Friday, January 28, 2011

What would you do?

During the summer of 2009 I was taking a walk with Marsha, my sister in law, and my niece. During this walk, my neighbors pit bull managed to get out from under the fence and attack Marsha. Luckily, I had been watching the dog and managed to pull Marsha up before she could do any real damage. We let it slide. They put stakes in their fence so that she couldn't get out that way again and Marsha didn't sustain any injuries so we didn't push the issue. Sometimes, dogs will just be dogs.

Today, Bryan and I were coming into the neighborhood from WalMart. The same dog was out running along the street. Being the good, animal-loving Samaritan Bryan is(and because we were assured the dogs problem is with dogs - not humans) Bryan got out of his truck to try and get the dog out of the middle of the street. Well, the dog started charging Bryan and sure enough bit him. Luckily Bryan was jumping back to stay away from the dog, but she still got through his thick Carhartt work pants and still managed to pull blood. Being the person I am, I stopped to tell the woman that she needs to try harder to make sure her dog doesn't get out, and she attacks me saying that she got out because of her kids and basically "kids will be kids - oh well".

Of course, Bryan refused to call animal control because he knows that since it's a pit bull it pretty much means automatic euthanasia. I'm not OK with that. The woman obviously isn't taking responsibility for the fact that her dog is attacking people and animals! I don't want to see the dog get put to sleep either, but whats it going to take? That dog attacking a child or killing another dog?! Ugh. I don't know what to do...

4 comments:

Alicia Kennedy said...

Tough call indeed.

Not that it's your primary concern, but you also have to be worried that this is your neighbor - what will her response be if her dog is taken from her? What will you have to 'deal with' from them for however long you're there?(not that there SHOULD be - but you never know)

MY initial thought is "see if it happens again - and then so something immediately"... but as you already said... next time it might not be a grown man or next time that person might not be able to pick up their dog.

Katy said...

Exactly. Honestly, the MAIN reason I really want to do something is because the woman was SO unreasonable. Instead of saying OMG I'M SO SORRY she was making excuses and trying to tell us its not a big deal. Ugh. Sucks.

Alicia said...

Are there other neighbors you could speak to about it? Sometimes when we have issues with a neighbor it helps to talk to the other ones about it. If we can't get through to the particular person than someone else (who maybe knows them or gets along with them a little better) might be able to. She should be concerned that she could have easily had her dog taken away and put to sleep already. But there's really no way for you to bring that up to her without getting a defensive response if she's already reacted that way before.... I don't know. That's definitely a tough call knowing what the outcome would be if the dog were taken.

But, both my cousin and a friend of mine had to have corrective surgery to their faces because of loose pitbulls. This lady is being completely irresponsible.

Katy said...

One of her friends were the person who called the dog off. She just laughed about how her dog must have scared the shit out of the Comcast man... I'm afraid they're all idiots. We spoke to our direct neighbor, though. Apparently, years ago his own dog bit him bad enough to have to go to the doctor. They made him fill out a report and a few days later the SPCA came knocking at his door. So when Bryan went to the doctors they did the same thing. We're hoping that the SPCA visits her and then it's an indirect effect that Bryan can feel comfortable with. The thing is, we're not going to know if they did visit. We just have to hope!