. “Nobody cares.”
In response to Citizen questions, Christine Hartig, a strategic initiatives program officer at the city, said bylaw and regulatory services does “from time to time as circumstances warrant, employ other investigative measures to determine the identity of alleged bylaw violators.
“In some instances, such as this particular one, members of the public may be of assistance by providing to bylaw and regulatory services a detailed description of both the dog and the dog handler,” Hartig said in an email.
According to Shawki, the woman walks her German shepherd at the Experimental Farm regularly. As recently as Sunday — two days after the vicious attack on Bella — her brother-in-law spotted her and her dog, running loose, at the farm.
“She has this expectation that she should be able to take this dog there, no matter how dangerous he is,” she said.
“It’s really ridiculous when you know that your dog could hurt other dogs, and you still let it happen.”
The same dog might have been involved in an attack Monday on a Shih Tzu behind St. Paul’s University on Main Street.
Johanne Bertrand, a pensioner and Humane Society volunteer, was walking her dog, Zeus, on a leash when a German shepherd came bounding at them.
Bertrand yanked on the leash to pull her dog toward her. Just as she was about to take him in her arms, the big dog grabbed Zeus. Bertrand managed to pull him free, but not before the attacker had torn a hole in one of Zeus’s hind legs.
“I’m told that this dog is known to everyone there and it often attacks,” Bertrand said. The owner is an older woman, who’s there every day at 10 a.m., she said.
Zeus required sutures to close his wounds, said Bertand’s husband, Mander Gardiner. The medical bill will likely be more than $500. “We’re pensioners,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of cash.”
Bylaw enforcement needs to be more proactive, Gardiner said.
“If they know this is going on all the time, why wouldn’t they get their little butt over there first thing in the morning and watch out for this person?”
(Ottawa Citizen - Sept 30, 2013)
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