By Patty Khuly
It's not just the perfunctory fang bang sustained during a brief brawl at the puppy park. Consider also the crushing injuries, the broken bones and the bleeding lungs that sometimes result when pets get into it.
The worst cases fall under the category of BDLD (big-dog-little-dog) interactions, or else they happen when cats end up on the business end of a dog's maw. In these cases, the aggressors are usually out to kill — and they can make pretty neat (and expensive) work of it.
Then there's the adverse human-animal event we occasionally observe — as in, you're taking in a civilized tea at your neighbor's house and the egregiously dominance-aggressive cat hurls itself at your daintily outstretched pinky finger.
In my experience, it's cases like these that bring out the best and worst in humanity.
Two recent examples from the annals of Dr. Khuly's diverse and interesting clientele:
• The owner of a Presa Canario (insanely big dog) whose notoriously dog-aggressive female got out last month and crushed the neighbor's (also inadvertently-free-roaming) bischon in her mouth.
In the end, the bischon didn't make it. But the Presa's owner handled everything with the kind of grace all humans involved in these sad cases should. What with our initial work-up and transfer to the specialists (which this dog's non-owner handled personally), $10,000 must have changed hands over the course of three days. And the Presa guy didn't blink. Not once. Bless him.
It's at this point we can only hope he applies more of his financial wherewithal to fencing instead of financing my profession's continued existence in cases whose outcomes I'd rather not revisit.
• How about the owner of a trained attack dog purchased exclusively for family protection? Two weeks ago, the mail carrier ignored the prominent "Bad Dog" sign, bypassed the mailbox at the curb, and let herself into the gated yard, package in hand. When the sleeping dog awoke to find the potential evildoer in his yard, he managed to claw a leg. No bite. Just a rough scratch and a frightened mail carrier.
Three police cruisers and one disgruntled postal worker later, this dog had been branded "dangerous." He got the first of a three-strikes-you're-out (as in, euthanasia) violation for doing pretty much what he's supposed to do, after the owner followed every single regulation pertaining to the keeping of such a dog.
Then there was quarantine for rabies (as if you could get rabies from a scratch) and the expense of veterinary visits for pepper spray inhalation — all because some humans feel pet owners and their pets deserve to be punished when animals act like animals, regardless of the circumstances.
Clearly, animal aggression has a way of eliciting a wide range of human behavior. Which is why I'd like to offer my advice for pet-bite etiquette on both sides of the equation:
1. Stay cool and keep it civil.
I tend to think simple bites between friends, family, neighbors and even strangers should be settled amicably (non-legally) with the biter's family offering to pay for any reasonable expenses incurred.
Nonetheless, if your pet injures a human in any way, legal experts say you should talk to a lawyer. You may be liable for damages present and future. This is what my client in the above example should have done to attempt to resolve his dog's "dangerous" distinction.
•2. Determine what isa "reasonable" expense.
Paying for "reasonable" veterinary costs is the norm for adverse pet-pet interactions. But this gets murky. How much is "reasonable" given the widening gap between what's doable and what's affordable? Ideally, the offender's owner should be willing to pay for whatever costs the affected pet's owner thinks is fair — and that might amount to $60, $600, $6,000 or $60,000, depending on the situation. The top end is why lawyers sometimes get into it.
•3. Go ahead, call the cops.
It's OK to call the police if your pet gets bitten out in public by an owned animal unknown to you. How else to be sure if the animal has been vaccinated and that you'll be compensated for your "loss" (i.e., veterinary expenses)?
•4. Choose the vet.
The afflicted pet(s) should go to the vet of the owner's choice. I've seen plenty of situations where the owners of the animals argue over which of their vets should handle the case. And that's not right. You wouldn't take your kid to another's pediatrician just because his patient treats the kid who bit her on the playground, right? Plus, there's a saying about foxes and henhouses that fits in here somewhere.
•5. Take responsibility for your own role.
If you're injured by an animal, you shouldn't expect compensation in a setting where the animal was justifiably defending himself or his property (and the property was so marked in accordance with the law). Similarly, assessing your own role in allowing your Chihuahua to go off leash and attempt to befriend a leashed Rottweiler is critical to determining your right to compensation in the event of an attack.
Accepting responsibility for our pets foibles — and our own — is part of belonging to a civil society. If only more common sense and civility were applied to our pet-on-pet and pet-on-human interactions, I wouldn't have to write a column like this.
