Kris­tel Marie Ram­nath

Brows­ing through the news­pa­pers this week­end, a let­ter to the ed­i­tor from a sub­scriber in San Fer­nan­do ti­tled "Dog own­ers, take all pre­cau­tions" caught my at­ten­tion. I start­ed to read with in­ter­est, which rapid­ly turned to dis­be­lief and dis­gust as I pro­gressed.

The let­ter was writ­ten by the own­er of a fe­male mixed-breed dog (pit bull ter­ri­er crossed with Rot­tweil­er), who claims that "he had to do one of the hard­est things he ever had to do in his life": put his pet dog to sleep. He de­clared that his dog "broke her stur­dy chain and bit a vis­i­tor who was let in­to his yard by his daugh­ter and wife," and ad­mit­ted that "even though she was the sweet­est and most lov­ing dog you could ever find, she was ex­treme­ly vi­cious to any­one else out­side of the im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly."

He con­fessed that "he knew this, but was very care­ful to keep her chained even though his home was fenced;" and that "in light of the re­cent en­act­ment of the Dan­ger­ous Dogs Bill and the chance that she might bite some­one else, he made the de­ci­sion to act re­spon­si­bly."

His de­scrip­tion of his ex­pe­ri­ence at the vet­eri­nary of­fice con­tin­ues: "When I took her to the vet, he could not get near­er than ten feet away. I had to ad­min­is­ter the seda­tive in­jec­tion on my own dog. She was my pride and joy and we had a deep bond. When the lethal in­jec­tion was giv­en she fought against the at­ten­dant and pulled him around un­til her last breath." This own­er con­clud­ed his let­ter by stat­ing that "he be­lieved it was God's will for this in­ci­dent to take place so that a greater tragedy did not hap­pen down the road."

A study by the Amer­i­can Vet­eri­nary Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion in 2000 showed that 17 per cent of fa­tal dog at­tacks on hu­mans be­tween 1979 and 1998 were from dogs that were re­strained on their prop­er­ty by teth­ers at the time of the at­tack, and many of the vic­tims were chil­dren.

Teth­ered/chained dogs have a greater ten­den­cy to re­spond ag­gres­sive­ly to an ap­proach­ing per­son, yet own­ers of­ten seem un­aware that con­tin­u­al con­fine­ment can cause im­mense frus­tra­tion, which leads to in­creased re­ac­tiv­i­ty or de­sire to chase and bite a per­son.

Cer­tain dogs are par­tic­u­lar­ly ter­ri­to­r­i­al, be­com­ing pro­tec­tive over space or prop­er­ty and putting any­thing ap­proach­ing their ter­ri­to­ry at risk. A dog is a so­cial an­i­mal, there­fore a lack of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion can se­ri­ous­ly dam­age its psy­cho­log­i­cal well-be­ing, caus­ing a build-up of frus­tra­tion and anger that can ex­plode at the slight­est trig­ger.

Dogs teth­ered in yards with no fences are much more ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic, in­clud­ing chil­dren who of­ten can­not re­sist touch­ing or some­times teas­ing a dog. Un­able to in­crease the dis­tance be­tween him­self and an ap­proach­ing stranger, the dog may feel cor­nered and re­act with fear, feel­ing he has no op­tion but to fight. Teth­ered dogs are al­so at the mer­cy of oth­er an­i­mals that may wan­der on­to their ter­ri­to­ry and are at risk of get­ting tan­gled in their teth­ers and be­ing in­jured.

The dog be­long­ing to the per­son who wrote this let­ter was in a yard with a fence but she seems to have been chained for most, if not all, of her poor-qual­i­ty life. This cre­ates stress and frus­tra­tion in an an­i­mal and I would class this as an­i­mal cru­el­ty.

An own­er's ig­no­rance is one mat­ter, but what caused me more con­cern was the vet­eri­nar­i­an who at­tend­ed to this case. It is un­eth­i­cal for a vet­eri­nar­i­an to eu­thanise a healthy an­i­mal with­out ex­plor­ing all pos­si­bil­i­ties and this an­i­mal should have been re­ferred to an an­i­mal be­hav­iourist or a dog train­er for be­hav­iour mod­i­fi­ca­tion be­fore killing her. It is un­scrupu­lous for a vet­eri­nar­i­an to al­low a client to ad­min­is­ter a seda­tive in­jec­tion to his own pet. It is un­pro­fes­sion­al for a vet­eri­nar­i­an to not get near­er than ten feet away but watch as his at­ten­dant had to fight against the dog and be pulled around by her. Vet­eri­nary clin­ics are be­com­ing bet­ter equipped for han­dling dan­ger­ous dogs: sim­ple muz­zles work mir­a­cles.

Many com­mon be­hav­iour­al prob­lems could be avoid­ed if own­ers un­der­stood how se­vere­ly con­fine­ment can com­pro­mise nat­ur­al be­hav­iour. This gov­ern­ment should be­come aware of the po­ten­tial prob­lems that chain­ing can cause for dogs and hu­mans, and fol­low the ex­am­ple that many cities and coun­ties in de­vel­oped na­tions are set­ting: by mak­ing teth­er­ing il­le­gal.

The key is to see the world from the dog's point of view if we want to un­der­stand why dogs be­have as they do. On­ly then can we tru­ly iden­ti­fy the root cause of the be­hav­iour and hu­mane­ly solve the prob­lem us­ing pos­i­tive re­in­force­ment. Dog own­ers should take all pre­cau­tions, but pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure: ed­u­cate your­self be­fore you get a dog to avoid cre­at­ing a mon­ster.

To the own­er of this dog I say: the greater tragedy hap­pened when this dog came to live with you be­cause you did not care for her in the man­ner which she de­served.

This ar­ti­cle is copy­right to Best Pets An­i­mal Be­hav­iour Ser­vice. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion con­tact Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath at 689-8113 or best­pets­be­have@ hot­mail.com