By Charles Melton
Jun 27 2007
POULSBO — Before the Poulsbo City Council unanimously passed a new
dangerous dog ordinance June 20, former city employee Colleen Smith
had a few words to say.
Her healing scars spoke louder, though.
Smith, who is recovering from a May attack by a pit
bull, an incident which spurred city officials to update
Poulsbo’s dangerous dog regulations, was brief in her
remarks.
“Thank you for taking your dangerous dog
ordinance and making it a little tougher,” Smith
told the council.
Interim Poulsbo Police Chief Jake Evans
reminded the council it had tasked his
department with developing a new
ordinance in light of the May attack.
“The ordinance we’re putting
before you we think is legally
defensible,” Evans said.
Instead of being
breed specific, the
city’s ordinance is
based on the dog’s
behavior and puts the
responsibility on the
owner, Poulsbo Police
Sgt. Howard Leeming
said.
“One of the
things we’ve
found in our
research is that
breed-specific
ordinances are
being challenged
right and left
by breeders’
associations,”
Evans said. “We
tried to stay
away from that
and
focus on the
behavior of the
dog and
responsibility
of the owner.”
In the
new
regulations,
the city
has
changed
its
definitions
of
potentially
dangerous
dogs and
dangerous
dogs,
Leeming
said.
Those definitions are from the Revised Code of Washington, so once a dog is identified as potentially dangerous by a court or Kitsap County animal control, immediate action can be taken, he said.
“We can make the owner go to specialized training. We can require the owner to have a kennel or specialized fence,” he said. “We can also require visible signs.”
The city can seek restitution from the dog’s owner for the costs involved with dealing with the problem, Leeming said.
After Leeming explained the new ordinance, Councilman Dale Rudolph asked about dogs,which previously resided in his neighborhood.
“The dogs would bark and get their nose under the fence trying to get at us,” Rudolph said.
“Would that meet your definition of a potentially dangerous dog?”
Leeming responded that such behavior would, in his opinion, meet that criteria.
“I can’t see any situation, where a court wouldn’t agree with that,” he said.
When it comes to reporting potentially dangerous dogs to the proper authorities, residents shouldn’t consider it “ratting on your neighbors,” Councilman Jim Henry said.
“It could prevent a potentially dangerous situation,” Henry said.
The city’s new regulations could be a role model for other cities throughout the state that are attempting to deal with the issue, Mayor Kathryn Quade said.
“It doesn’t allow dogs one bite, which is what I intended to do,” Quade said.