American Dog’s Life Spared – But Is This A Fate Worse Than Death?
A seven year old German Shepherd who attacked a child has been spared from death by a judge in New Jersey, who opted to sentence the dog to life imprisonment instead. Ozzy, the dog in question, who was due to be put down, will now live out the rest of his life in solitary confinement.
After accepting the appeal of Kelly Allard Ozzy’s owner , the municipal judge agreed that Allard’s proposal for Ozzy to patrol a perimeter fence at a local prison was “the right alternative.
“The owner protested the original decision to have the dog put down and proposed that the dog could be of use at the George W Hill correctional facility.
Superior Court Judge John T McNeill III agreed, stating that “He (Ozzy) will be here until he dies, he won’t be adopted by another family, he won’t be released to the public.”The decision is likely to draw criticism from animal welfare groups. The dog had been in an animal shelter since April and now will spend the rest of his life with minimal contact with anyone else, patrolling the prison fence by himself, until he dies. Is this a case of anthropomorphism gone too far? Perhaps the judge and the owner thought that sparing his life may be a relief to Ozzy, but is it fair to subject a dog, an innately social animal to a life of solitude?
The conscience of the owner and the judge should be somewhat lighter after sparing Ozzy the death that was set out for him, but is this really a case of an owner satisfying his own guilty conscience when it was their own negligence that resulted in Ozzy being able to attack a young child?
What do you think?
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I agree completely with your concern.
What I’ve been teaching for years is, “Dogs are innately social creatures. It is unnatural for them to be alone. Responsible dog owners do everything in their power to minimize the amount of time their dogs are left alone.”
This is why prolonged tethering, caging, kennelling, and general isolation, are unethical practices. Forget about the indesirable behaviours that often result, it’s just plain unnatural and, therefore, unethical to force a dog into isolation. Their brains are hard-wired to respond socially.
Years of dog bite research shows that unsupervised (alone) dogs are in the highest category for biting. …Even those who’ve never successfully bitten previously.
I explain it this way. As pack animals, dogs look to their pack leaders for just about everything. The leader tells the dog when it is time to eat, sleep, play, and when to feel threatened. Without its leader there to guide it, a dog is left to its own devices. People are generally unhappy with the rules dogs make for themselves.
Being alone can make an otherwise confident dog feel vulnerable. Some of them end up biting, as a result.
But being alone is psychologically stressful to a dog. Sure, we teach our dogs to accept being alone for short periods. That’s just part of modern life. But it is still stressful. Prolonged isolation is even more psychologically damaging.
Thus, my view of keeping dogs in isolation is akin to devising a way to keep a horse underwater. It is so unnatural and ridiculous, it is unethical and repugnant to anyone with any concern, whatsoever, for the individual animal.
On a completely different slant, the idea of “sentencing’ the dog to “solitary confinement” is as absurd as the “trials” of animals in what we perceive as less civilized times. Imagine a time in history when a pig was hanged in the town square, like a human criminal, as though the pig has any concept of human laws. Many of us horrifically remember the image of the elephant hanged by a chain…again, as though it understood the human law it apparently contravened.
Barbarism is apparently alive and well.
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I wrote Ozzy’s story in today’s Philadelphia Daily News:
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20070612_Ozzys_off_to_Delaware_County.html
The facts in your version are not correct. Ozzy will not be isolated. He will be one of 28 guard dogs working at the prison. He will be under the care of the K9 trainer who saved his life by determining that he could be retrained as a working K9. His former owner is overjoyed at the outcome.
Ozzy was a loving family pet for 7 years until the recent alleged attack on a neighborhood boy. The defense contended that the attack was provoked. A couple of weeks later, there was a second attack, this time on an animal shelter worker where Ozzy had been in court-ordered confinement for weeks.
Yesterday’s appeal verdict gives Ozzy a new life as a working dog with a trainer who obviously cares about him. He is NOT in solitary confinement. He is only isolated from the general public, not from the dogs and trainers in his new workplace.
Reading the story will clarify Ozzy’s situation.
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This is ridiculous. Solitary confinement and punishment are meant for humans who can rationalize and understand emotionally and intelligently what consequences are. It is cruel to put a pack animal in this situation he is better off put to sleep. He will be miserable for the rest of his life and will be an unhappy, unstable animal. This idea is really to make the owner feel better, AGAIN people fulfilling their emotional needs instead of fulfilling what the animal needs in order to be stable. This is probably why the animal hurt the child to begin with, because the owners did not make sure the animal had its needs met.
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that is so so sad.. how could a human being so called judge decide the destiny of another life. dogs do not under human logics and they live very natural as they are.
if dog attacked a kid or an adult, it is the very basic nature of a dog.
punishments, torture back for a crime, justice and all this shit is so weired.
i am really sad for the poor dog.
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