What to do when an owner puts an animal in danger

http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/pettalk/2009-03-17-animal-rescue_N.htm?csp=YahooModule_News
Pet Talk: What to do when an owner puts an animal in danger
By Sharon L. Peters, USA TODAY

Quick. You've got 60 seconds to make a decision that may help an animal in what could be in a life-threatening situation.

But this case is rather complicated. Deciding what to do may be even more complex than making a decision about whether to put yourself in peril by trying to coax a strange dog out of a dark, dilapidated building slated for demolition, for instance, or trying to rescue a kitten from a toxic-looking pool.

Here it is: A dog seems to be seconds away from grave jeopardy. But its owner is right there. It's the owner, in fact, who's putting the animal in what seems to be harm's way.

That was a scenario I wrote about last week:
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about how some people, despite having brains about 15 times the size of a dog's, do unspeakably stupid things with or to their pets. In this case, a nervous young Labrador kept jumping out of the back of a pickup, and the annoyed owner kept tossing her back there as a crowd formed and pleas were issued for him to accept the offer of a free leash and transport her safely in the truck cab.

Many readers commented how stupid the man was. Some were outraged that the bystanders (including me) didn't do more to protect a pet that seemed likely to leap into the path of an oncoming car. Some readers wrote that since putting dogs unsecured in the back of a truck is illegal in many states, citizens should have arrested him and called police. Another suggested that someone should have snatched the dog from the owner.

So I contacted a few experts for ideas about how such a thing should be handled. I'm sure every one of the people who watched this incident (and every pet lover who has, unfortunately, been in similar situations — filled with dread over a possible outcome and having, literally, one minute to do the right thing) has worried about woulda/shoulda/couldas.

Here's the experts' thinking about the two most significant issues:

•Issue 1: Laws banning dogs in the back of pickups. Only nine states — California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington — have such laws, according to the Humane Society of the United States. A few municipalities, including Indianapolis, Albuquerque and Miami-Dade, also have such laws. My state (Colorado) and most of the really heavy pickup-truck states in the rural West and the Deep South have no such laws.

Absent such laws, it often falls to animal control to respond, and even when a call gets highest priority, it's 15 to 30 minutes in most towns before an officer arrives on the scene. That said, it's possible in some communities that police will respond, particularly if it's presented as a public hazard issue — a dog flying out of the back will cause wrecks or injure people — but in this economy, when departments have been cut, it's unclear what level of urgency would be assigned.

So this kind of situation is much simpler if it occurs where bans exist (even though many people report that even in such places authorities often turn a blind eye to violators), because there's no lack of clarity about the wrongness of it and who has authority.

Such laws, by the way, came into being out of sensitivity to the enormous risk: About 100 truck-bed-riding humans die in the USA annually, so it's safe to assume many more dogs die or are hideously injured since more dogs than people ride in cargo beds. But no one keeps those records. The American Veterinary Medical Association reports that 141 Massachusetts veterinarians surveyed in 2007 treated 592 dogs for injuries (mostly severe and multiple) after the animals jumped or fell from a truck. Several states have considered legislation but, as just occurred in Maryland, have rejected it.

•Issue 2: Wresting the dog away. "Members of the public do not have the authority to seize a dog," says the ASPCA's Stephen Zawistowski. Do people sometimes take suffering or at-risk pets from owners? Sure, a shelter official told me, but it tends to happen in the middle of the night or when the owner is gone. Authorities warn that confronting an already angry owner could put a person at "risk of bodily harm" and may put the pet at greater risk after the episode because the owner is mad.

So what do you do if you live where there's no ban?

If it appears the situation will take more than a minute or two to play out, call animal control (report animal in possible imminent danger) and the police (making the public safety argument). If you know you have less time than that, call anyhow, give them the plate number and description of the truck. They probably won't arrive fast enough to intercede, but sometimes, though not always, animal control will — if a witness signs a complaint — track down the owner to chat. It may be too late for the dog that was at risk. But I wish we'd done that so the guy would have been confronted by someone other than bystanders.

And finally, Zawistowski says, "Take a picture (of the frantic dog in and out of the truck) with a cellphone. If something does happen to the dog, you have evidence it was his dog. At times I think that seeing someone take the picture may get the person to change his attitude. But you need to keep in mind that it may really tick him off."

Next time this sort of thing happens, I'll have approaches beyond offering help (and hoping the mere intrusion — and knowledge someone is watching — will alter the situation). You will, too.

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READERS: Have you ever witnessed an animal at risk? What did you do?