somerville dog

Preventing dog attacks

Somerville is now safe from one aggressive dog. David Renna, Somerville's one-man Animal Control Department, confirmed this morning that Diamond, the unlicensed dog that mauled three people in an apartment in Homer Square (near Union Square) on the Columbus Day holiday, has been humanely euthanized at the North Shore Animal Hospital in Lynn. The Somerville Journal is running the story about Diamond, who "viciously attacked two kids and their mother" on Monday, October 11. The mother "was dog-sitting . . . for her downstairs neighbor . . . , who went out of town on business."

Renna said that when he arrived at the scene last week, he was able to calm the dog down so that he could transport her to the North Shore Animal Hospital, the facility that kenneled the dog for the ten days that the City is required to hold a dog that has not been claimed by its owner. But he said that, in his opinion, the dog was mentally instable, "crazy," due to inbreeding. He said that staff that worked in the kennel where Diamond was quarantined also reported that the dog was confrontational. A female, Diamond was fine with men, but she challenged women, almost as if she didn't distinguish between people and dogs. Although Animal Control had received no previous complaints about Diamond, Renna said that neighbors at the scene of the attack told him that they have had many problems with the dog, including the report that was printed in the Journal, that Diamond had bitten one of the children before.

Human-directed aggression in dogs is never acceptable. Diamond was a menace to society. Now that the problem of the aggressive dog has been taken care of, however, what concerns me is that the Journal article, rather than addressing the problem of an aggressive dog, insinuates that aggression was only to be expected because of the dog's breed. A San Francisco based organization of pit bull owners, rescuers, and supporters, Bad Rap--Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls--agrees with me on how to deal with aggressive dogs: "Pit bulls that do show aggressive behavior towards humans are not typical of the breed and should be humanely euthanized." A dog that is aggressive toward humans is not a typical dog. Dogs and humans have co-evolved over thousands of years to live together to our mutual benefit.

Rather than demonizing pit bulls, our community will be more safe from dog attacks when we understand aggression in dogs and prevent it from ever being directed toward humans. According to Jean Donaldson, in her book The Culture Clash, "the usual reason dogs bite 'without provocation' or 'for no reason' when they had never behaved aggressively before" is that "some novel combination of elements [specifically, 'risk factors'] pushes the dog higher than the elements on their own have ever pushed him previously." "Risk factors," are what Donaldson calls things that "bug" a specific dog. "Typical risk factors include: categories of people to which the dog is not socialized, hands and/or being touched, approach, presence of food bowl or other guarded resources and any discriminative stimulus for positive punishment (such as a choke collar or a strap used to beat the dog)." Donaldson gives the following example:

Hypothetical dog Zaphod has always been uncomfortable around strange men. His other major risk factor is that he freezes up on approaches to his food bowl. The owner has also noticed that he seems just a little bit more sensitive at night than during the day and not perfectly relaxed with hands or when approached. These last two, by the way, are in the profiles, to some extent, of most dogs. One day, Zaphod bites a man who approaches to pat him. The owner is completely floored as Zaphod has never bitten or even growled at anyone before, and there was no provocation on this occasion, from the owner's perspective. As you can see from his profile, however, Zaphod was a time-bomb which, unfortunately, went off (91-92).

Donaldson includes a graphic representation of Zaphod's profile, which shows how Zaphod's risk factors--"strange men," "hands" and "approach"--separately do not bug him enough to reach even his thresholds for growling or snapping. But Zaphod's growl, snap and bite thresholds are all at more or less the same level of provocation: the combination of elements--when a strange man approaches with his hand to pat the dog--bugs Zaphod beyond his growling and snapping thresholds and pushes him past his bite threshold.

Diamond's owner failed to understand his dog's risk factors and thus failed to prevent her from attacking and injuring people. Given that Diamond allegedly bit the ten-year-old girl last year, it was irresponsible of Diamond's owner to leave her in the custody of that child's family.

UPDATE January 23, 2005: Check out Jean Donaldson's new book about dog-dog aggression!

Posted by Canis Major at October 22, 2004 10:25 PM in the following categories: Dogs in the News , Literature , Somerville