If local animal lovers had managed to recruit thousands to pester Dallas City Council members about the injustice of euthanizing the dogs that mauled Antoinette Brown to death in 2016, would our elected officials have caved to pressure and given those animals a reprieve?

That's the question I and many others have asked since the saga of Deep Ellum's Lamb of God and, more recently, the second chance sought for a dog that bit a 2-year-old at a pet adoption event at Klyde Warren Park.

Tens of thousands of words — most of them supportive — have already been littered over Lamb of God. So far, thank goodness, Rusty has not gathered a similar number of City Hall-swamping supporters, but my confidence in that remaining the case is not high.

And no doubt the Lamb of God case set a precedent that Rusty's rescue group almost certainly will use when it gets its day in court Friday.

In Lamb of God's case, I remain baffled by Dallas City Attorney Larry Casto's 180 to get around a city law that clearly called for the dog to be euthanized after it bit a 13-year-old boy in the face.

I have no doubt that one or more City Council members got tired of the bombardment of email and bad publicity and told Casto to find a loophole.

As Robert Wilonsky wrote, Casto's was "a remarkable about-face given that two days ago, city attorneys were in municipal court arguing that the dog needed to be destroyed after last month's biting incident, which sent a boy to the hospital for five stitches on his left cheek."

So make a dog a local celebrity and it doesn't matter that it caused bodily harm.

That kind of thinking sets a precedent for the next attack. And, just as important, these time-consuming fights, mostly carried out in the media, get in the way of what Dallas failed to be focused on for way too long: public safety and getting loose dogs off the streets of southern Dallas.

I'm not interested in owning the dog beat, but I am passionate about using my voice at every opportunity to improve the quality of life in the southern half of the city. I'm committed to making sure that we put in place the right policies when it comes to loose dogs — and executing those policies correctly.

That's why I'm writing today.

The amount of energy that Dallas Animal Services has had to spend on Lamb of God and Rusty takes away from new Dallas Animal Services director Ed Jamison's top job: Getting the dogs picked up in southern Dallas.

While Lamb and Rusty win so many hearts, here's an example of a story Dallas residents would be better-served to rally around: I took a southern Dallas source to lunch two weeks ago to discuss racial equity efforts she's leading, only to learn that her biggest concern is the packs of dogs living in several vacant houses near her residence in the Illinois Avenue-Lancaster Road area.

Yes, she says, the loose dog problem has gotten a little better, but in her neighborhood, it's still gruesome and prevents her from walking her own dogs. If we want to come together for justice, how about we worry about that neighborhood?

Neither Lamb of God nor Rusty were loose dogs. But the amount of time they have sucked from Dallas Animal Services is time DAS could have spent on the loose dog problem.

Similarly, lost in the weeks of massive coverage of the Lamb of God story and the more recent stories about Rusty the rescue are the 70 dogs a day coming into Dallas Animal Services, dogs that haven't bitten anyone and that need homes. I'd much rather see the publicity and letter-writing campaigns be on their behalf.

But DAS will be in court Friday again, when a judge will have to make a decision about whether Rusty goes back to the rescue group, Dallas Pets Alive, is euthanized or, like Lamb, gets escorted — by DAS field officers who otherwise would be picking up loose dogs — down to Austin Pets Alive for rehabilitation.

About 2,000 loose dogs are coming into the Dallas shelter each month. Against those numbers, Jamison and his team are still managing an amazing live-release rate; in December, the rate was about 88 percent.

When I look at how much time Lamb and Rusty have sucked up, I seriously don't know how the DAS is pulling it off.

For my money, I'd like to see Dallas Pets Alive — an excellent rescue operation — put its energy into leading other organizations in making sure that rescue events are as safe as possible, both for the dogs, potential adopters and even the random folks likely to drop into the scene in a place as popular as Klyde Warren.

And I'd like to see stiffer spines among those at Dallas City Hall who thought making an exception for Lamb of God was no big deal.

Lamb had a really dreadful life, which may well have played a role in his three bite incidents. And no reasonable person wants to see a dog euthanized.

But by caving to pressure around Lamb's story, Dallas City Hall has potentially created an even bigger problem by being more interested in warm and fuzzy PR than in making hard decisions.

Seriously, does anyone north of Interstate 30 even remember the Antoinette Brown story? Lamb of God and Rusty didn't kill anyone, but the improper resolutions of their cases is how we wind up with dogs that do.