Sudden attack

LITTLE ROCK — THINK of looking out your kitchen window one peaceful Saturday morning to see a neighbor’s pit bull mauling your little boy in the front yard. Rushing out to help, you and your other young son are bitten on the face and arms, too. Torn and bleeding, all of you somehow manage to retreat to the safety of your home.

No, this isn’t a scene from another Stephen King movie. It’s the nightmarish scenario that Kathryn Urban of Springdale and her family went through the other day before a police officer got to the scene and killed the rampaging dog.

Mother and sons, ages 5 and 9, were treated for their injuries-to heads, hands and arms-at a local medical center. In a way they were lucky. They didn’t wind up among the many maimed by dogs gone wild over the years. It’s estimated that about a thousand Americans a day have to seek emergency care for dog bites. Dozens have been killed in canine attacks since 2007. It’s not just Springdale that’s had this problem; so have other towns in Arkansas. (Prescottcomes to mind, for one.)

Pit bulls are involved in lots of these unprovoked attacks. But while the breed can be vicious, especially when raised by owners who train them to be, so can other breeds. Back in 2000, the Los Angeles Times carried a story about a family’s Pomeranian that killed an infant left on a bed. Scary.

Springdale, like many another town in Arkansas, has an ordinance against keeping an animal that’s been deemed vicious. But dogs don’t show much interest in our species’ laws and ordinances. Springdale’s statute certainly didn’t prevent the Urbans from being savaged as they tried to protect each other. Nor was there any record of this pit bull having been reported as vicious.

This is a sound ordinance Springdale has adopted-as far as it goes. But it may not go far enough. That’s the problem with laws that are written after the need has been sadly demonstrated. It’s like putting up a stop sign at the scene of an accident-after the accident has occurred. But that’s the way the law works often enough, or doesn’t work.

And it’s not just the law that can be dilatory; all of us tend to put off measures we know we should adopt-till some dramatic incident forces us to. By the time this pit bull had been deemed vicious, she’d already proved it. How much better if the animal had never been allowed in the neighborhood in the first place.

The pit bull’s owner, Pablo Jacinto, was cited for harboring a vicious animal and allowing it to run free. Mr. Jacinto says he was at work when his dog attacked the Urbans, and that he’s sorry for what happened. What’s more, he says he’s always kept his dog inside when he was away, and has no idea how it got outside.

One neighbor told a TV station that the dog seemed calm and friendly when it was walked around the neighborhood. “I could come out, my grandsons could come out, and they’re 12 and 11, and they always played with her,” she said. “She was just a big, overgrown puppy.”

But then came that one moment when this great big, lovable puppy became a menacing beast.

Short of using a muzzle, there are a couple of other ways to guard against such attacks. First, don’t leave dogs alone with children. Second, even the best-behaved dogs need to be confined to their owner’s property and leashed when in public. But the surest way would be to simply outlaw this troublesome breed within the city limits.

Before all the dog lovers out there throw a fit themselves, allow us to add that, yes, we know that not all pit bulls may turn treacherous, and other breeds are involved in attacks on humans, too. But pit bulls seem particularly prone to violence.

This is a case in which justice for one of man’s best friends can’t be perfect if we want to protect another species, namely, homo sapiens. And especially its most vulnerable members-small children and the frail and elderly. When it comes to what a town should do about pit bulls, the decision boils down to whether we’re willing to take a chance on somebody’s lovable puppy suddenly becoming a family’s worst nightmare. We’re not.