I just believe that LE came to their conclusion much too quickly. I believe it is possible that their conclusion is correct, but that for public safety reasons, they should have been more diligent.
Here's what I think they should have done. They should have brought in a couple of dog behavioralists and at least one wildlife expert to assess the scene. I would have also wanted a scent dog brought in to see if a coyote or another human had been present.
The reason is because we are seeing more and more coyote attacks in my area, right in cities. They recently followed a woman walking her two dogs and she just barely got away. They have been attacking dogs out in their yards to potty before bed at night, and in some cases killing them. Then we saw the case where a bobcat actually ran at a person and attacked them right in town. Another person got the bobcat off the other person, but got attacked. The video was sickening - it would not let go. Turned out that it was rabid.
My point is that there could be a public safety issue in the area. If a wild animal attacked either her or her dogs, she could have ended up getting torn up in the situation. Dogs and cats both sometimes do this thing called redirected aggression, where they perceive a threat they are concentrating on, and another animal or a human comes near and they automatically react and bite. I've seen this A LOT. Anyway, it's possible that there is a very bold wild animal in the area, or a rabid one.
Second thing about this that bothers me is that she had threats from an ex who also had dogs. I can think of a few scenarios involving this person and his dogs where her dogs were not responsible for killing her, but ended up as the "person" standing over the dead body holding a knife they just picked up in shock (think old mystery movies here). Someone could be getting away with murder quite literally here.
The dogs were neutered, taken to doggie daycare at times, and she was familiar with something as progressive as using a gentle leader (which some people have wrongly identified as a muzzle in pictures of Tonk) as opposed to the more barbaric use of choke and prong collars to train. The use of a gentle leader suggests she didn't even believe in jerking on the leash to control them, which many trainers still do. All of this information suggests these dogs were well cared for and that she was knowledgeable, gentle, and progressive in her training methods. However, I do know that even experts can screw up and reach into a dog scuffle in the heat of the moment and end up getting seriously injured due to redirected aggression.
I am neither a pit bull apologist nor anti-bully breed. I believe in approaching all situations based on the facts surrounding the individual dog. And I will say that Gitana is onto something regarding the dog attack stats in post 103. The dogs I had to put down for aggression had backgrounds like she described.
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