April 30, 2014Comments are closed.council pound
A loose dog has injured a ranger in Mandurah, WA;
A City of Mandurah spokesperson confirmed the attack which happened on Mistral Street about 3.30pm Monday and said the ranger was now recovering from his injuries.
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According to neighbours, two dogs escaped from their backyard and ran loose on the street, aggressively barking at other dogs contained at neighbouring properties.
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By the time the ranger arrived, there was just one dog remaining in the street as the second had returned to its home.“The male [neighbour] warned the ranger the dog was dangerous, but the ranger tried to coax the dog over with dog treats,” a witness said.
“As the ranger grabbed its collar, the dog attacked him and knocked him to the floor.
“They scuffled on the floor for a moment, and I could see lots of blood from the ranger’s hands and arms.”
This is awful outcome for both the dog and the ranger. The dog now has a bite history, probably putting its life in danger. While the ranger will be scarred and likely traumatised for life.
But if the reports from the witness are accurate, it serves as a reminder to us all about the importance of safe animal handling. You should never grab a strange dog by the collar. Like never. It can be interpreted by the dog as a directly aggressive action, or the precursor to a punishment, both of which can cause a bite.
Also, by leading with your hands you put forward one of your most vulnerable body parts, with bites on the hand being potentially devastating and needing extensive plastic surgery to repair.
A slip lead is a safer option. And in this instance, where the dog had been reportedly already been aggressing with other dogs on the street, and likely highly stressed, a catchpole would have been the safer choice.
I wish the ranger a speedy recovery from his injuries, and hope the Mandurah Council’s investigation leads to more appropriate processes to keep staff safer in the future.
A terrible outcome indeed, all too preventable.
The biggest issue here is what type of training this officer received, and how he has been taught to assess the dogs emotional state, identify the current risk of bite, and then manage the identified risk accordingly.
As for the notion of punishment actually causing aggression there is not actually a causal relationship between punishment and aggressive response. There is a correlation that shows up in research, but science says that correlation is not equal to causation.
Interestingly where these correlations show up the studies seem to frequently involve handler questionnaire as a method of information gathering. The recent Casey et. al. study from the UK is a great example of this, and I wrote a blog about it on my website (I won’t post link here as it may seem tacky).
It’s more productive to think of this in terms of an emotionally aroused dog with NO RELATIONSHIP with the ranger is left to go on what his instinct and training history teach him is an appropriate response. Dogs are masters of context, after all.
As Shel has indicated, now this dog has a bite history, and the ranger is harmed, which is terrible for all (mentioned in no order of importance).
All this said, we should’t be too quick to judge this ranger. These folks do very difficult jobs, often in very difficult, emotionally charged circumstances, and usually with very small training budgets from their employer to help access relevant training for situations such as this.
The City of Calgary has very well trained AMO’s (rangers) and has had a pole use rate of as low as 3% for a calendar year – that means a pole was used in only 3% of cases. All this in an area with no breed specific regulation, no number limits on dog ownership, and a very dog oriented social culture.