Virginia Legislator Seeks Restrictions on Pet Owners who Chain their Dogs
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December 12, 2006, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA - Does chaining make Fido fierce? Fewer children might be maimed and killed in dog attacks if we treat "man's best friend" as a member of the family, a Virginia legislator says.
Algie T. Howell Jr., a Democratic delegate from Norfolk, will introduce a bill in the General Assembly next month that would make it illegal for pet owners to chain their dogs for more than three hours a day.
The state of California passed a similar law in September.
"Chaining a dog is not only inhumane," Howell said, "but, in my view, makes the dog more aggressive."
His contention is supported by a recent study authored in part by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. It showed that chained dogs are nearly three times more likely to attack.
The victims are most often children. In 2002, according to the CDC, chained dogs killed as many children as gun accidents.
And a 1994 study authored by the CDC concluded that, "Biting dogs were significantly more likely to be chained."
Since 2003, the media has reported 104 Americans being injured or killed by chained dogs--75 percent of the victims children. The actual number may be higher, those opposed to chaining say, because police reports and news accounts sometimes omit details about tethering.
"Chaining dogs makes them more aggressive--the shorter the chain, the greater the aggression," said Nicholas H. Dodman, a Ph.D. in veterinary medicine at Tufts University in Grafton, Mass.
Dodman, author of the book "Dogs Behaving Badly," is director of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts.
He said in a telephone interview that keeping dogs inside as part of a family unit greatly reduces the chance of attacks. Chaining dogs--naturally social animals--induces "isolation-induced aggression, " and creates a "junkyard dog" effect, he said.
"They basically go mad," Dodman said, when chained for extended periods of time.
People for Ethical Treatment of Animals in Norfolk has launched a TV public service announcement taped by Virginia Beach resident Alice Conner, whose 2-year-old cousin Jonathan Martin of Suffolk was killed in October 2005 by his family's chained dog.
In the PSA, Conner says: "Jonathan had no idea how dangerous chained dogs could be. For your family's sake--and for your dog's--don't chain your dog."
"I feel it's my obligation to call for legislation," she said in an interview.
Before the family had begun chaining the dog, Jonathan had often ridden on its back.
Then, after a long period of being chained and neglected, the dog killed the toddler "because he was hungry and wanted a bowl of cereal Jonathan had," Conner said in the interview.
Robbie Shafer, a 4-year-old Orange County boy, died in April 2005 after he wandered too close to Chance, the family's Rottweiler-German shepherd mix. A 20-pound logging chain was keeping the 65-pound dog confined in a portion of the backyard of the Shafer residence in Placid Pines mobile-home park north of Gordonsville.
At the time, Chad Carr, then an Orange animal control officer who worked the case, said: "There's no way we'll ever be able to figure out what happened. It was a tragic accident."
But Dodman and other advocates of restricting chaining say there's nothing mysterious about the reason for such attacks."They're called 'family' dogs, but they're not treated as family," said PETA's Daphna Nachminovich. "Too often, these dogs are used as cheap alarm systems."
Three of 11 Virginia maulings reported by news media as involving chained dogs were in the Fredericksburg area.
The same month Robbie Shafer died in 2005, a 3-year-old Orange County girl was mauled by her family's chained dog. And a month before that, a Fredericksburg resident was attacked by a chained dog that broke free.
But the dogs belonging to Deanna Large that killed 79-year-old Dorothy R. Sullivan in Spotsylvania County in 2005 had not been chained, according to Sandra Miller, a neighbor. She said the dogs were kept inside Large's trailer.
In September, California banned the tethering of dogs for more than three hours a day.
"This bill helps protect dogs from cruelty and enhances public safety by preventing aggressive animal behavior that can result from inhumane tethering," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said when he signed the it into law.
In Virginia, a far more conservative state than California, Del. Algie Howell's dog-chaining bill is expected to face strong opposition in rural areas. However, Norfolk and Virginia Beach have already passed local ordinances setting three-hour limits.
G. Paul Nardo, a spokesman for House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, said: "This strikes us as a local ordinance issue. How would you enforce this?
"The reality at a hunt club in Fauquier County," Nardo added, "is different from the reality of a suburban neighborhood in Newport News."
