California: After man mauled by dog he'd just adopted, veterinarian says shelter so desperate to reduce their "kill" rate, they're adopting out vicious dogs

CALIFORNIA -- Imagine taking a dog home from a shelter, and having it attack you only hours later. It happened to a Benicia man, and sent him to the hospital with serious bite wounds.

"He was full-on Cujo," Leiv Arnesen told KTVU, "one minute he was fine, then I stood up, and he went at me." 

It happened the day after Arnesen and his wife adopted the stray German Shepherd from Contra Costa Animal Services. They wonder why the dog, named Frasier, was up for adoption if he had a history of instability or aggression.

  

"I had some pretty deep slashes and punctures," described Arnesen, who has thirty stitches on his arms and wrists, from fending off the mauling. Still, he's glad it was him, at 6'2" and 225 lbs, and not his wife.

 

The stick he used to pry Frazier off his arm, covered in blood
and bite marks where the dog refused to stop its attack

"If the dog attacked me, there's no way I could fight it off, no way," echoed Chek-Young Arnesen, alongside her husband in the backyard where it happened. The couple showed photos of the young dog, who had been calm and friendly until that point.

Mrs. Arneson says that shelter staff told her that they're so "backed up they don't have time to evaluate the dogs completely" -- and then they push them onto people like the Armeson's so that they can crow about having successfully adopted another animal to placate the loonies who demand "no kill" shelters and that no dog should be euthanized. 

They noted, during his adoption from the Martinez shelter, they had been told he had some "aggressive tendencies", but say it was downplayed.

 

This photo was taken shortly before the attack

"The never said he had attacked another human being, or even another dog," observed Leiv Arnesen.

Thirty stitches and months of pain ahead

As it turns out, during his two week shelter stay, Frasier couldn't even be approached by staff.

"We couldn't touch him," explained Dr. Richard Bachman, Veterinary Medical Director for Contra Costa Animal Services.

"We couldn't get near him to give him a medical exam because the dog would not let us." Bachman says Frasier lunged at and tried to bite a dog trainer in the face, yet remained "adoptable".

Dr. Bachman is willing to say what many involved in rescue don't want to admit -- that shelters are so desperate to reduce their "kill" rate that they push dogs with serious behavioral issues onto unsuspecting families.  

The reporter then asks, "But is the public being put at risk?"

Dr. Backman says, "Yes, I think so."

 

 

In the video clip Beth Ward, Contra Costa Animal Services Director, insists Frazier was a great dog and that she wouldn't have had any problems taking him home to her family. However, she concedes that vicious dogs are a problem and she is hiring 3x as many "animal evaluators" to deal with the rush to push these untested dogs onto the adoption floor to decrease their "kill" rate.

(KTVU San Francisco - Aug 2, 2016)