Cowichan News Leader
March 6,2003
Are these dogs vicious?
By Jennifer Hourihan
Joan Bell’s physical wounds have long healed, but the emotional ones remain.
“I have never in my life been nervous about dogs, but now there are times when I am out walking and dogs come up to me and I just go to pieces,” the Chemainus resident says.
Bell received bites to her hands and ear while trying to protect her poodle-shitzu cross, Max, from attack by two lab crosses owned by Mavis Sheikh of Chemainus.
Those two dogs were designated as vicious by North Cowichan animal control officers following the attack.
But after a story about Sheikh’s effort to have the designation lifted appeared in the News Leader, Bell said she feels people need to hear her side of what happened.
“I feel really badly about the whole thing,” she said. “I really don’t want to see the dogs killed.”
A long-time dog person, Bell said she at first felt no need to report the attack. She believes the dogs were not interested in hurting her, and only bit her as “collateral damage” when she tried to stop them from hurting Max.
Bell said when she had her wounds treated at the hospital, staff there as well others in the community urged her to report what happened.
“I got to thinking, what if it had been a child and not an adult?” she said. “I don’t think those dogs would go after a child, but if the child was walking a small dog, the same thing could happen.”
Bell said she doesn’t want to see the dogs taken away from their owner or destroyed, and she applauds Sheikh for rescuing the two animals by adopting them from the SPCA.
But she believes the dogs do need to be properly managed, under the guidelines set out in the order designating them as vicious.
That order states Sheikh is to have the dogs leashed and muzzled when off her property, and to walk only one dog at a time.
Had Sheikh been walking only one dog, she likely would have been able to keep it under control and prevent it from biting, Bell said.
“As long as she complies with that order, everything will be okay