Off Duty San Antonio K9 Officer Involved In Dog Shooting

“… the off-duty officer fired multiple shots at the dogs attacking his K9. Two of the neighbor's dogs were reportedly hit, officials said, and the K9 was also hit in the gunfire.”

"A San Antonio Police K9 is dead, and two dogs were shot after an off-duty police officer tried to stop his K9 from being attacked"

This is a sad situation all the way around. Some thoughts…

Sometimes, a location will set off my internal alarm bells, telling me to be extra careful. Looking at the street view of the homes, I don’t see any obvious signs that you would need to be extra careful with a K9 or pet. This looks to have happened in a normal looking suburban neighborhood. The incident happened around lunch time. Life can be unpredictable, and bad stuff can happen anywhere, and can come into to your home and your yard. It is normal for all of us to let our guard down when at home in a peaceful looking suburban neighborhood. Most people don’t want to be in Condition Yellow at home. Here in AZ, the risk might not be another dog, it could be some kind of wild predator that can get into your yard. I think it a good idea to have a plan wherever you live to game out how you might prevent or deal with such a situation. Most people, however, are unaware of this concept because the average person doesn’t track this kind of thing in the news. They might be thinking about a burglar, but… an intrusion by another animal? Being a dog trainer, I watch for these stories to see what I might learn from them.

The news articles say 3 dogs broke through a fence to attack the K9. That indicates to me some big, strong dogs. The news says the officer and his wife couldn’t physically get the dogs apart. That isn’t unusual, especially with these many dogs. Dogs are also incredibly strong when fighting. Was the fencing inadequate to keep these dogs contained? As I look around the neighborhood on the internet using street view, the fences seem like normal fences. The news stories say the owners of these dogs had just moved in 3 weeks prior and had never seen this kind of thing from their dogs before. Dogs can be more suspicious and stressed in new environments, so that could have played a part, but there is no such information in the news that I read. We don’t know what set these dogs off. The main conclusion here for me is that all dog owners need to inspect their property walls and fencing to keep out neighbor’s dogs and wild predators. Ask, can that barrier be defeated in some way? Since the news indicates the dogs broke through the fencing, maybe that means the fencing was somehow damaged before all this happened, whether by weather, aging, or some other factor. Walk your property, go look at your boundaries. Are they still in good condition? Could an animal go under, over, or through into your property? If so, then you have some work to do.

Regarding the K9 that was killed in this situation. It is hard enough for a dog to fight off another dog, much less 3 dogs. Most K9’s aren’t selected for their aggressive capabilities to fight off another animal. They are selected, raised and trained to be relatively neutral towards other dogs. All dog fighting is not tolerated. So, this dog was confronted with a situation that it was most likely unprepared to handle. It is also going to be very difficult for someone with a firearm to shoot multiple dogs in a fast moving dog fight. There have been several stories in the news of hunters being attacked by bears and the hunters shooting themselves as they defended themselves. There are also stories of those who use a firearm to get a bear off of someone, and the person with the firearm having to be concerned that the bullet might ricochet inside the bear, make a turn, and injure the victim. Furthermore, dogs’ bodies are not the same as human bodies. As I mentioned, bullets are unpredictable once they enter tissue and hit a bone. They can deflect and go in strange directions and come out in ways that are not in line with the direction the bullet first entered. Add in all that commotion of a full-blown fight with 4 dogs, and the use of a gun, while possibly justified (I don’t know the specifics or the laws there), is going to be hard to manage. Note, the K9 was managed by a police officer, who would have had plenty of training with a firearm, and he still ended up shooting his own dog, and only shooting 2 of the 3 other dogs. If he had had some other tool, say bear spray, would that have stopped the fight? That is an unknown. Plenty of bear attacks, as a parallel example, are stopped with bear spray, but a percentage of those cases the bear spray doesn’t work and the victim is either killed, badly mauled, or the bear must be shot. A split second decision had to be made, and I don’t think you can second guess what the officer did, especially when all you must go on is what some reporters have written down. Furthermore, reaching into a full-blown fight is very dangerous. People have done that before, and then all the dogs turned on the humans and the humans were then killed. Dogs have also been in fights, now in a frenzy, going on to attack nearby humans. So, doing nothing isn't always the best option, either. There is no easy answer. I think this entire situation is a tragedy for all involved. The news indicates the owners of the 3 dogs have been cited for some violations, but I don’t know if those alleged violations had not been made if that would have prevented this from ever happening. 

Moral to the story? Well, from my perspective, I’ll adopt the Boy Scout motto: “Be Prepared”. I have been criticized for noting dangers and risks when I evaluate situations. Some people tire of my opinions because they want to only hear stuff that fits the happy stories in their heads. I look for risks to help my students who might not focus on "what could be". I believe there is wisdom in the streets; wisdom is to be found everywhere if you look for it; good outcomes are mostly a result of experience, knowledge, and acquired judgment; and sometimes it is a good idea to lean on the wisdom of others, such as elders or professionals, to advise you. For this case, I would say, for me, a few things that stand out: a.) develop a Code Yellow mindset; b.) inspect your property to prevent escapes and intrusions; and c.) have a plan. People do this with respect to prevention of burglaries. We plan and consider that people might want to get into our property. We do that when considering what we would need to do if we had to escape our property, such as if the house was on fire. However, people who are not dog trainers possibly don’t consider that animals can also be motivated to get into or out of our property.