Adopting-Out a Known Dangerous Dog Should Be a Crime
From official sources as well as whistle-blowers, I have learned that a small, small number of adoption organizations are taking custody of dogs that the public authorities have declared to be dangerous and placing those dogs in the homes of unsuspecting families including those with small children. The rationale for this practice is that all dogs supposedly will behave safely if they are loved enough, thereby justifying the placement of the dogs in households with kids.
I believe that such adoptions are misguided, dangerous and should be prosecuted as crimes. There is no justification for exposing people to vicious dogs, especially when the potential victims include children and the elderly. Adopting-out a vicious dog also means condemning to death another dog in the same shelter that never hurt a person.
Many of the organizations that engage in this wrongful behavior have received tax-exempt status. Since there is no beneficial public purpose to be served by these groups, they should not be effectively supported by the taxpayers. In other words, they should not exist at all, let alone be entitled to accept donations that pay for their dangerous, immoral activities.
One of the worst ramifications of these practices is that they cast a shadow over the work of legitimate rescues and shelters. Let me repeat myself in saying that this is a small, small number of rescue groups. I admire and support the legitimate ones that conduct themselves ethically and do not knowingly expose the public to unnecessary risks. They make up the overwhelming majority, and they are entitled to our gratitude. But every occupation or endeavor has a few “bad eggs,” and the people who intentionally and knowingly endanger children by putting known vicious dogs into loving homes must be stopped.
In the past two years, I have won several large cases against government agencies that unconscionably neglected to take known vicious dogs off our streets. In one such instance, the animal control department of Knox County, Tennessee had, itself, officially designated several pit bulls to be dangerous, but then failed to remove them, resulting in the lengthy, horrific killing of a young woman, Jennifer Lowe. In other cases, innocent pedestrians have been mauled by packs of domestic dogs that were known to roam at large, or even wild dogs that were known to do the same. Next year I hope to bring to light the dangerous activities of these few adoption organizations that intentionally conceal the background of dogs that the authorities previously declared to be vicious. The other 99.9% of the adoption, rescue and shelter groups will continue to have my support and gratitude.
Thank you Kenneth, you have my full support. Anything that
I can do to help, just ask.
Dawn
December 18, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Do you have information you can share about this subject?
Kenneth Phillips
December 21, 2010 at 11:39 pm
In 1978 I began tracking fatal and disfiguring attacks by pet animals, initially to compare the frequency of incidents involving exotic pets such as big cats, pythons, and poisonous snakes to incidents involving pet dogs. In September 1982 I made the dog portion of my log breed-specific.
In the first decade that I kept this data, there were two fatal attacks by former shelter dogs, both by wolf hybrids. In the second decade, there were neither any fatalities nor any disfigurements by former shelter dogs. In the third decade, 2000-2009, there were three fatalities and 29 disfigurements by former shelter dogs. In 2010 alone, we have had three fatalities and 18 disfigurements by former shelter dogs.
Interestingly enough, and contrary to common perception, the total volume of dogs adopted out by shelters has barely changed at all throughout this time. What has changed are which dogs are placed. In the 1980s the typical adopted dog was an unneutered puppy, and shelters received far more puppies than adult dogs. Today the total number of dogs coming to shelters has declined by two-thirds, largely because the success of sterilization campaigns has drastically reduced the number of accidental litters. The typical adopted dog today is an adult dog, about 18 months of age, who would have been killed 30 years ago as unadoptable, simply because the adoption market was glutted by puppies.
Coinciding with the drop in shelter intakes of puppies has come an explosion of intake of pit bull terriers, Rottweilers, and their close mixes. Pit bulls and their easily identifiable mixes have gone from under 1% of shelter intake to 28%, nationally, and have gone from close to 0% of adoptions to about 13%.
Given the volume of dogs handled, and the volume of pit bulls handled, it can be said that most shelters are doing a good job of keeping dangerous dogs away from the public. Of note is that pit bulls have accounted for more than 50% of the dogs killed by shelters for more than 10 years now, & although the volume of pit bulls killed per year has dropped from more than a million to about 800,000, the problem overall is clearly not that most shelters are not euthanizing those they recognize as dangerous.
The problem is a small minority of shelters and rescues whose personnel for whatever reason fail to identify dangerous dogs and/or adopters who will not safely keep their dogs. These people are putting every shelter dog at risk — especially pit bulls.
People who follow liability issues will be aware that 27 fatalities over a 10-year interval lastingly destroyed the reputation of the Ford Pinto, and indeed of the Ford Motor Company itself, after the Pinto had for a time been the top-selling car in the U.S.
People who follow liability issues also will be aware that recent verdicts in dog disfigurement cases have run as high as $2 million, and as high as $7 million in fatality cases.
Thus the involvement of any shelter dogs in fatalities and disfigurements is a serious threat to the reputation of animal shelters as a good place to get a dog.
Simultaneously, the potential second-party liability costs resulting from adopting out a dog who kills or maims someone are greater than the annual operating budgets of all but 18 of the nearly 6,000 incorporated nonprofit animal shelters and rescue agencies currently active in the U.S.
People who take chances in adopting out dogs of dangerous behavior are gambling with the life-saving capacity of the entire shelter and rescue community, and should not be tolerated within the field — least of all by people who hope to amend the reputation of pit bulls, who have now accounted for more than half of the fatal and disfiguring attacks in the U.S. for at least 29 consecutive years.
Merritt Clifton
December 18, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Here you go Ken…Meet Frankie Fiora who endured a 1000 stich mauling from a Pit Bull adopted put by OUTOFTHEPITS Rescue in upstate New York…As far as I know they have been AWOL on their financial responsibilities to the victim. OUTOFTHEPITS needs to be OUTOFBUSINESS!
http://www.frankiefund.com/
Anti-mauler
January 1, 2011 at 1:07 pm
It is a violation of Federal law to transport dogs across state lines for the purposes of dog fighting. Is this correct? It should also be a violation of Federal law to transport dogs across state lines for the purpose of rehoming if the dog has a violent history.
Carol
January 2, 2011 at 5:22 am
What you say is true with the exception of your claim that only a “small, small number of adoption organizations” adopt out dangerous dogs. Everyone I know involved in dog rescue really and truly believe there is no such thing as a “bad dog.” I have gotten into numerous arguments with these types who — no matter what a dog does — always find an excuse for its actions. I have even heard them bragging about adopting out dogs known to be aggressive and the excuse they use to justify their actions is that the dog passed the temperament test.
Here in Florida back in 2007, a dog that passed the temperament test with flying colors ripped a woman’s face off just 2 or 3 weeks after it was adopted from the St. Lucie County Humane Society. In the late 1980s, a dog rescue organization in Ft. Walton Beach adopted out a dog that was also featured on TV as “pet of the week” and within a month, the dog had killed a child. I was later told by a friend in Ft. Walton Beach that the woman at the agency knew the dog wasn’t safe but justified her actions by saying if the dog had not been adopted, it would have been euthanized.
What you and others need to realize is that 99.9% of those who work in dog rescue ALWAYS do what they deem “best” for the DOG or whatever it takes to keep the DOG alive, even if it means placing children and others in danger.
2lacy
March 11, 2011 at 5:43 am