Home >  Lifestyle

Sunday, July 28, 2002

By Bruce Keidan, Post-Gazette Senior Editor

"When a dog bites a man, this is not news, but when a man bites a dog, that is news."

-- Newspaper editor Charles A. Dana, 1882

On the evening of Jan. 26, 2001, Diane Whipple, 33, a former women's lacrosse star at Penn State University, was set upon by two large and ferocious dogs outside the door of her San Francisco apartment. In an attack that lasted the better part of 10 minutes, the dogs ripped out her throat.

That fatal attack and the murder trial that followed set one of American journalism's oldest axioms squarely on its ear, riveting the attention of newspaper readers and television viewers nationwide.

Whipple's neighbor, lawyer Marjorie Knoller, 45, eventually was convicted of second-degree murder, amended this month to manslaughter by the presiding judge. Knoller's live-in lover, a lawyer named Robert Noel, 59, got off with involuntary manslaughter because, unlike Knoller, he was not present at the scene of the crime.

The dogs that killed Whipple, a 120-pound male named Bane and a female named Hera, slightly smaller, were promptly destroyed. Early news reports described them as English mastiffs or bull mastiffs. Subsequent stories identified them as Presa Canarios, which translates to "Dogs of the Canary Islands." Although it is popular in Spain, the Presa Canario is exceedingly rare in the United States and, like many rare breeds, cannot be registered with the American Kennel Club.

Reaction to that publicity was immediate. Breeders of Presa Canarios found themselves deluged with phone calls and e-mail. Not from irate or frightened people. From people who wanted a Presa pup.

"The interest in this breed went up about 400 percent" within days after Whipple was killed, said Tracy Hennings, president of the Presa Canario Club of the United States.

"I went from getting one to five inquiries a week to between 10 and 20 a day. Most of the people who e-mailed did not even sign their name. It was just 'I want a dog. How much?' "

Few fatal attacks

Part of the fascination with Whipple's death lies in the lurid details of the case. The dogs belonged to two convicts who had been represented and then legally adopted by Noel and Knoller. The convicts' plan was to breed dogs to sell to the Mexican Mafia to guard illicit but lucrative drug-manufacturing operations.

Noel and Knoller, never palpably remorseful, tried hard to blame the victim for her own demise. There were whispers, then published stories, that bestiality and pornography were involved.

Part of the fascination with Whipple's death, perhaps subliminal, has to do with the horror of the unthinkable. Dogs do not kill people. Particularly adults, former athletes still in the prime of life.

On average, fewer than 15 people a year are killed as the result of dog attacks in this country. Some years (1998, for instance), the number is measured in single digits.

Most of the fatal attacks are on children. Of the few adults involved in such fatal attacks, the vast majority are elderly.

No one, adult or child, has been killed by a dog in Allegheny County in the 22 years Dr. Ihsan Chaudry has been the county's public health veterinarian. "God has been very kind to us," Chaudry said this week.

In the matter of mortal wounds, yes. In the matter of serious but not fatal attacks, not so kind.

The number of dog bites reported in Allegheny County last year was 1,128, which broke the record of 1,075, set the previous year, which broke the record of 973 set in 1999.

As of last week, there had been 580 dog bites reported in the county this year. And summer is dog-bite season. The majority of reported dog bites take place between late May and early September, when children are not in school.

"What's reported is the tip of the iceberg," said Kathy Hecker, a Pennsylvania Humane Society police officer. When the family dog bites the family's 2-year-old, animal-control officers are rarely informed. Likewise, a bite that does not require medical treatment is unlikely to attract official attention.

But even without complete reporting, the number of dog bites recorded in Allegheny County since 1999 is fast approaching 4,000.

Who's being bitten? Boys between 7 and 13 are at greatest risk, followed by girls in the same age group. Together, they made up 20 percent of the victims of bites reported from 1999 through 2001. Another 11 percent were children 6 or under.

Why children? Because they are closer to the dog's eye level than adults and are therefore more likely to make eye contact, which the dog may perceive as a threat. Because they are small and they run, which is characteristic of prey, and they cannot defend themselves as well as adults can. And because they make childish mistakes. Like the little girl who dropped or spat a piece of candy onto the fur of the West Highland white terrier at the home of her baby sitter in Shaler and tried to pull it out. The result: Wounds that required more than 100 stitches in her face.

What sort of dogs are doing the biting? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

In a national study reported in the Journal of Veterinary Medicine, using data collected between 1979 and 1998, pit bulls were held accountable for 66 of 300 fatal attacks. Rottweilers were a distant second, with 39 kills.

Presa Canarios? Zero. Whipple's death was the first ever attributed to the breed in the United States.

Well-bred Presa Canarios, Hennings said, are by nature "very stable, very level-headed, very secure, not a breed that attacks." But Hennings, who operates a small kennel west of Cleveland, knows very well that not all Presas are well-bred.

Bane, the male that killed Whipple, came from a line developed by a man named Tobin Jackson at a kennel in Frenchtown, N.J., in the 1980s. What no one knew at the time was that Jackson wasn't importing purebreds from Spain. He was concocting his own line, crossing various mastiff breeds with pit bulls.

"This breed has always attracted undesirables," Hennings said, "Our breed is absolutely flooded with backyard breeders. We have people who would be driven out of AKC breeds, so they move along to [a breed that] has no controls."

Bites and fights

Of the dog bites reported in Allegheny County between 1999 and 2001, pit bulls were identified as the culprit in 15 percent of the incidents, followed by German shepherds, 14 percent, and mixed-breed dogs, 13 percent.

But pit bulls, like art and pornography, are in the eye of the beholder. The breed is not recognized by the AKC and is commonly confused with the American Staffordshire terrier. Most people, cops included, can't tell them apart.

Furthermore, the raw numbers are a reflection of the pit bull's rising popularity as much as its inclination to bite. "They are part of the urban environment more and more," said Lamar Barnes, Pittsburgh's assistant director of environmental control.

The larger the pit bull population, the more likely you are to be bitten by a pit bull. But is the average pit bull more prone to bite people than the average chow chow, Akita or Rottweiler? Probably not.

What about pit bulls bred and trained to fight? Dog fighting, once merely a misdemeanor in Pennsylvania, now is a felony punishable by long prison terms and stiff fines. But it continues to take place in Allegheny County in garages, basements and the back rooms of bars.

"I consider dog fighters the scum of the earth and the epitome of evil," said Debbie Jugan, an assistant Allegheny County district attorney known to colleagues as The Doggie DA. "But it's a myth that dog fighters' dogs maul people."

Here's why: Individual wagers on dog fights can reach $100,000. If a dog shows aggression toward a human, it is disqualified. If you wagered on the dog, you lose your bet.

"Dog fighters have a term for dogs that show aggression to people," said Jugan, who conducted the state's first successful felony dog-fighting prosecution in 1998. "They call them 'man-eaters.' And they [kill] them."

Dan Sharp, now a Forest Hills police officer, was a member of the East Pittsburgh force in the mid-1990s when he responded to a call that two pit bulls, running loose, had ambushed a woman walking her pet beagle.

Sharp arrived to find the beagle dead, the woman on the pavement, where she had fallen during the attack, and the larger of the two pit bulls, mouth bloody, still on the scene. After getting that animal under control, he was able to track the dogs to a gutted house in North Braddock from which animal-control officers eventually removed 13 pit bulls.

What struck Sharp was this: While the woman had become entangled in her leash and had been dragged by the pit bulls as they savaged her pet, she had suffered only scrapes and bruises. Even in their killing frenzy, the pit bulls had not bitten her.

Documenting the danger

The pit bulls involved in that attack in East Pittsburgh are among 187 dogs registered in Pennsylvania as dangerous dogs under Section 502-A of the state's Dog Law. Of that number, 87 are registered in Allegheny County. It is by far the largest total of any county in the commonwealth.

"There are more dangerous dogs in Philadelphia than Pittsburgh beyond any doubt," said Jim Brush, the state dog warden responsible for Allegheny County. "It's just that enforcement is more active here."

A dangerous dog is one that attacks and injures a human being or a domestic animal without provocation. What constitutes provocation is up to a magistrate to decide.

Once a guilty verdict is final, the dog's owner must either destroy the animal or take elaborate steps that include keeping the dog in an escape-proof enclosure and never taking it out, except on a leash and in a muzzle.

The owner also is compelled, in theory, to post a $50,000 bond, to be forfeited if the dog bites again. In reality, though, such a bond is almost never posted.

The dog is required to wear a tag that declares it a dangerous dog. But like the bumper sticker on the back of the big truck says, "If you can read this, you're too damned close already."

Within 30 to 60 days after a dog hereabouts is declared dangerous under the law, Brush pays the owner a visit. One of his jobs is to make sure the owner has taken the required steps to avert another attack.

"In most cases, the owner destroys the dog," Brush said. "Or tells you he has.

"He's got a death certificate that says Rex was put down. Rex could be sitting right next to him. How would you know? He might have destroyed Rex or some other dog. Unless there's a nose print or a microchip, which there rarely is, you really have no way of knowing."

Some owners go to the trouble of building a virtual Alcatraz for their dangerous dog. Some simply give them away to someone in some other state, making them someone else's time bomb.

What type of dogs will you find on the list of dangerous dogs around here? Pit bulls and Rottweilers, Akitas and shepherds, just as you would expect. And a mishmash of mixed breeds.

There isn't a Presa Canario on Allegheny County's list; which could be because there is not a Presa, dangerous or otherwise, anywhere in the county.

There is a beagle, though. And a Weimaraner. And a pair of exuberant briard pups. There is a golden retriever, too, and a springer spaniel.

"Usually, it's the owner," Brush said. "If the owner is nice, usually the dog is nice, regardless of what breed it is. But not always. You have some dogs that are mentally ill, just like people."

In a life spent approaching strange dogs, some of them stressed out and some scared half to death, Kathy Hecker, the Humane Society cop, has been bitten once, but seriously enough to sever an artery.

A Chihuahua did it.