So, the dog world was justifiably shaken two weeks ago when Jackson, a one-year-old golden, had to be shot by provincial police after attacking a woman in her home.
“He grabbed my wrist and started flinging my arm around like it was a rag doll,” Kelly Lawrence said from her home on Whistler Place near Line 12 in Oro-Medonte Township.
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| Kelly Lawrence, pictured with her dogs, Sasha and Libby, is recuperating after a golden retriever her family had taken in attacked her earlier this month. (CHERYL BROWNE/QMI AGENCY) |
Sitting on their sunny deck two weeks later, mother Linda and daughter Kelly, 35, are taken back to Aug. 7, when they adopted a dog from a family in the GTA.
The beautiful golden retriever, Jackson, came from a loving family, said previous owner Victoria, who didn’t want her last name used.
“When we decided to get a dog, we got a retriever because they’re the best family pets,” she said.
They took him to obedience school and she said Jackson was great with her nine-year-old son. He already had his rabies shots and was, by all accounts, a good dog, until he bit her daughter.
“He did bite a female member of my family and she became nervous around him,” she said.
They searched for a new home for their pooch and when they found the Lawrences, right away they spoke of his one-time aggressiveness. But as there were no small children around, they felt they’d made the right decision to give him up.
Lawrence has two golden retrievers she adopted through her previous volunteer work with the Golden Rescue organization, though she no longer is associated with it, she said.
Both of her dogs, Libby and Sasha, suffered from various anxieties when they arrived, and the Lawrences were able to turn them into caring family dogs.
Although she had fostered seven dogs at one time, Lawrence said she had recently given a golden up for adoption and was missing him, so Jackson seemed to have come into their lives at the right time.
The day went well: He played with her other dogs and enjoyed swimming in Bass Lake during the afternoon.
“He didn't know how to swim,” Lawrence said with a laugh. “He was jumping over the waves like a gazelle and then he played with Libby and Sasha and just had a great time with them.”
It wasn't until the women attempted to leave the beach at the end of the day that he turned on Kelly, Linda said.
“When we tried to get him in the car, he looked at (Kelly) and just started to growl. He let us put his leash on, but when we tried to get him in the car, he nipped her finger,” she said.
It took them half an hour of Jackson growling and acting threateningly toward the pair before they finally threw a car blanket over him and hoisted him into the car, she said.
He was fine in the car. When they got home, they fed the two females in the kitchen and put his dog bowl outside on the gated deck, near the small kiddie pool.
Jackson finished his dinner happily enough. Lawrence went into the kitchen to answer the phone and, without warning, he attacked Kelly.
“He was done, so I just moved his food bowl and he started getting nasty with me again,” Kelly said.
In a blink, she said, his face changed. He lunged at her and bit into her arms as she tried to cover her face.
Linda dropped the phone in the kitchen when she heard Kelly's screams and she picked up a chair to ward the 80-pound dog off her daughter.
“He saw me and he just backed down,” Lawrence said.
Her daughter's arms covered in blood, Lawrence locked the dog onto the deck and called the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as they made their way to Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital.
They told Lawrence they couldn't help, so she called police.
The emergency doctor said it was one of the worst dog attacks he'd seen, she said.
“She had well over 70 punctures,” Lawrence said, adding her daughter also had a tetanus shot and underwent a series of rabies shots. The cracked bone in her wrist was treated with a sling.
Both police and Oro-Medonte Township staff drove to the home and police shot Jackson on the deck.
Lawrence later found a bullet casing in the small pool.
In his fear, Jackson escaped the gated deck and the OPP canine unit and township staff hurried to warn local residents to keep an eye on their children as they searched for the wounded animal.
He was found dead in a ditch nearby the following morning by a township worker, Lawrence said.
She had spoken to the original family — who had advised her to put the dog down after the attack — and told them how he died.
“They were heartbroken and so were we. My intent was to give him a loving home,” she said.
But even Viive Tam, of Golden Rescue, admitted there is a small percentage of golden retrievers that bite people.
Of the 2,000 dogs Golden Rescue has adopted out, Tam has had about five a year she couldn't take due to biting.
“There are certainly some dogs who are just wired wrong,” she said.
In fact, after hearing Jackson had nipped a member of the owner's family, Tam refused to take him in for adoption.
She said the majority of dogs that have bitten people have had alternative reasons for the aggression.
One dog had painful but undetected tumours in his eyes. Another dog that bit a child was more than 20 pounds underweight. Another was suffering from two rotting teeth. Others are just poorly bred, she said.
“It's usually a medical issue. We call them big goofballs, because most of the time, that's what they're like,” she said. “If a dog is vicious, it's probably 90% because of the people who owned them and 10%, those unfortunate few, are just not well bred.”
(Orillia Packet & Times-Aug 27, 2014)
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