My wife’s mom and stepdad were here a couple of weeks ago. At the time they asked if we’d be allowing our new son, the reason they were visiting, to run around the neighborhood with the other kids when he’s old enough. My answer was an immediate and definite “no,” and they teased me about being over protective.
I explained that the house next door, a duplex, has 3 pit bulls between the 2 sets of residents. The one, Tip, is a well loved, well behaved dog who sometimes gets out into the street off leash, but is still obedient and comes when called. His owners live in the top floor of the duplex.
The other two, Chocolate and Remy, were cute, playful puppies in April, but soon must have become too troublesome indoors to keep there. Their owners, in the bottom unit, decided to chain them up outside all summer, where they barked day and night at neighborhood kids playing in and out of the yard.
The barking, the need for attention, the inability to temper their behavior when I would approach and pet them in response to their excited, bouncy yapping made it clear to me they’d not be good dogs if ever they escaped their tethers. No way would I allow my little boy out on the streets with a couple of ticking time bombs at the end of heartbreakingly poor quality restraints.
The parents relented and agreed that no kid should be running around outside in a neighborhood with unhappy pit bulls chained to a post in an unfenced yard. My mother-in-law had actually witnessed the horror of a neighbor losing her young son to a dog attack 30 years ago.
They escaped their restraints a couple of days ago:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/331595_dogs14.html
There’s a 2 year old little boy (a guess at his age) who runs around the neighborhood with his 6 year old sister. As sad as it was that the dogs mauled someone’s pet, imagine if they’d mauled a neighborhood kid.
The dogs have been euthanized and the owners fined, but shouldn’t there be something a bit more socially effective? Rules about the behavior and keeping of large dogs? If you have a large or dangerous dog, you have to have the space to raise it. The time or money to train it. And if you can’t, your neighbors should have a legal avenue for having the animal taken from you when the trouble is in its infancy.
I would have loved to have called animal control as soon as those puppies ended up tied to the back porch, barking incessantly for some attention. But current Seattle law simply provides for a complaint hotline, but no official authority to move neglected animals out of the hands of stylish hipsters using a popular breed to bolster their tough guy image into shelters or the hands of well equipped dog lovers.
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