Aggressive dogs are more the product of irresponsible owners than the product of their breed, local animal experts say. These experts also indicated they don’t favor an outright ban on specific dog breeds in Newton following the brutal late morning attack Aug. 19 that sent Newton resident Cora Vander Heiden to the hospital.
Vander Heiden has had several surgeries to help repair the damage done after she was bitten by a pit bull while walking near West Fourth Street South in Newton. She said she’s doing “about as well as can be expected” but remains a little unsteady following the attack.
While Vander Heiden expects to recover, the rest of the community is left to debate what to do in the wake of that dog attack. The Jasper County Animal Rescue League (JCARL), which deals with animal complaints, has seen an uptick in the number of calls on loose dogs — a product, employees say, of heightened community awareness following the highly publicized incident.
Dog bites like the one that happened to Vander Heiden aren’t as uncommon as people might realize, according to JCARL statistics. Earlier this summer, the rescue league took a report on an incident at Car Country Auto Wrecking, where a man crouched near a dog only to have it snap and bite him in the face, tearing his eyelid. Several employees at JCARL indicated that attack may actually have been worse than the Vander Heiden attack, even though it received less attention and nothing has been done with that animal. The incident is just one of the 40 bite reports filed with JCARL this year through August.
The Newton City Council is slated on Tuesday to have a discussion about the possibility of a vicious dog ordinance.
Currently, getting a dog deemed vicious is no easy task in Jasper County. Only once in her time at JCARL has Director Kris Smith had an animal deemed vicious and subsequently euthanized. That was in the case of a German Shepherd that killed another dog in rural Newton. Even then, the county’s Animal Welfare Board had to hold a hearing with witness and expert testimony before the designation could be made.
Within Newton, it’s up to the city administrator to deem a dog vicious. Smith recalled one instance about four years ago where she and others and the rescue league were dealing with what she believed was a vicious pit bull with the potential to hurt someone. The animal bit out the taillight on her car and, in Smith’s opinion, should have been put down. Even then, the rescue league was ordered to release the animal to its owner, she said.
Following the Vander Heiden attack on Aug. 19, the pit bull Rufus, along with three others owned by Tony and Beth Audas, were euthanized, though that was done with permission of the owners, according to authorities.
The Audas’ however, dispute that. The couple regrets the attack, but don’t believe the other three dogs should have been euthanized. Tony agreed to have the dogs put down, but indicated the two options he was presented both included putting down all the dogs
“Our other three dogs have never bit nobody, would never bite nobody,” Beth said. “Yeah, they might jump up on you and want to get petted, but they have no kind of violence in them.”
Rufus, however, was another story. The Audas’ had him since he was born, then gave him to another owner when he was 11 months old. He bounced around to several different homes and wound up at the rescue league after being picked up as a stray in early 2008. The Audas’ reclaimed him and found him to be a changed dog, much more excitable. The couple, however, was unwilling to put him down.
“He was like a child to me,” Tony said.
“If your kid does something bad, you don’t throw him away, right?” Beth said. “I thought that once he got home, you know, and got settled in — after we’d seen what he was like, maybe he’d mellow out, but he just never did. I don’t know why.”
The Audas believe Rufus was just a bad seed, but that he’s not representative of the breed, nor should their other dogs have been put down because of his actions.
“They should not condemn the breed just because there is one bad seed,” Tony said. “Any dog in the world can do this.”
Newton Veterinarian Douglas DeWolf doesn’t favor dog restrictions based on breed. He believe it’s more an issue of poor training and treatment from irresponsible owners when it comes to creating an aggressive animal.
“Any dog can be turned into a biter if you treat it badly,” he said. “I don’t think (pit bulls) are more likely to bite, but when they do bite, they tend to bite harder. That’s just their anatomy. It’s not like getting bit by a little poodle or a cocker spaniel.”
Smith agreed.
“We just see so many dogs that sit on a chain all day and go crazy. We call it ‘kennel crazy,’” she said.
Rufus’ story, however, doesn’t appear to be completely uncommon among pit bulls. The breed, Smith said, seems to appeal to some owners who might not be willing to put in the necessary effort for training and at times, problem dogs are passed off to different homes.
“We get a lot of punk kids who come in and the first thing out of their mouth is ‘Got any pit bulls?’ It’s like testosterone on a leash,” Smith said. “It just seems with the pit bulls, they fall into the wrong people’s hands.”
But, Smith said, that’s not the fault of the pit bull breed itself. It’s owner carelessness, failure to train them or properly care for them that can make them aggressive.
“99 percent of the pit bulls that come in are no problem,” she said.
As such, Smith would like to see owner-specific restrictions where people cited for violations are required to build dog runs or faced with other requirements to continue owning dogs.
But even if such rules were in place, the recent attack on Vander Heiden may still not have been prevented. The rescue league never had any reports on the Audas’ dogs prior to the August incident, employees said, so even with complaint-based restrictions, there would have been no reason to restrict Tony and Beth Audas prior to the attack.
“I don’t know that there could have been anything that would have prevented it,” Smith said.
Ultimately, the Audas deeply regret the attack, though they firmly believe they were being responsible owners by having their dogs secured in a fenced in yard. How the dogs were able to get loose and were able to hurt someone, is a mystery and something they dwell on.
“We think about it every day, we talk about it every day,” Beth said. “If I could’ve got there sooner or taken everything she took, I would have did it because she didn’t deserve what happened to her and neither does her family.”