This column is written by different author each month. If you’d like to contribute, contact editor@baywoof.com.
Editor’s Note: This past August, a pregnant Pacifica resident named Darla Napora was killed by one of her beloved family Pit Bulls. Many questions still remain about the causes and conditions that may have led to the tragedy. A media firestorm ensued, much of it demonizing the Pit Bull as a violent beast unfit for society. Amidst the uproar, Oakland’s Donna Reynolds of BADRAP (Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pit Bulls), offered a clear and compassionate voice. Some of what appears here was published on the BADRAP blog soon after the event. Donna has updated the piece for Bay Woof and we are gratified to share her wisdom with our readers.
My dog Elliot offered a sobering lesson the other day. He’s a large, 85-pound husky-mix and not quite two years old. I’ve had him since he was a pup. He’s my right hand man; my shadow. Well trained, gentle, beautifully socialized, and responsive.
When we play, of course it’s fun to wrestle and chase. Sometimes we get sliding across the hardwoods, me laughing and him panting with the goofy-eyed look most dog owners know well. But on this day, I got too rough and it scared him. He tensed up a bit and mouthed my arm harder than he normally would. His message was clear: “Please stop.”
Reality check: My dog is an animal, not a little person. I mean, I know he’s not a little person, but his brief toothy hold was a clear reminder. Elliot showed a considerable amount of respect by pulling short of correcting me as he might correct a dog, but what I really wanted to thank him for was revealing the blessed beast that lives inside every pet dog. I wasn’t with my pet in that nano-second; I was with the primordial wolf who knows his strength and his boundaries. Elliot is most decidedly an animal before he’s a dog, and he’s a dog before he’s a house pet. Yep. Got it.
I fell back on that lesson several times as the media prodded at the recent dog-related fatality in Pacifica. Every canine is an animal before he’s a dog, and a dog before he’s a pet. Darla Napora of Pacifica loved her dog completely, but something terrible happened in her home and now she’s one of 30 or so people a year killed by dogs in this country.
Yes, the dog involved (Gunner) was a large unneutered male, but that alone doesn’t tell us why it happened. Dog-related fatalities are exceedingly rare, but when they occur, savvy investigators can typically map out a series of contributing factors that line up into a perfect storm of train wreck circumstances. In the Pacifica case, forensics experts searched for a brain tumor or other abnormality in the dog (results have not been released), but at the end of the day we may have to accept that we’ll never know what triggered this horrible tragedy.
The formulaic response from opportunistic politicians and media types on a sky-is-falling mission can be exhausting after a dog incident. Intelligent people don’t want to be manipulated into fear, though; they want to be informed. Keeping perspective is crucial and National Canine Research Council helped on that end with this letter to the San Mateo Daily Journal:
Even as we share the grief of Ms. Napora’s family, we do well to keep two things in mind. First, serious incidents involving dogs have always been exceedingly rare, though they generate news coverage that creates an impression they are more prevalent than they actually are. There are roughly 78 million dogs in the U.S., and 308 million human beings. Annually, there is one dog bite-related fatality for every 10 million human beings, and every 2.5 million dogs.
Second, official reports may shed some light on the unique calculus of an incident; but they are never a basis for generalizations about all dogs, or even one kind of dog. To illustrate, consider the following. The week before Ms. Napora died, a pregnant woman in Milwaukee, Sharon Staples, was shot to death in the street, in the presence of her 13 year-old son. Police arrested three teenaged boys in connection with her death. There are over 20 million teenagers in the United States. What will the investigation into the death of Sharon Staples tell us about teenagers?
Reports concerning the death of Darla Napora cannot be used to generalize about any of the other 78 million dogs. Out of respect for Darla Napora and her grieving family, and due regard for their love for their dogs, we must not assume we know more than we do. The more deeply one examines any incident, the more likely one is to appreciate that its complexity cannot be reduced to a simple prescription
-Don Cleary
National Canine Research Council
In time, the hype died down and dog owners in Pacifica went back to the business of enjoying their pets. In the North Bay, a call for breed-specific legislation by Sonoma’s mayor sparked headlines, but was flatly rejected by the city council. Cooler heads prevailed and that community wisely opted to begin searching out better ways to bring spay/neuter resources to under-served dog owners instead.
Darla Napora’s grieving husband surprised many by burying his wife with Gunner’s ashes. The second dog in the home – a six year old female Pit Bull named Tazi – was returned after authorities determined through dental impressions that she was not involved. According to her owner, the incident scared her so badly that she hid under a table and soiled herself, shaking like a leaf when she was discovered. Tazi is yet another reminder that dogs’ reactions to events can be as individual as ours.
Greg Napora reached out to us after the incident, devastated by the news reports that implicated breed type (his wife had been a BADRAP facebook fan). He pleaded in interviews to readers to avoid implicating a breed type in this incident. He told me by phone: “I really wish I knew what happened, but at the end of the day, Gunner was an animal.”
There it is again, an obvious fact that this tragic incident teaches us. That Greg Napora still loves his dogs is probably the greatest and hardest-to-understand lesson of all.
Donna Reynolds is founder and director of BADRAP (Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls), a prominent education and rescue group devoted to this very special breed. More info at: www.badrap.org.
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