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When a dog bites or engages in other aggressive acts against people or other animals what is an owner to do? Do they accept the dog is vicious and allow it to be put down? Coquitlam’s legal counsel, Heather Bradfield, told me the city prefers to work with all dog owners to try and find ways to ensure their pets won’t pose a safety hazard to the public. But when they can get no compliance and the public’s safety is at risk they have to seek an order to destroy the animal. However, she aded there are few dogs that have been formerly labelled “vicious” in Coquitlam but their owners have taken steps to ensure the public’s safety. Steps like never allowing the dog out without a muzzle, working with a professional dog behaviourist and in one extreme case, where a pit bull cross was actually given the court approval to be put down, the dog’s owner resolved the matter with a peace bond with the city setting out what he would do so no one was ever hurt by the dog.
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But it did make me wonder if there was any way Jasper could be rehabilitated?
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To find the answer I spoke with dog expert Stanley Coren, whose latest book on dogs is called The Modern Dog. He offers some hope but not a lot and said any rehabilitation of a dog this old would require a professional and a dedicated owner. I wasn’t able to contact Jasper’s owner but I’m sure she loves her dog and likely doesn’t believe he is a menace to public safety.
But obviously others disagree. A check into court records also showed a civil case, filed by a woman in March, seeking damages from Olsen. The woman called Olsen negligent for failing to have her dog under control and on a leash in public. The woman said Jasper, unprovoked, bit her while she was walking on a Coquitlam street in April, 2008 causing her to suffer lacerations to both legs and scarring.
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Chris White had mixed emotions to Thursdays news that a local dog fighting ring had been busted.
The Geneseo man has spent the past 10 years rehabilitating pit bulls and other dogs that have been used in fighting.
“Im extremely happy to see someone finally take the dog-fighting issue we have in the area seriously,” he said. “Im also intensely outraged at the cruelty these dogs endured.”
He has hope for the 60 animals rescued Thursday. Outside of the few that may be too aggressive to be adopted out one day, he thinks the majority of the dogs could be able to find a good home with the right amount of training.
“Ive taken extremely aggressive dogs and turned them into productive, normal members of the canine society,” White said.
The first step to rehabilitating a fighting dog is to get into the mind of a dog fighter.
“They take puppies, and they will smash them together,” White said. “They do it over and over again, head butting the dogs, until one dog bites the other.”
He said most dogs, especially pit bulls, seek to make the handler happy. So if the handler is telling the dog to bite another and gives a reward, the animal will continue the behavior on demand.
“It turns a dog that normally wouldnt fight into a fighting dog,” he said.
Whites goal is to reverse course.
“On the flip side, take a dog with aggressive issues and recondition it,” White said. “When it sees a dog and wants to go after said dog, you make a correction. Say, No. Tell it what you want it to do, then reward it. Keep doing it over and over again.”
As part of the training, White will walk the aggressive dog to within 50 or 100 feet of another dog and record how it reacts. He will correct the dog if it tries to charge at the other dog. He will reward the dog if it does nothing.
“Its brain associates good things, like rewards, with seeing another dog,” White said. “Over time, the dog will become desensitized to seeing other dogs.”
White, who also serves as president of Bikers Against BSL (breed specific legislation), is a pit bulls best friend. He advocates against laws that ban certain breeds, such as pit bull terriers.
He said terriers are “tenacious” dogs that will do anything to please the owner and that is why pit bull terriers tend to be popular in dog fighting.
White also owns four dogs he rescued from shelters, including two pit bulls, a rottweiler and a German shepherd.
“There are millions of pit bulls put down every year in shelters,” he said. “Rather than contribute to the problem buying from a breeder, I would rather rescue a dog that would have ended up dead.”
Can Fighting Dogs Be Rehabilitated? 71% – NO, 29% – YES.
Should Jasper live or die? The eight-year-old German Shepard cross was dognapped from the Coquitlam City pound, where he had been locked up while his owner tried to contest an application by the city to have him destroyed for being a vicious dog.
Jasper allegedly bit two people and was involved in numerous aggressive incidents over the years. But someone snuck into the pound, cut the lock on the chain link fence leading to his kennel and freed Jasper sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning. His owner, Claire Olson, was scheduled to show up for day seven of the court case but did not arrive, forcing the judge to postpone the matter until Oct. 27. ( I reported on the story of Jasper in Thursday’s paper. You can read that story here.) We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or