I've been posting this around, asking for advice...so I might as well ask you all too!
On Saturday, November 14, 2009 at approximately 7:20pm, my two American Bulldogs were shot by Cobb County Police - while being assisted by Cobb County Animal Control. The dogs (ages 5 and 1) pushed their way out of their fence (or so we are lead to believe) and were out in the front yard while we were away.
Our neighbor (directly to the left) called the police stating he was "trapped" in his car by the dogs. Once the police arrived (written in the police report) the neighbor called from inside of his house. The police report ends with the officer writing he situated his car to shine his headlights toward our house.
We arrived home that evening around 9pm, my husband realizes the dogs are not in the back yard and begins to ready himself to drive around the neighborhood on a search. I decide to run across the street and ask if anyone has seen the dogs. This is when the across the street neighbor states “the Police shot both of the dogs and one died in my yard.” This is the only way we knew what happened to the dogs. At that point I began calling around to animal control (no answer, it was the weekend) and to Cobb County Police. I left my number and was told someone would get back to me within thirty minutes. After two hours of going to animal control (no one was on-site) and the emergency center for animals (located on cobb parkway), we headed home and finally received a phone call from a Cobb County Police sergeant (J.Love) at 11:30pm. This was not the officer that responded to the call, but he provided second hand details on the events of the night.
The Sergeant tells us that one of his officers arrived on the scene and quickly there after, animal control. Both parties felt threatened because when trying to catch one dog, the other would circle around back - their response was to shoot not one dog, but both. I asked if the dogs bit anyone and he stated "no."
My question is, do they not have other tactics on handling dogs? Do they use this shooting "solution" in a lot of cases? Why did the police report not mention the officer shooting both dogs at all? Why didn't animal control use a tranquilizer or call for backup? Why was no information left at our home to notify us our dogs had been eliminated? After shooting one dog, could you not handle the second - since the circling around would have been resolved?
We were told one dog was shot in the head and died instantly, and the second was shot in the body and ran away. After the officer and animal control personnel looked for the dog for an unknown amount of time, the dog came down the street. At that point they captured the dog with a catch pole and that is where it collapsed. You can still see the blood stain in the street.
The next morning around 10am, Cobb County Animal control returned to our home and issued 6 citations for the dogs (3 for each dog – vicious animals, failure to control, and lack of proof of rabies shots). We have a date to appear in court in January.
I feel this is a huge mishandling of the situation – and although you can’t bring our dogs back, some attention needs to be brought to this incident. Some reprimands need to occur besides the paying of fines for the issued citations.
