BASS President Says Dog Attack Was an Accident

The scene that Kinnelon resident Alice Moore described to the Bloomingdale Council Tuesday of her dog being attacked by a neighbor's adopted dog was a horrific one, but, according to (BASS) President Ellen Ribitzki, it was an accident.

"My dog was in the dog's mouth and the dog was shaking her," Moore said before passing out photos of her 13-pound Bichon Frise's injuries.

The dog that allegedly attacked Moore's dog, Shadow, was adopted about a month before the incident by a Kinnelon family from the Bloomingdale Animal Shelter.

Moore came before the council Tuesday to question if the adoption process included testing for aggression.

"These dogs should be really scrutinized," she said, later adding, "I just want to understand the background of this animal."

According to Certified Dog Trainer Jaimee Wenzel, the trainer who worked with Shadow at the shelter, the dog's background was incident-free, with Shadow, the female dog, showing no aggression to people when tested (see video for food aggression test demonstration). However, Wenzel said she had warned the family who adopted Shadow that the dog did show interest in chasing prey.

Wenzel said she is able to distinguish whether a dog would chase small animals by monitoring their behavior while they are at the shelter. In Shadow's case, Wenzel said she noticed the dog became highly focused on small animals, such as squirrels and chipmunks, when they went on walks.

This type of behavior is common in dogs, but they can be rehabilitated to not chase the smaller animals, Wenzel said. In fact, the family had brought Shadow to several obedience classes at the shelter after adopting her, but after the incident, Shadow is now back there again.

Wenzel said she warned the family of precautions they should take with Shadow and that she needed to be kept on a leash, however, during the incident, Moore said the dog had escaped an enclosed fence.

"She should not be unsupervised, she needs to be on a leash. She's not an off-leash dog," she said. On the other hand, Wenzel said Shadow does do well with children and plays well with other dogs.

Ribitzki said it has not yet been decided whether Shadow can be adopted again, although Moore had requested that Shadow not be euthanized and even made a donation to the animal shelter. Still, Wenzel said families need to be prepared to work with the dogs they adopt from shelters because they require a special level of care.

"Any time you adopt a shelter dog and take them home, it's a 24/7 job," she said.