Helen Kitchen said she had just set out for her regular walk with her dog Oscar shortly before 6:30 p.m. last Wednesday when her “neighbour’s pit bulls” got loose.
“They were growling and just flew, grabbed him and dragged him,” she said, recalling the jolting experience. “One clamped on the back of his neck and the other was biting his legs and wouldn’t let go. I was hitting them with the leash and screaming for help.”
A passerby stopped to assist and told her to stand back. She ran next door to notify her husband Grant, who ended up beating the attackers off Oscar with a piece of ironwood. But by that time it was too late.
The Kitchens rushed Oscar to a local animal hospital, then to the University of Guelph where a veterinarian gave him morphine and laid several options on the table.
“They put a drain in his neck, but he was all swollen down the side of his face and soaked in blood,” Helen explained.
“They didn’t know if his ear canal was involved and said he had an irregular heartbeat. They thought there was maybe nerve damage, and he was 11. He had arthritis and cataracts and they couldn’t tell me how he would recover.”
Like most owners of a domesticated pet, the Kitchens remember Oscar as a friendly dog that used to cuddle and play with children in their Elmwood Avenue neighbourhood.
The attackers’ owner, who asked not to be named, described her pets much the same, and said they play with her kids and “all the kids who come over” to their home on a regular basis.
The dogs got loose because a visitor left the backyard gate open. The owner has been fined for allowing them to run at large and the Humane Society has deemed them dangerous. The owner was also ordered to build them an enclosed pen and must have them spayed and neutered.
According to Bonnie Deekon, executive director of the Cambridge and District Humane Society, the most recent incident could have been avoided if the victim’s owner filed a complaint when her guide dog was attacked previously.
Helen, who suffers from visual impairment, said that one of the “pit bulls” had attacked her six-year-old black lab once before, but she didn’t report it because the injuries he sustained were very minor.
Her husband claims that the dogs next door previously killed other animals, including their owner’s cat.
Usually dogs that attack other pets are not good house pets, Deekon deduced.
“In this case, the owner has to become more responsible, but if a first report had been made, we wouldn’t likely be in the same position we are now,” she stated. “If people have concerns or are involved in an altercation, they need to report them.”
The attackers’ owner expressed remorse for her neighbours’ loss and paid $1,500 for their vet bills. She also said she plans to get rid of her dogs, but won’t see them destroyed.
The Kitchens, on the other hand, believe that her dogs pose a potential danger to other animals, as well as humans, and want to see them pay the ultimate price. But their only option is to go through the courts and charge the owner under the Dog Owners Liability Act, an option they currently can’t afford.
“We don’t have the authority to put dogs down,” said Deekon, “but if the dogs were deemed dangerous before, our recourse would have been much more severe and we’d encourage the owner to have them euthanized.”
Deekon said there is a third dog living in the home, also an “American bulldog”, that the Humane Society can’t do much about. They’re not pit bulls, the owner contends.
“They’re American Bull Crosses.”
According to her mother-in-law, the dogs were nice as pie when police showed up on Wednesday evening.
Police did not press charges against the owners, but did confirm that they arrested a 34-year-old male last August at the same address and charged him with production and possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking.
The current occupant and dog owner was visibly upset, saying that all the money she’d saved to give her children a nice Christmas has been spent on compensating the victims of the attack.
“As they say, s--t happens and I feel horrible.”
(Cambridge Times - Nov 23, 2011)
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