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General News: Judge Weighs Facts in Dangerous Dog Cases
July 25, 2011
By Charlie B. Scirbona
In what may be nothing more than a coincidence, town of Cornwall judge Frank Navarra has faced a string of dangerous dog cases in recent weeks.
The cases came to light at the July Town Board work session when councilman Randy Clark brought up one of the recent cases, which involved a boxer on Jackson Avenue that had repeatedly gotten away from its owner and attacked a neighbor’s Labrador retriever. Cornwall Police Chief Todd Hazard mentioned another case in which a Staffordshire Terrier, a breed of pit bull, caused trouble on Sycamore Drive, basically terrorizing the neighborhood, he said.
When these two cases came before Judge Navarra, he imposed restrictions on the dogs that included confining the dog to the owner’s house or an enclosure with fencing at least six-feet high, keeping the dog leashed and muzzled when not in the enclosure, having the dog micro chipped and providing liability insurance in the event that the dog ever injures a person or animal in the future.
The dog on Jackson Avenue was legally declared a dangerous dog, which requires the owner to register that dog as such with the municipality where the dog lives. Residents that brought the complaints on Sycamore Drive settled with the dog’s owner.
The third recent dangerous case involved Roxy, a pit bull. Roxy’s owner, Tina Spagnoli, said Roxy, who had never attacked a person before, got beyond an invisible electric fence when she was away from the house. As she drove home, Spagnoli saw her two dogs, Roxy and Primo, were out and had trotted over to her neighbor ,Jennifer Migdal, who was walking her own dog. Spagnoli stopped to apologize and Migdal’s dog started to jump on Spagnoli’s vehicle. That caused Roxy and Primo to react and and the dogs began to fight.
Migdal said that during the fight Roxy came after her and bit her on the knee. When Spagnoli found out that Migdal later went to the hospital for her injury, she was ready to put the dog down, but Migdal told her not to.
“The last thing I wanted is for the dog to be put down,” said Migdal. She said that because of her experience working at an animal rescue in Washingtonville that she felt the dog “just saw red.”
The case did come before Judge Navarra, who declared Roxy a dangerous dog and imposed all the same restrictions that the two other dog owners faced just days earlier. Spagnoli said she thinks the restrictions are unfair because the dog had never gotten out, let alone attacked a person before the incident.
Migdal said that she didn’t think the dog was psychotic or needed to see a shrink (a stipulation in all three cases was that the dogs needed to see an animal behavioralist), and that any dog under the right circumstance could hurt someone.
Comments:
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I cant beleive the woman who got bit stopped the dog from being put to sleep.
posted by mary delaney on 07/29/11 at 3:08 PM
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It's not the dog's fault the owners didn't train it and socialize it properly. I would have asked that it not be put down too.
posted by Ted Warren on 07/29/11 at 4:14 PM
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What a euphemism, "put to sleep." But I guess it's like "taking the big dirt nap." ("Grandma took the big dirt nap last night...")
Anyway, Jennifer Migdal obviously saw that it wasn't the dog's fault. We're so quick to kill every animal that displeases us, whether it's a bear cub tipping over the garbage, a dog that barks, a ferret that now bores us or a feral kitten that offends our sense of order.
posted by Stephan Wilkinson on 07/29/11 at 6:05 PM
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