Irresponsibility Ruins Lives

As many people know by now, late last year I became the proud parent of a lovely puppy boxer. Since that time, the two of us have experienced a lot together. It's unfortunate that outside events have changed our perspective on a happy life together, and what it means to be a petowner in recent months since she evolved from being a puppy to being a dog.

First, allow me to introduce Ms. Isley Pawlowski. She's named after Pamela Isley, who you may better know as the stunning villianess Poison Ivy, aptly named because of her brilliant red-brown fur. She's a sweet boxer mix who came to me through a friend of a friend just before Halloween last year, and we've been inseparable since.

As a responsible pet owner, the first trials came from pet vaccines and puppy training. Pretty straight forward: dogs like to pee where they want, and they hate getting shots. After about 6 months of struggling with house training, she got the hang of it reliably and has done great since. She's also learned a few tricks along the way, including; sit, stay, lay down, shake (both left and right paws depending on what hand you offer her), focus on me, and play dead. Kids that meet Isley especially love to ask her to shake and play dead to be sure.

She's been well socialized in almost any situation you can think of. Pet store, puppy class, dog park, fencing class (for me, not her), family holidays, college events outside of regular business hours, kickball/softball (again, for me), and even on a few outdoor film shoots where she did a good job guarding everyone's stuff in downtown Denver. She loves both people and other dogs, rarely even baring her teeth when another dog bullies her. She'll often roll over to submit to even the tiniest dog, or will run away with her tail tucked from bigger threats.

She also loves children, which is the first issue we've had in public. A lot of parents will approach me and ask if their young one can pet her. I say “yes, absolutely!” and hold on to her collar so she can't jump or lean on the kids around her. She loves licking their often-sticky faces of whatever food stuffs they had, or just absorbing the attention. Some kids will even ask me themselves before just running up and petting the doggy, and that's wonderful as well. It's the irresponsible parents that get Isley into trouble. Kids that are unsupervised and not taught to either ask me, or ask their parents if it is okay will often be knocked over before I even see them come up to Isley to pet her. She leans on them asking for more love, or gets excited and jumps up (she's learning that it's not okay now, but in her younger days it was a tough trait to train out of a breed designed to jump up).

She's knocked down a kid in every single dog park in the Denver Area that we've visited, simply because small children have been within the confines of the enclosed fence area – where large dogs are running and playing freely. As someone who enjoys children, this is not the place for your little one to be. Put them on the swings, or leave them on the other side of the fence to play in the grass. Just don't bring them inside the off-leash dog park.

The parents then get upset with her, saying she's mean or misbehaving when she hasn't done anything wrong. They yell at me for having a mean dog, and Isley gets very confused when voices are raised while she was just running around like, well, a dog. The hassle of dealing with other peoples children at the dog park has limited our ability to even visit such locations, so we've had to resort to going on long leashed walks around the neighborhood.

The second issue we've had nearly consistently since this past summer has been dogs attacking her while she's on leash. In an open dog park we acknowledge that some dogs get rowdy and may snip at each other, but when she's leashed and your dog isn't for whatever reason (jumps the fence, breaks through the screen door, isn't locked up at all, etc) that's entirely unfair to her.

We've had to change our walking route numerous times in our own neighborhood because of vicious dogs getting out and charging her. Up until today it has mostly been a lot of posturing, but yelling at the dogs often discourages them and they back off. Today a man opened his front door to no-front-yard, and his two boxers bolted across the street to attack Isley. He caught one of them by the stump of a tail and threw it back in the house, which gave the other one enough time to bite Isley's face repeatedly while I tried to reach his collar without being bitten myself. Her lip is split, her tongue was torn up, and she's got a nice-sized scrape on the top of her nose. Not nearly as bad as it could have been – but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

I'm disappointed with how other people treat their dogs. Whenever I see a dog left outside in the yard unsupervised, I think the owner should not own a dog in the first place. Leaving them outdoors not only invites illness in the form of insects and infection, but also breeds frustration and agitation as the dog sees things all day that are so close but so far away from them. People on the street, cats, other dogs, squirrels, cars, etc.

I've never seen an “outside dog” that was also well socialized and sweet. They're constantly thrown outside when guests are around the house, they're left in the car when the owners go to the vet, they're not with the family at PetSmart to pick out their new bed. I had a friend who blamed the neighbors for their dog being mean, when they left the dog outside to be tormented by the neighbor kids in the first place.

These dogs are also the ones that escape the yard most often and are struck by cars, or attack people and other peoples dogs. This is not responsible pet-ownership. I understand putting them outside occasionally, especially when they're cooped up because you don't walk them (or in my case, can't safely for the time being), but leaving them out while you're at work all day is rude to both the dog and your neighbors from the constant barking.

I also feel that people with mean dogs know they have mean dogs, and should be careful of the situations they're in. At the Denver Zombie Crawl, Isley saw a few dogs she wanted to visit with, but occasionally the owners had to control their dogs who went in a barking, growling frenzy when they even saw her. There were some four thousand people around, many with dogs and you brought a mean dog with you?

Leave your dogs at home. Watch them if they have a habit of bolting out the front door to attack people walking to the very nearby park. Make sure they can't scale the fence or simply bring them in the house. Take them to special behavior training courses to try and remove some of that aggression. But don't treat your mean dog like all dogs are just like that. They're not.

Now that Isley has wounds on her face, she's been snippy with the cats when they get too close to her. It's likely just because she hurts, but it could become a habit. Once she heals, if she's still doing that we'll have to take her to said behavior training classes thanks to someone elses vicious animal. This is unfair to responsible petowners, especially after fronting the money for their pets vet visit and antibiotics after your animal attacked. I'm out $74 as of right now in unnecessary veterinary expenses, and we can't walk yet another direction in our neighborhood any longer.

It's also unfortunate that Denver Animal Control can't/won't do anything about a dog attack unless you wish to jump through the hoops of small claims court, or they witness the attack first-hand. The most they were able to do is issue a warning to the vicious dogs owner and make sure the dog was registered with the city, nothing more.

As of today I have an aluminum walking stick on the way from Amazon.com. Since I can't seem to get through to pet-owners, and still wish to walk my dog on a regular basis to keep her and myself in shape, I will defend her. I don't want to hurt anyone elses dog, but this situation is getting too dangerous and she could be seriously, permanently harmed. I will also have pet pepper-spray on the strap of said walking stick. If I can spray your dog before it gets too close to her, congratulations – you just have to deal with pepper-spray. If I can't, then there may be a whole list of other issues that I don't want to deal with, and I don't think you want to deal with.

To wrap this up, I want to thank you for educating me, irresponsible pet-owners. I now know why dogs aren't allowed in stores, why many hotels won't allow pets, why pets are discouraged in many apartment buildings, and why dog pepper-spray exists. I'm very disappointed in a lot of you.

The above images throughout are in chronological order from when I got Isley to a few weeks ago. She's grown up beautifully, and loves to ham for the camera. If incidents like this make her mean, I will never have this baby girl back again.