reflections on the case in Pacifica, CA

My dog offered a sobering lesson the other day, which I'll get to in a minute. He's a large, 85 pound husky-mix and not quite two years old. I've had him since he was a pup. He's my right hand man; my shadow. Well trained, gentle, beautifully socialized and responsive. When we get playing, of course it's fun to tickle and tease, wrestle and chase. Sometimes we get sliding across the hardwoods, me laughing and him panting and wagging with the goober-eyed look most dog owners know well. But on this day, I was getting him a little too riled and I pushed too hard and it scared him. He tensed up a bit and mouthed my arm harder than he normally would. His message was clear: "Please stop."

Reality check: My dog is an animal, not a little person. I mean, I know he's not a little person, but his teeth in that moment offered the full reality that - Oh yeah - I'm getting an 85 pound dog super amped and the only way he can tell me to stop would be to correct me, much like a dog would correct another dog who was being overbearing. "Stop!" Elliot showed considerable restraint by pulling short of a stronger correction, but what I really wanted to thank him for was revealing the blessed beast that lives inside every house pet dog. I wasn't with my house pet in that nano-second; I was with the primordial wolf who knows his strength and his boundaries. Elliot is most decidedly an animal before he's a dog, and he's a dog before he's a house pet. Yep - Got it.

I've fallen back on that lesson several times this past week as the media prodded at the dog related fatality in Pacifica. He's an animal before he's a dog, and a dog before he's a pet. Darla Napora of Pacifica loved her dog completely, but something terrible happened in her home and now she's one of 30 or so people a year who are killed by dogs in this country. This particular case is making investigators and onlookers absolutely crazy because no one can figure out what really happened.

Yes, the dog (Gunner) was a large unneutered male, but that alone does not give us the answer. In nearly all of dog related fatalities, we get a roadmap of several messed up circumstances that typically lead straight back to the whys of each tragedy. (KC Dog Blog's Road Map) Not in the Pacifica case however. Final forensics reports may or may not reveal the key to the incident ...Was there a physical abnormality such as a brain tumor in the dog? A pregnancy related fainting spell? (Darla was pregnant) ... but at the end of the day we have to accept that we may never know what triggered the incident.

Following any dog-related tragedy, the formula response from opportunistic politicians and media types on a sky-is-falling mission is exhausting. Intelligent people don't want to be manipulated into fear though; they want to be informed. Knowing that, we've declined all media requests for interviews since news first broke, preferring to wait for forensic reports to help fill in the blanks. It could be two or three more weeks before we the final results come in. During that wait, we've so appreciated this letter from the National Canine Research Council that was sent to the editor of the San Mateo Daily Journal:

Even as we share the grief of Ms. Napora's family, we do well to keep two things in mind. First, serious incidents involving dogs have always been exceedingly rare, though they generate news coverage that creates an impression they are more prevalent than they actually are. There are roughly 78 million dogs in the U.S., and 308 million human beings. Annually, there is one dog bite-related fatality for every 10 million human beings, and every 2.5 million dogs. Second, official reports may shed some light on the unique calculus of an incident; but they are never a basis for generalizations about all dogs, or even one kind of dog. To illustrate, consider the following. The week before Ms. Napora died, a pregnant woman in Milwaukee, Sharon Staples, was shot to death in the street, in the presence of her 13 year-old son. Police arrested three teenaged boys in connection with her death. There are over 20 million teenagers in the United States. What will the investigation into the death of Sharon Staples tell us about teenagers?

Reports concerning the death of Darla Napora cannot be used to generalize about any of the other 78 million dogs.

Out of respect for Darla Napora and her grieving family, and due regard for their love for their dogs, we must not assume we know more than we do. The more deeply one examines any incident, the more likely one is to appreciate that its complexity cannot be reduced to a simple prescription. - Don Cleary National Canine Research Council

Darla Napora will be buried on Wednesday with Gunner's ashes. The second pit bull in the home - a little six year old female - was returned to her grieving husband, and when we talked on the phone, the couple's nieces and nephews were squealing with delight to see her again. Authorities determined through dental impressions that Tazi was not involved. According to her owner, the incident scared her so badly that she hid under a table and shat and peed herself, shaking like a leaf when she was discovered, and she's still showing signs of having experienced a trauma. Tazi's yet another reminder that dogs' reactions to events can be as individual as ours.'

Greg Napora and his family have asked that people please avoid implicating a breed type in this incident. After all, Tazi is a pit bull. He told me by phone: "I really wish I knew what happened, but at the end of the day, Gunner was an animal." There it is again. The fact that he still loves his dogs is probably the greatest but hardest to understand lesson of all.

Rest in peace, Darla and Gunner.