Owner of mauled cat won't let him to 'die in vain'

Sarah Volpenhein | Marion Star

MARION — Within a month, Laura Culp has seen two of her eight cats killed by a neighborhood dog on the loose.

One of them, Cotton, she had raised from a kitten.

"Cotton died in my arms," she said, recounting how the dog went onto her porch in July and snatched the cat from the chair where he was sleeping. "To see him killed in front of me and the horror in his eyes ... I've got to do something."

The animal lover lives on Girard Avenue in her late mother's house, which is like a sanctuary for cats, the felines lounging in flower bushes or on patio chairs. She points to the alley behind her house, which she jokes should be called "Cat Alley" for all the cats she has plucked from its pavement.

At a council committee meeting Monday, Culp called on city officials to hold irresponsible dog owners accountable and to have the dog that killed her cats deemed "dangerous," a label that would place more restrictions on the dog.

"I need some reassurance that I'm not going to lose any more of my animals," Culp told city lawmakers and officials, saying besides the emotional loss, she has spent thousands of dollars on her cats in vet visits and other bills.

For Culp, it is only a matter of time before the dog that killed her cats, one on July 10 and another on Aug. 5, hurts a child.

"Then it's a tragedy," she said.

In 2017, there were at least 12 reports of dogs attacking children in Marion, including a 5-year-old boy who was bit in the face and injured last July, according to records obtained from the Marion County Sheriff's Office, which runs the county dog pound.

Last year, there were at least four reports of dogs killing other dogs or cats, according to the records. There were several other reports of loose or stray dogs attacking or injuring other dogs that year.

The problem is not unique to Marion. Across the state, cities grapple with how to respond to threatening or violent dogs on the loose, especially in places where high-profile dog attacks have caught the public's attention, including Dayton where a woman was mauled to death in 2014.

The owner of the dog that Culp says killed her cats has been cited three times for failure to confine, a minor misdemeanor. He was found guilty of the first offense, but the other two — which stem from the deaths of Culp's two cats — are still pending.

If convicted, his dog could be deemed a "dangerous dog," meaning he would have to obtain liability insurance for the dog and register it as "dangerous" with the county auditor.

But Culp doesn't see why it had to take the lives of two of her cats to get to this point.

"Once a dog bites, most of the people say they'll do it again," she said.

Marion County Sheriff Tim Bailey said that in this case, the dog owner had been cited both times he allowed his dog to run free.

"We did what the code requires us to do," he said.

But Culp and other local animal advocates want stricter laws for irresponsible pet owners, particularly laws that would label a dog "dangerous" if it killed a cat, thereby making the dog subject to more requirements and stiffer penalties if it steps out of line. Under current law, a dog may be deemed dangerous if it kills another dog; cats aren't mentioned.

"Definitely, consequences for not confining pets (or) your dog should be more consistent and stronger," said Jeanine Tarantino, founder and director of Homeless to Home, a local animal rescue and shelter.

However, Marion City Law Director Mark Russell said there wasn't much the city could do, saying it could not enact stricter dog laws than the state.

"We would be challenged constitutionally, and we would lose," Russell said, asserting that change had to come from the statehouse. "The state's really designed how they want dogs to be designated, and they want it to be uniform across the state."

The law director pointed to a section of state law that prohibits cities from enacting and enforcing codes that "conflict with" state law.

However, that hasn't stopped some Ohio cities, such as Dayton, from adopting and enforcing stricter laws for problematic dogs, said Mark Kumpf, president of the Ohio County Dog Wardens Association. That's the city where a woman, Klonda Richey, was mauled to death by her neighbor's dogs. She had called authorities there dozens of times to report concerns with the dogs in the the two years leading up to the attack, according to the Dayton Daily News.

In Dayton's city code, a dangerous dog is defined as "any dog, other than a police dog, which without provocation has a propensity to bite or cause physical harm to a person or pet," with pet including not only dogs, but cats, birds, rabbits, hamsters and more.

Dayton's code has stiffer penalties for law-breaking dog owners and also makes it an offense for any dog to "snap at or attempt to bite or attempt to cause physical harm to any other person, domestic animal, or feline."

Several Dayton-area state lawmakers have been trying to pass measures that would toughen the state's existing dog laws.

A pair of bills — H.B. 352 and S.B. 195 — has been introduced in the Ohio General Assembly that would make it easier to hold irresponsible dog owners accountable. If passed, the legislation would require that reports of dog law violations be investigated and would expand the definitions of "vicious" and "dangerous" dogs.

Other legislative measures to change the state's dog laws in recent years have stalled. The most recent overhaul of the state's dog laws was in 2012 when, among other things, language was removed from the law that defined any pit bull dogs as a "vicious dog," the most serious classification.

In Marion, the city effectively does not enforce its own dog laws, some of which are outdated. The city code defining pit bulls as "vicious" is on questionable legal footing because of a 2017 appellate court ruling out of a Licking County case.

Instead, the city relies on the county dog warden to enforce dog laws within the city limits, though the dog warden only has authority to enforce state laws, not city ones. The most common offense the dog warden will charge a dog owner with is failure to confine, a minor misdemeanor that on the first offense has a maximum fine of $100 and on subsequent offenses has a maximum fine of $250 and a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail.

If the city wanted to enforce its own codes, it could task police officers with doing so or hire an animal control officer.

Russell said he is looking into updating the city's codes and believes he could use a city law that holds animal owners liable for property damage — pets qualify as property under state law — to better hold irresponsible dog owners to account.

As for local animal advocates, they don't plan to let this issue lie anytime soon.

"I didn't want Cotton to die in vain," said Culp. "You always have those special cats, and Cotton was definitely special."

svolpenhei@gannett.com

740-375-5155

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