The plan explains when dogs must be sheltered, places a rating system on the severity of bites and offers solutions to dealing with reckless owners.
Clay Goddard, assistant director of health with the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, presented the outline to members of Springfield City Council.
The plan was described in a pair of flow charts — one explaining how to deal with a dog running at large and another dealing with “restricted and vicious” dogs.
This comes after years of discussion on how to provide animal control, including what dogs should be licensed.
Dogs at large
If the animal isn’t claimed by the owner, either right away or at the shelter, it’s sent to a rescue group. The process is a bit more involved when the owner does recover the dog.
In the first instance, an owner is given a citation and warned about future calls. If a dog is found running loose for a second time within a year, it’s declared a nuisance dog, which means it is required to be microchipped, vaccinated against rabies, spayed or neutered, and the owner issued a license for the dog.
The owner has an opportunity to appeal that decision.
If a dog is found running a third time or fails to comply with the requirements of a nuisance dog, the owner will be investigated as a “reckless owner” and could be restricted from owning dogs.
Vicious dogs
This system can place dogs in two groups — restricted or vicious — based on the seriousness of a threat or bite.
The department is suggesting use of the Dunbar Scale, which includes six levels from a dog being intimidating up to a bite, or attack, killing a human.
The first three levels, two of which include more minor bites, result in the dog being declared a “restricted dog.” In that case, the animal must be microchipped, vaccinated, licensed, attended by an adult when outside and meet other requirements.
If the bite is more serious, including deep bites, bruising, slashing — typically anything that might require an emergency room visit — the dog is considered vicious and the owner is sent to a reckless owner hearing.
A hearing administrator will then decide what happens to the dog, department spokeswoman Kathryn Wall said.
“As it stands now, we generally recommend euthanasia, because we really only go to court on the worst cases,” she said. “That’s one of the draws of this proposed protocol — it gives us a few more tools in our tool belt beyond just going to court.”
What about pit bulls?
The proposed plan applies to all dogs, but City Council has the option to use this plan and repeal the pit bull ordinance. However, that’s not something the health department has recommended, Wall said.
“We think the pit bull ordinance has worked to prevent some of the more dangerous bites we saw far more often before the ordinance went into place,” she said. “But there has been discussion among the Animal Issues Task Force and some members of City Council’s Plans and Policies committee to use this protocol to replace the pit bull ordinance entirely.”
She said another option has been discussed — to put all pit bulls on the restricted list for a year, and if those dogs do not have any code violations for a year they can come off the list.
More action on pit bulls
In addition to plans on how to deal with vicious dogs in general, city leaders continue to address the existing pit bull ordinance.
At the next City Council meeting, April 13, council members are expected to vote on a resolution to allow pit bull adoptions from the city shelter.
Also at that meeting, outgoing councilman Doug Burlison is expected to push to have the pit bull ordinance repealed. It will be Burlison’s last meeting on council, as he chose not to run for re-election.
(Springfield News Leader - April 7, 2015)
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