When we were given the dog we were expressly informed that he will go absolutely crazy if crated, if that’s what you mean. We can’t afford to put him in daycare all day.
We tried a Thundershirt; it doesn’t fit well on him due to his body structure (think greyhound shape). It’s loose and dangles around his tuck-up, but chafes his chest and upper front legs when we try to make it snug. And that gets worse if we leave it on him all day and it rains.
Ironically, he got out again yesterday. He’s becoming an expert at the neighbor’s portion of our fence (5’; our three sides are 6’). Then he jumps THEIR fence to get out of their yard. A neighbor called and made him follow her around in her car till I could get there (15 min drive) and as soon as he heard my car pull into the subdivision he came running for me.
Today I locked him in the house with his usual dose of Trazadone. And as per my previous pit thread, she told me he needed A LOT of water and why was he so thin? I can’t tell her to fuck off, when she spent at least 20 minutes of her life watching my dog for me until I could get home from work. She wasn’t the bitchy one from before; she was truly concerned he’d get run over. And my dog is the opposite of the OP’s; he resists all attempts to be lured into garages or cars. He’s the last one to attack or be dangerous in any way, but it’s true, random strangers don’t know that.
And I agree that the dog in the OP is worth the concern. I would just hate someone to have a knee-jerk reaction to ALL dogs because of it. Also, I have to question, if the OP and neighbors are so concerned, what is your plan for getting him into your car and why would you want to endanger yourself like that? I picked up a stray Dachsund and took it home once (the owner scolded the dog but in truth his fence had been open :smack: ) but like hell am I putting a giant possibly aggressive poodle in my car and driving it anywhere.
I totally agree. I think they also forget that the dog that they know and love is not what a stranger sees - a stranger just sees, “Free roaming dog who may or may not attack me.”
We had another dog attack on the news here this week. This time it was what appeared to be an intact male pitbull-cross who attacked another dog. The news people were focussing on the pitbull aspect of the story, but I think they need to focus on why people aren’t taking controlling their dogs seriously here - I think that’s the real story.
IANAL, but it would make a difference legally IMO - if they’d failed their duty of care or whatever standard it is with keeping their animals controlled.
I’m not sure I understand here - if someone’s dog is attacking me as I walk down a street, surely they have failed their due diligence in keeping their animal controlled.
Standard of care seems to be a subsection of duty of care, at least according to wiki. I wasn’t sure if there were a separate legal standard in the US for dog control.
Essentially, it’s unlikely they’d be held liable for damages if they take all the precautions a reasonable person would take against foreseeable harm (in this case, resulting from their dog attacking a person). Of course, the legal question is separate from the personal one, in that if I feared for my life, I’d probably harm or even kill a dog attacking me, even if there were legal consequences to my doing so.
Ah, I get what you’re saying. Still, if someone’s dog is attacking me on the street, I’m not going to say, “Oh, well, you tried to keep your dog in your yard, but somehow he just got out. That’s okay then.” The consequences for a dog attack are too serious for dog owners to take anything except a 100% attitude on keeping their dogs under control - you do whatever it takes so your dog never injures anyone else.
That’s where you would have to look at what a reasonable standard of care was, and whether the dog owner had met that standard. If a dog had regularly been escaping by the same means, then odds are the standard was not met. If a dog that had never escaped or attacked anyone burst though a double paned window to go bite someone across the street, then odds are the standard of care was met.
A few years ago I was chatting about the dangers of golf with a litigation attorney. (I gave up golf because I kept pegging things that one does not wish to injure. Ever hit a birdie or an eagle? I hit a beaver, and a couple of days later a beaver dam at that course failed and shut down the Trans-Canada. I nailed my dad in the big vein in his forehead – lots of blood – while he was standing well behind me. Later that year, I nailed him again in the big vein on this forehead and knocked him out, so drove him in the golf cart to the nearby hospital.) Anyway, the laywer (who was a golf nut) said that sometimes when a golfer puts a golf ball through the window of a car that is travelling along a regular road (e.g. highway/city street) beside the fairway, the golf course and the golfer are not always liable for their occasional stray shots. I found that a bit hard to swallow, given that in my experience, every shot of mine is pretty much random, so for me to play golf within a hundred yards of a person or vehicle is the epitome of negligence. The lawer came back a few days later with honest to go case law on the issue in which a fellow teed off, pluged passing car’s windshield, but defeated the ensuing civil suit because the court found that he met the standard of care. I don’t know if this case was a freak exception to the norm when it comes to golf liability (sorry, I have no recollection of the case name, and taht lawyer has since passed away), but it was an eye opener for me as to how something that I though was clearly negligent might not be considered nagligent by the court.