On January 30, the Army Medical Command at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, issued a memorandum to provide guidance on the use of service animals, animal assisted therapies, and animal assisted activities in healthcare settings. The memo applies to “all medical treatment facilities (MTF) using animals in healthcare setting (Service Dog programs, Animal Assisted Therapies (AAT) and Animal Assisted Activities (AAA).” The memo is not just medical or institutional in its applicability, however, since it also specifies that it applies to “recovering service...
Monday, March 26, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Another Pit Bull Tragedy
In a scene that belongs in an episode of Southland, a 911 caller mistakenly informed the police that a neighbor’s house was being burglarized, which resulted in a young man’s pit bull being shot by the police when they arrived. Pit bulls are wonderful dogs, but they come with risks. Being large-jawed, they are more capable than many breeds of doing damage with their bites, though no more so than Great Danes, which have obtained the image of gentle giants from Scooby-Doo and Marmaduke but which a century ago, as I have discussed here before,...
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
The Dogs of Marco Polo
Lest we accept the narrative of Marco Polo’s travels too readily, perhaps it is best to begin near the end of his journey with a description of the Island of Angamanain (one of the Andaman Islands south of Burma, west of Malaysia):“Angamanain is a very large Island. The people are without a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I assure you all the men of this Island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise;...
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Two Recent Attacks: A Dog Is Muzzled in New York, A Boy Killed in South Carolina
About five million Americans are bitten by dogs ever year. The United States Postal Service, the American Veterinary Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics sponsor the National Dog Bite Prevention Week in May, and USPS reports that about 3,000 city and rural carriers are bitten by dogs every year. The USPS regularly posts tips about how to reduce dog bite risks. A significant number of law enforcement officers are also bitten, as the first case below describes. The officer was trying to interview the neighbor of someone...
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Putting Dog in Back of Truck to Find Suspects Was Not Illegal Search, But Were Police Really Looking for Drugs?
We have discussed traffic stop cases where a dog, supposedly on its own initiative jumps into a car. As long as the police did not encourage the dog in this action, or facilitate it, courts have generally allowed the evidence following an alert of a dog that has entered a car. See Police and Military Dogs, Chapter 10: Automobile Sniffs, section on jumping into a vehicle. In a recent case arising in Rhode Island, however, the handler directed the dog to jump into the back of a rental truck, and the evidence was not suppressed, because the prosecution...
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