Unlocking the Secrets of Canine Aggression with Dr. Jim Crosby

Understanding Dog Aggression with Dr. Jim Crosby


Announcer: 0:02

Welcome to the Starlight Pet Talk podcast, where we'll talk about and explore ways to help pet parents and future pet parents learn everything they need to know to have a happy and healthy relationship with their pet. So, sit up and stay for Starlight Pet Talk rescue, adoption and pet parenting done right.

Amy Castro: 0:25

Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk. I'm your host, Amy Castro, and today we're here to talk about a really serious subject, and that is dog aggression. I think we've all seen the headlines and the videos of extreme examples of dog aggression, and hopefully none of us ever end up in those types of situations. However, as somebody that works in rescue and adopts animals out to people, understanding aggression in dogs and other animals is a really important part of what we do to do our very, very best to make sure that both humans and animals are safe, and I am really excited to have with us today, Dr Jim Crosby. He is a canine aggression expert and he has focused his career on serious aggression in dogs, dog bite situations and fatal dog attacks on humans. He's also a retired lieutenant with the Sheriff's Office in Jacksonville, Florida, so I'm pretty sure he's probably seen a lot and we're going to hear quite a bit about that. So, Jim, thank you so much for making the time. I know you're a busy guy.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 1:29

Well, thanks for inviting me, Amy. I'm glad to be on here and talking with you and with your listeners, and sharing some information.

Amy Castro: 1:38

We really appreciate it because, like I said, it's something that is always a concern to me as somebody that puts animals in people's homes. I never would want to put anybody knowingly in danger and I know that sometimes in rescue there's such degrees of what people find acceptable to adopt out or what people find acceptable to bring into their home.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 2:01

Having worked with rescues for years and also having run two animal control agencies where we did adoptions and so forth on top of the normal animal control stuff, I feel your pain.

Amy Castro: 2:14

Yeah, it's definitely a challenge. So, let's talk about and it seems kind of crazy to ask what is aggression, because I think we all feel like we know what that is, but from your perspective, what is aggression? We're focusing specifically on dogs today.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 2:29

Well, something a lot of people don't understand is aggression is not a single behavior. Aggression is a group or, as I call it, a cluster of behaviors. Then an animal whether it's a lizard, a dog or us uses to manipulate their environment, especially for survival reasons. So, aggression as a big block contains a lot of little behaviors, things like biting, warning, growling, showing teeth, body postures, movement back and forth. Those are all parts of the aggressive cluster and they can all happen outside of aggression, even biting. So, when your dog runs out and grabs a tennis ball and comes running back to you, they're using their teeth. So that's using teeth for something other than ripping your arm off. So, it's a group of behaviors. And the other thing I try to explain to people is aggression is normal, it's part of survival And so it's not a disorder or a disease that has to be cured. Instead, it's something we need to be aware of, we need to understand, and we need to understand the reasons for dogs, in our case, exhibiting those behaviors. You want to see aggression, especially on a social level. Watch the real housewives of plugging whatever city you want. That's aggression.

Amy Castro: 4:09

Yeah, definitely, and as human beings we have so many different levels of. I mean, I’m a communication. I like to think of myself as a communication expert. I've been working in the, you know, for my professional work and you know there's direct aggression, there's physical aggression, there's passive aggression, there's aggression by nonaction. You know, just being passive and not doing something can be a sign of aggression, and I think that's important that we understand that in animals as well, because too many times people don't like you know, like you mentioned several different aspects of aggression, so people pretty much get the biting you know is probably aggressive. People will label growling as aggressive And, yeah, that's a sign of aggression. But there's all those other things that you mentioned that people either miss, don't understand or misinterpret, and I think it's important for people to have a better understanding of those things. And you know as much as we don't like to think about some of these extreme situations. Could you share with us what you have seen on the extreme level when it comes to aggression, but especially fatal dog bites it seems? I think people think it's unbelievable, like my dog could never do that And I always think could any dog do that?

Dr. Jim Crosby: 5:24

Well, yeah, and actually that kind of scratching your head thing was. What got me started on this path in the first place is that I had retired from the sheriff's office and became aware around 2000 or so of these cases. And in 2001, there was the famous case of Diane Whipple, who was killed by the two dogs in San Francisco, and I started wondering how is it that the human-animal relationship goes so sideways that a dog actually kills a person? I mean, we've had these guys running around our feet and sleeping in our beds for somewhere between 15 and 40,000 years. So, you know, how did that go so sideways? And I found out that, although there had been some academic reviews of reports and so forth, nobody had ever looked at these cases with the eyes of a cop. Nobody had ever gone to the scenes or been able to go to the scenes, and nobody had ever put hands on these dogs after they did whatever it is they did, which I've been able to do now for close to 20 years. And so I've had my hands on around 60 dogs post-attack that have killed human beings, looking for the why, looking for the how And that's what both my master's research and my PhD research was on was looking at these attacks, finding out the circumstances, and I've been able to put together some profiles of the basic groups of behaviors that seem to lead to these, which hopefully will help us going back down the road to safely, or more safely, evaluate dogs that have less serious histories, that are coming through rescue or adoption and so forth.

Amy Castro: 7:21

Just that information is so invaluable And I do want to talk about what those signs are that you learned. But you said something to me in our pre-recording conversation. We were talking about the demographics of victims And I have now tested several people I know, like who do you think is the number one category when you take? you know, gender, race, age, et cetera. You know some demographic categories. Who do you think is the top person that tends to get fatally killed? you know fatally killed that gets killed by a dog. And you know several people thought it was small children. A lot of people said teenage boys. I'm not sure where that came from, but what's the truth about that? Because I was really surprised. Well, once you said it, I wasn't surprised because it makes sense, but at first it was like really.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 8:11

Over the 500 plus cases that I went through and studied and amassed as much data as possible and the nearly 40 cases that I've been on scene are. The most common victim of a fatal dog attack in the United States is a woman in her 30s in her own home by a dog that typically she either owns or is caring for, and this is in a neighborhood that typically has an adjusted gross income of over $100,000 per household. So not what we thought. This is not a crappy neighborhood socioeconomically challenged phenomenon. The second most likely target is a little boy around two years old, which is weird because it's way more little boys than little girls. So that's something again that I want to look further. How are we treating our little boys? that's exposing them to these dangers that we're not doing with the little girls and yes, these are still in relatively high socioeconomic class areas that these are happening. Yeah, that's um, yeah, And the scary thing is what's the profile of your at least in my experience with volunteers and so forth and with rescues? what is your most common demographic on people who are doing their best to rescue dogs Women kind of in their thirties or late thirties, at their homes taking care of dogs?

Amy Castro: 9:52

Yeah exactly. Yeah, exactly, and I, you know it's um, I wish I was still in my thirties, but not really. I have learned a lot since then. But um, yeah, I mean to the point where and I uh, I don't remember the name of the guy, but there is a gentleman who makes TikTok videos and he kind of makes fun of the crazy lady who, you know, gets out of her car and, just like, snatches up a dog off of the street and you know the dog's snarling and snapping and it's like, oh good boy, let's come home to my house.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 10:27

You know, it's, uh, I think, an extreme example, but Yeah Well, as, as we, and you understand this also, as we say in the South, bless their hearts. But, um, that, you know, tends to be our victim demographic. Now, why is it? because this demographic is more exposed to unknown and strange dogs or dogs they've had for a short period of time? Is it they're putting themselves voluntarily in situations to save animals that maybe we should think twice about saving? I don't know why, but the numbers and the numbers were statistically significantly significant in my studies that this is, this is who we're getting wiped out.

Amy Castro: 11:15

Yeah, and I think it's probably a little of both.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 11:18

It's strange, because it's strange that you mentioned teenage boys, because very, very, very few of those are ever killed Now. is it because they run faster?

Amy Castro: 11:28

Maybe, probably, it can't hurt.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 11:31

Is it because they've got more sense? Well, no, because I was a teenage boy once and teenage boys have zero sense. Teenage boys are probably, I think the lowest, or teenagers period are the lowest number of people that are victims of fatal dog attacks. Maybe they survive more often because they're just. They can just take more damage, you know.

Amy Castro: 11:57

They bounce back better than we do. Well, and you know it gets me thinking too about the and I'll just kind of speak to the whole rescue side of things is that there tends to be at least when I'm looking at it from the outside, it's almost like a group think type scenario where a rescue group or a person, you know, an influential person basically has a certain philosophy about what should be saved, what we should take in, what we can handle, what we're capable of dealing with, and somehow other people in in the vicinity of this person gain from that comfort. I feel like a lot of times people are probably ignoring their own instincts for whatever reason. I want to be helpful. I don't want to look like I'm afraid of something. I don't want to be that volunteer who says, uh-uh, I’m not taking anything bigger than a Chihuahua, or I'm only going to take cats.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 12:52

Well and that's something we want run not only in the rescue world and the shelter world, but even within animal control and with their behavior consultants and trainers. it's not a contest to see who can handle the biggest and the baddest dogs or who can put themselves out there and prove some kind of a point. I've handled a lot of dogs, like I said, that have actually killed human beings, and if I'm working with a dog and it's giving me certain signals and groups of signals and responding in certain ways, I may say, uh no, this dog is not coming out of the kennel. I don't need to prove anything here. The people that worry me are the ones that show you their arms and go see all the bite scars. I'm an aggression expert. I know what I'm doing. I've been bitten Amy a bunch of times and every time it's been my fault. It's every time been my fault, which is why I wear things like Kevlar gloves and sleeves and pants that are bite resistant not training pants, but actual anti bite Kevlar stuff and boots and because a lot of times the dogs that come to me, whatever has happened last, may be their last strike. And I refuse to A try to be Mr. Badass, because there's always. There's always somebody or something out there that's bigger and better than you are and kick your rear end, And I also refuse to have my mistake be the mistake that costs an animal its life.

Amy Castro: 14:34

Exactly, that's, yeah, that's. That's, I think, a huge piece of it that people don't think about. They think they're doing the animal a favor And, in the end, they put the animal in a situation that pushed them past a point of being salvageable for whatever, what organizations, guidelines might be, and there's plenty of.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 14:51

there's plenty of animals that are even with just serious bites and regular bites, that are victims of stupid human tricks, like a guy had once that long set up to it. but despite warnings, this person goes over to a dog, says dude, I'm like a dog whisperer, grabs this big dog by the cheeks and leans in and kisses it on the nose, despite growls, warnings and everything else, And the dog took his nose off. Stupid human trip. Fortunately, I was able to talk to the legal people involved and go yeah, the only thing we need to do is make sure that this person isn't allowed within 10 yards of anything more dangerous than a goldfish.

Amy Castro: 15:34

Yeah, it's unfair to the animals that we put them in some of these situations. It reminds me and it drives me insane when I see videos Usually it's involving children of people. They'll proudly post the picture of their toddler sitting on their dog and it is quite obvious to me, as a you know, I know this much about dog behavior that that dog is not enjoying that experience and it's just, in my opinion, just going to be a matter of time when you push that animal too far.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 16:06

Dogs are incredibly tolerant I mean the stuff we do to them and they're also incredibly forgiving, because no matter what people have been done whether it's having their kid jump up and down on them or jumping in their face or mistreating them, they always want to forgive us.

Amy Castro: 16:29

So, what are the signs that we could share with our listeners that they might be missing, whether they're volunteering or even in their own pet? Because that's another thing You know, as, again, in the rescue, we get these calls and it's usually somewhere between a dog that's 15 months to 24 months, it seems to you know. They get to that level of maturity and certain behaviors start creeping in that were not there when they were the eight-week-old or 12-week-old puppy that they got, and I know part of it is the whole process of how you're raising that animal. But what are, what are some of the signs that people are missing, before the bite, even before the growl, that they should be paying attention to that. This is your dog trying to tell you I am not okay with whatever is going on here. I'm not comfortable, yeah.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 17:12

Well, to begin with, you need to remember that and the way I put it to people is a dog in that age group is like having a 17-year-old human on Friday night. He's got $20 bill in his pocket and the keys to the Mustang. And he's you know, he's not good. No, exactly You know. So, you've got that going on. But the biggest thing I think we need to stress and the people need to do is dogs have a language. It's not verbal, it’s body language and they talk to us all the time. Dogs they and they don't whisper, they talk very clearly and we can talk very clearly back and recognize that. For instance, if the dog growls at you, that's not a time to punish it. That's a time to listen and pay attention. If the dog backs up and cower and goes off in the corner, it doesn't need a hug. It's communicating and it's telling you I'm afraid of something here. So, instead of going “oh baby,” instead, figure out what the dog is perceiving as a threat, because that's the key Whether it's a real threat, a perceived threat, and how you can build a relationship using your body, where you're looking, how you're standing, how you're moving, to build a relationship with that dog. That's how I've been able to handle dogs that have had horrible results to aggressive problems is by, even short term, using my body language and their body language to communicate, to build even just a short period of a relationship. You know I mentioned before there's always somebody bigger or better. As a police officer, I was taught as a rookie by a senior officer don't get all pumped up and think you're going to go out there and kick everybody's butt, because there's always somebody bigger, better or who has less to lose than you do. So, instead of trying to be a bully or dominate using force is not how we need to do it Instead, communicate, learn to give a clear message and learn to receive that message. That's the core of communication. The message has to be transmitted and received and understood the same on both ends. And you don't have to be special to do that. It ain't magic And, again, it ain't whispering, it’s just learning that when your dog does something, if you reach for them and touch them and they shy away, maybe that hurts and you need to pay attention. And again, if people would just pay attention to their pets, by and large, they're trying to talk to us all day long and they really want to.

Amy Castro: 20:20

Yeah, a key point there, too, is that the language that they communicate with body language. Obviously, they don't have the ability to use words like we do, and what we do is, instead of trying to understand their communication, and shutting up. I think people talk too damn much to their dog. Excuse my language. It's like sometimes, the more you're running your mouth, the more you're reinforcing whatever it is that they're doing and you're not helping the situation. Just be quiet and listen to what the dog is trying to say and react accordingly. It's just.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 20:51

AA Milne in Winnie the Pooh or actually I think it was actually in Benjamin Hoff’s the Tao of Pooh has Piglet saying something along the lines of lots of people talk to animals. Not so many listen to them. And that's a very true thing. We need to listen and we need to pay attention and not just assume. And one of the things I tell people is ideally, what we want is not compliance from our dogs, but cooperation. We don't want them doing things because they're afraid of consequences. We want them doing things because they understand what we're asking for and they want to work with us. The language is it's not difficult to learn and there's plenty of resources out there, but you got to pay attention to it.

Amy Castro: 21:45

Yeah, definitely. So, you mentioned again the animal that's walking away from you, that's going to a corner and not looming over them, grabbing them around the neck, doing some of the. You know, I think so many of our signs of human affection are pretty aggressive to dogs They are. What are you doing? You know the dog doesn't want to be hugged or dog doesn't want to be. Just because these little doesn't mean he wants to be ripped up off the ground every five seconds by strangers, just carried around.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 22:13

Think about if you're walking along minding your own business and some 40-foot giant reached over and grabbed you under the arms and picked you up and said oh hi there, how are you today? And you're going and thinking, oh God, I hope he doesn't drop me and he's going to break my neck. And yeah, I understand this is a source of affection, but geez, I really didn't want to be snatched off the street right now. There's that part of the human interaction. The other thing is the signs are not always you know the dog is backed in the corner, but we should be looking for smaller signs. It's like when I evaluate a dog that's been involved in a bite situation, I don't need, unlike some people, to precipitate a bite for good television. Instead, I’m looking for where's the dog looking? Is it trying to disengage? What about tension in the body? Did the dog go from like this to frozen like that? and tension? Look at the eyes of the dog. Not only where are they looking, but one of the earliest physiological signals of stress is that the pupils of their eyes will suddenly enlarge more than they need to for the level of light. Why? Because the dog's brain is considering whether they're about to be addressed with a fight or flight situation. All of their scanners, all the Star Trek sensors, are put on high alert so they can figure out what's coming, those little signs of tension like they go from, like your typical yeah, yeah, yeah, gold retriever Yeah with the mouth loose to just simply the mouth tight and closed and they're looking around. There's lots of these signals that are subcritical, but that are early warning signals that I'm doing something. Now, if I get this signal, let's back off, let the dog calm down and let's figure out what started that snowball rolling. and doing behavior, consulting and working and trying to remedy some of these problems That's what I'm looking for. Again, I’m not trying to get the dog to bite me. When dogs bite, it hurts and it doesn't succeed in doing it, proving anything. Instead, I want to see. okay, the dog looks at me sideways and gets tense if I walk towards its bowl. I don't have to take the bowl away from them to know that I may have a problem here with resource guarding. If I touch the dog and it stiffens up, is it because I'm touching him or is it because of where I'm touching him? Maybe we have an underlying medical issue? All these little signs can help us be so much better partners with our dogs understanding what they like, understanding what they don't like, and understanding at least as much as we can because there are, after all, not humans in fur coats, they're little aliens but understanding more of how they perceive the world.

Amy Castro: 25:33

I think, respecting it too Absolutely. I'm not talking about putting your dog on a pedestal from a respect standpoint, but respecting that they have their right to, whether it's their personal space or to be uncomfortable in a certain situation. it's not for us to tell them that's wrong or to necessarily fix that. We need to understand it better.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 25:57

We don't need to punish them having the natural behaviors we expect from whoever they are. I mean, nobody again with any sense goes out in the wild and runs up and hugs a lion because the lion isn't going to take that very well and they're going to do what lions do. But they'll run up to some stranger's dog that may have its own set of problems and expect that they can impose themselves on that dog with no consequences and that the dog is expected to simply sit there and take it.

Amy Castro: 26:39

Yeah, exactly, you had mentioned resource guarding and one of the things that I wanted to kind of talk about were, you know, under this umbrella of aggression, you know we hear about resource guarding or food aggression, we hear about barrier aggression, fear aggression, thoughts. That might help kind of clarify some of that. Okay, I know you were talking about, you know, aggression versus anxiety and knowing those differences.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 27:04

Well, yeah, there's a bunch of differences I wish people would understand, and one of them is fear is an acute response. It's right now, right here, to a specific trigger. Anxiety is a chronic term. It's a chronic condition that the dog may, for a long time, be showing against subcritical or less than emergency responses, but it definitely affects their life And, just like with people, I’ve seen dogs. For instance, after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, I was there for quite a while. I've seen dogs with PTSD because they've been placed in stressful environments for a period of time, just like humans. Or maybe they've had one horribly critical experience and that's going to resound and echo through their lives for a long time. So, lumping things as well this is this kind of aggression, or there's an author out there that has like 47 different kinds of aggression. That's not the point. I look at it as what is the purpose of the behavior? not the intent, because we're not trying to, we can't even read each other's minds and we're the same species. What's the purpose? Is it to something like get space? Is it to protect a resource or territory which is a resource, or a person which is a resource? or is it for the purpose of gaining nutrition, bottom line predation, and that pretty well gives you all of that in an easy package. Female dog is protecting your pups. That's a resource. Why? Because those are passing the DNA along to the next generation. Dog is running up and down its fence barking at people. It's protecting the resource because home is where affection and food and all of that comes from. And it may not matter what specific item they're protecting. They're simply protecting their resources and otherwise needing space. That's basically perceiving a threat and again, it doesn't have to be a real threat, but perception of a threat that the dog feels like it needs to gain space from for whatever reason, either to evaluate, to get away because, remember, most animals kind of accept humans. The default response is run away and live to fight another day. So, with most animals, if they can get space to get the heck out of dodge, that's their preferred response. So, you've got some very basic. When we look at bites and behaviors for their purpose, to me that tells us a lot more than trying to go. Well, is this dog trying to show this or that, or no? what's the purpose of what they're doing and how does it bottom line? how does it make sense to the dog Sometimes bite. Why? because it makes sense to them at that moment, in that circumstance. They're not evil, they're not planning on overthrowing your house. What they do makes sense. Right then, right there.

Amy Castro: 30:26

Yeah, yeah. And I think the question of and I might be wrong on this, but my feeling has always been I can better understand a dog that bites than some of the stuff that people do and accept it. They're doing it out of instinct. They're not sitting there maliciously plotting like how can I ruin Amy Castro's day today. I think I will bite her when she tries to take my bowl away to teach her a lesson for not letting me watch television last night. Versus people have all kind of intent behind their behaviors And I think that's much more malicious. So, when it comes back to so we're accepting that aggression is a natural behavior in an animal. Yet we've domesticated this animal for thousands of years and have brought it in and now start considering it a member of our family, our child for some folks. When it comes to a dog that has shown aggression, is there a line where you say, well, this and this is okay and this is okay to have And I go back to the example I gave you yesterday about and we've done this to a certain degree ourselves Like, if I have a fearful five-pound Chihuahua who may have this and this behavior and he needs to get used to that person. Maybe I'm okay with adopting that out, mostly because that Chihuahua is not going to rip a person's throat out. But if it was a larger dog that could do some serious damage to a human being, I might think differently about that behavior. Yet at the same time, there's the groups that will adopt an animal out with a whole list of caveats. Fluffy is a great dog, except can't be around dogs can't be around. Cats can't be around. Children can't be around birds can't be around. Men can't be around women who are wearing a hat. You know and that's their category versus you know the other end of the extreme, which I have seen, having worked in a shelter environment for 10 years, where a dog's been thrown in a cage and is still growling at people when they pass by after three days. We must euthanize it. It is aggressive. Where's the line that we can say we can accept this level of behavior in society because it's a dog, not a human being?

Dr. Jim Crosby: 32:41

Well, the good news is that myself and some others are working on a reexamination of behavior, evaluations and so forth so that rescues, shelters, people, whoever can start especially with animals that have a bite history doing a better job in assessing the relative risks and then use that assessment to compare against their own communities as to what level of risk the community will tolerate, what level of risk they feel they could tolerate. But the bad thing is that there's not a clear line and I wish like heck there was the questions that I ask, initially on a bite or warning behavior or whatever A was the behavior species appropriate? Was this animal acting like an animal? Was the dog showing normal behaviors? And then the second question being was that behavior proportionally appropriate? For instance, in one of the fatalities I worked, the dog clearly perceived a threat in a very specific, limited situation This was a case that's not all that far from where you are. The dog perceived the person who wound up being the victim as a potential threat to himself and particularly to his owner on his own property. Well, when I dealt with that dog at the shelter, the dog didn't give me any nonsense at all. All I ever got from him was a basic lift of the lip once. Everything else was disengagement, but his perception was that this person was a threat. Now his response was, yes, it was species appropriate, but it was way disproportionate. I mean, instead of jumping up and biting the guy and backing off to get space this dog, the first bite was to body center and eviscerated the guy's privates. Then it ripped both of his calves off and knocked him down and then it proceeded to tear his throat out and tear big pieces off the guy and actually had to be picked up and carried inside and locked in the house to stop him from continuing to take apart this now deceased person. So, the response was way disproportional and did not stop when it should have. That was even though I never got any flak out of the dog. That was a dog that was way too large of a risk to ever take a chance on putting out. But if you're walking down the kennel run and the dog growls at you, that's appropriate. It's proportionate to the threat it may be feeling because it's in a chaotic, strange environment with strange people. You know barrier aggression. It may just be an additive effect of all of the things that are happening to that dog at the time And, as you well know some of those if you either sit down and create a relationship with them or you remove the barrier safely, then suddenly that goes away because the dog is more. Oh, this is a strange person And I'm an affiliative dog that wants to have company and wants to be with humans. I'll go over and say hello, yay, not, I’m in jail and I don't know who's going to shiv me or come in and knock me down or whatever. So, I'm just going to act like Billy badass and try to scare everybody away because I'm terrified. So, I wish there was a magic test. We don't have one I wish there was too, and the problem is that, on the other hand, we've got to use our heads. I worked a case and it's not the only one that's happened, but this one I was directly involved in where a shelter got a dog in that had been running at large and, without provocation, attacked two strangers and should have been declared dangerous at that point. But this particular organization was looking to increase their live release numbers.

Amy Castro: 37:07

I want to talk about that too in order to be no kill.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 37:11

So, they shopped and three different rescues refused this particular dog and it was a big dog and they said no, this dog is way too aggressive. A fourth rescue said oh, we're going to save the dog and rehabilitate him and they took him, but they didn't have the resources, the talent or the skills to work with a dog like this and the dog already had several other strikes against it. They took the dog, held it for three weeks, did nothing with it, took it to PetSmart and adopted it out and the dog was taken home by a couple, man and woman. The woman was significantly pregnant and within less than 15 minutes of getting home in the backyard, the dog inflicted life-threatening bites on both of them.

Amy Castro: 37:58

Wow, that makes me sick to my stomach to hear that.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 38:01

It's just so preventable, exactly. Because if we had looked at the history of the dog and looked at its behavior and there was some more stuff that went on here the people that took it and adopted it out actually sued to keep it from being put down, took it back into their, their custody, and wound up with three different staff members and volunteers being significantly injured by the same dog before they finally put it down because everything should be safe. It was completely avoidable and the municipal agency and the rescue that placed this dog with no disclosure of its past wound up both being held significantly civilly liable for putting this animal out and endangering these particular people with this dog. So, there's got to be a line drawn somewhere and you know history and behavior that's happened. When we have it, you don't have it. It's strange, but you know that has to be considered. I'm sorry. There are some animals, usually not by their own fault, that just aren't suitable to be placing out in public and I understand you know running two animal control agencies. It's a hard decision but it's okay. I have a thousand units of resources available. Do I spend 900 on one dog and maybe fixing it and maybe not, and then only have 10 units left to spend on all of the other dogs, or do I spend 10 units of resources on a hundred dogs that are easy and get them out the door and put them where they're appropriate and protect the public from that one dog that may or may not ever be quite right.

Amy Castro: 40:03

Yeah, that could be a whole episode of the podcast in and of itself, absolutely. But you know my thoughts about no kill, because we get this question. A lot people will ask us are you no kill or I only want to adopt from this place because it's no kill? The intent behind no kill, from the perspective of not euthanizing perfectly healthy, mentally stable, appropriate pets that are just getting slaughtered left and right in this country. God love you. Yes, that's what we should be trying to do is to save those pets and prevent the overpopulation in the first place. But to your point about the resources for sure, the time and energy that gets put into trying to save some of these dogs that, in my opinion, probably shouldn't be saved. You know some of them and at the same time I think the whole no kill thing has now become a shell game. You have to understand what no kill really means. Number one it doesn't mean nothing ever dies. What it means is we have an acceptable level that we have established because there is no real standard. I mean, there's a pseudo 90% live release rate standard, but everybody adds their caveats to that. We're not going to include wildlife; we're not going to include this. You know, even in the Houston area, and they're fantastic organizations, but it is easy to be no kill when all you take in are fluffy little this and that, or only taking in owner surrenders, that you have the full history of the animal.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 41:38

Or you're not taking any owner surrenders because you're going to make the owners feel like they're bad people. If they Bonafede, we have a problem, and you're right, we can do this as an entire episode of like four or five hours, but yeah, it's no kill. I fully support the idea of reducing to eliminating needless shelter, killing, needless destruction of animals. I also recognize again having been the decider in a couple of different municipal agencies the challenges of resources, the responsibility to keep the public as safe as possible and to try and match these dogs with appropriate placements so that we can set them up to succeed and we shouldn't just be mass loading up like happened in another country when they had a huge stray problem. They just simply went around and shot all the dogs and loaded them in the back of a dump truck. That's not the answer. And reducing needless, unjustified killing of the animals is a wonderful goal. It's a process getting there. But we have to look at the populations also. You're in Houston, I’m in Jacksonville In Houston, you may have, because of very active participation by the public And the animals that needed to have been saved have been saved very much, and so now the animals that remain are more of a challenged population And maybe of those animals in Houston you can't save 90% of what's left, whereas perhaps in Jacksonville and again I'm not saying we have, but maybe we've had less active working on placing the placeable animals So we may be able to slide at 89 or 90 or 92% or whatever, because the group we have to grab from is different, right, so if you're in a small town out in upstate New York or something, they may be able to adopt and ship out every animal they come across. Yeah, 100% Because nobody's ever been culling the good, easy ones from the bad ones, and there's a lot of other things that add into it, but we've been aggressively trying to save as many animals as possible in this country for quite a few years. Yes, we keep producing more, but maybe we're not producing as many of the socially suitable ones as we were once upon a time.

Amy Castro: 44:43

Yeah, that's a good point, and each community has a different.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 44:46

You know again, you're still a little bit East but you look out in places like the desert Southwest, where you have limited resources, you have groups of animals, particularly on indigenous lands and empty lands, that have a different place in the local society and are less humanized and have reproduced for many generations, surviving as they can. Those are a different group. The animals I deal with down in the Caribbean, because I've worked a lot in the islands, those community dogs down there don't necessarily behave like George and Frank here because they've grown up and existed in a different set of circumstances. For instance, in Nassau there was one dog that was a community dog. We brought him into the Humane Society. All the time We gave him medical care, he had his shots, he was neutered, but he also had a bum leg that we had treated the best we could and people would call about this limping dog and we'd say where was it? Oh, it was around the Dunkin Donuts down on Bay Street. And what time of the morning. It was 10 o'clock. Okay, that's George. In 20 minutes, he'll be going down to Junkanoo Beach because he hangs out around the food stalls down there. George is okay, he was here at the shelter a month ago for his regular checkup. But yeah, that George might be a horrible dog in a home. So, there's just so much going on that you can't necessarily say well, you know, if we picked up George and tried to put him in a home and he doesn't work out, is he then a dog that's appropriate to destroy? Well, he was doing fine before we messed with it. Whereas you know, I said there's just there's so much going on that, just like with humans, there's always going to be a percentage of humans probably higher than dogs that just don't belong out wandering around mingling with the rest of the population.

Amy Castro: 47:07

Yeah, and I think you know we try so hard to humanize animals. It's like, okay, well, if you want to play that game, let's take the biting dog situation that's bitten several people, but yet we're still wanting to keep it alive. If it was a human being that had shot several people along the way, would you still want to have it out in society or would you want it in jail?

Dr. Jim Crosby: 47:28

You know it's like you're you know you want it in your backyard.

Amy Castro: 47:32

And your yeah, or put it in your, in your sister's home with her kids, kind of thing.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 47:37

I mean that's, I need to think about things. Yeah, I've had plenty of people with seriously messed up dogs going. Well, this dog's life needs to be saved. You should take him. Well, no, Yeah, I've worked with a lot of problem dogs and maybe I could improve its life, but I don't want a yard full of dogs that are likely to bite somebody and rip somebody apart. Why don't you take?

Announcer: 47:59

it.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 48:00

Oh no, I want it saved, but I'm not taking it home. Well then, don't say that I should take it home if you think it should be saved, but not at your house.

Amy Castro: 48:12

And we hear that you know, with everything in rescue, it's like people get angry when we say sorry, you know, I’m sorry, we're full and we can't take the dog that your boyfriend left behind, that now has had 12 puppies in your mobile home. I mean, that's a small place to keep that many puppies. And I was like, what am I supposed to do? Well, let me tell you what you could have, should have, would have done, but that ship has already sailed, the horses left the barn, whatever you want, whatever cliche you want, to use Another example, the people that pick animals up off the street. And it's like, well, now, what am I supposed to do with it? Well, and I hate to say, you should have left it where you found it, but now you've made it your responsibility and it's not going to become my responsibility when you brought it home. And it's growling at your kids and growling at your dog.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 49:02

And sadly because of the efforts to meet artificial target numbers, Municipal shelters and again, having run a couple, I believe firmly that a municipal shelter that's supported by tax dollars and as part of the community and is expected to protect public safety has absolutely no business refusing any animal that comes to the door Period, especially if the animal has bitten or harmed anyone. That's what they're there for. But yet to say I'm sorry, we're trying to be no kill. Literally had a client where the dog center to the hospital with life threatening injuries and wound up being permanent impairment to one arm. That tried to surrender the dog at the shelter for euthanasia with full disclosure and their response was no, that's going to affect our numbers. That person couldn't afford the couple of hundred dollars it was going to cost to take it to a private vet and they went to two vets anyway and the vets said Well, I don't feel comfortable euthanizing the dog. Okay, so what are we going to do? There's a problem there and coming up with an artificial number That well, we're, we're going to save 90%, or now some people are pushing for 98%. That number may vary from community to community as to what's actually appropriate.

Amy Castro: 50:36

Right, well, and the rules. I, you know it. As much as I sometimes did not appreciate a lot of things at the municipal shelter Where I used to volunteer, at the same time I felt for them and still feel for them Because, like people say, I don't want to take this animal there because they're going to euthanize it. Number one They get a bad rep. That is not warranted. But in this particular community, you know, the mission was if there was a stray animal in the community, we pick it up. We don't get to cherry pick what we want to pick up and so if we end up with a disproportionate number of dogs that can't be adopted out and therefore, for public safety reasons, we have a higher level of euthanasia, people should be understanding of that, not vilifying them and saying I'm now not going to Support that facility because their numbers lower, because they euthanize things, and I always want to just say well, then you take it into your house. You know, go ahead, here I'm. There's plenty of dogs I could hand over to you and let you deal with it, but it's really easy to point the finger. It's harder to be part of the solution, and sometimes the solution is making tough decisions that people aren't going to like.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 51:44

That's some of the hardest part of working in that animal control shelter business is knowing you have to make those decisions in the agencies. I worked with none of us and I included myself in the euthanasia rotation because I'm the kind of person that went, whether I was a police commander or Animal control whatever. I'm not going to tell my staff, the people I work with, do something that I'm not willing to do, so we took turns and I was certified to do that, just like the others. That's the worst part of it, but you know, it's something that is part of the fact that we've got animals that aren't going to succeed. Maybe they're a threat to the public, maybe their quality of life is extremely poor due to, usually, things that human beings have done. But You know, just simply saying that We're going to save all of them It's a great goal. We should always be working towards saving absolutely as many as possible, but recognize that that sometimes we just don't get to do what we want to and right. There are a lot of factors involved and you know, were it not for rescues like your rescue and the others that I know around the country where volunteers and people are reaching into their lives reaching into their pockets, you know, doing everything they physically can. There wasn't for those, the destruction rate of animals across the country would be Unbelievable and we would still be ears deep in problem animals.

Amy Castro: 53:35

Yeah, it sometimes feels like it's just a never-ending.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 53:38

There's a never-ending supply, unfortunately there are a lot of frustrations and challenges in the animal biz, as you well know, being right there in the front lines with a rescue and It's great when people try and tell us what they want to happen. But you know it’s like, okay, fine, come out here and let me drop you in the middle of it for Six months and see if you haven't either slit your own throat or runaway screaming.

Amy Castro: 54:10

Yeah, I don't even think it would take six months, I think. I think they'd be leaving one and we see that in days. Yeah, well, and that's what we have, you know, with our volunteer turnover. You know it sounds like even just the simple stuff, you know, not even talking about aggression, just the day-to-day glamour of animal rescue. It's not all petting puppies and kissing kittens, you know. It's poop and vomit and scratching and heat and a whole bunch of other stuff. That again, that's a whole other episode. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I feel like you've shared such helpful information for people to not only be better able to assess whether it's a pet that they're considering adopting or bringing in their home, or Assessing their own pets behavior, but just having a much better understanding of this whole issue of humans and dogs living together and recognizing and respecting that we are to completely different species and if we are going to coexist, we need to Do a better job of taking our responsibility as the humans with the ability to speak and the opposable thumbs To take the lead on that in understanding the other species. So, thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your expertise and knowledge, Jim. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Jim Crosby: 55:26

Sure. Well, thank you for having me on, Amy, and having another opportunity to try to reach out, because My feeling is that if we can change or inform even one person or one family on How they can set themselves and their dogs up better to succeed, then that's worth taking the effort of reaching out and improving Some little corner, whether it's ours or somebody else's, but some little corner of the world for the time that we're here. So, thank you for what you're doing and thanks for giving me an opportunity.

Amy Castro: 56:06

I Appreciate that and thank you to everybody for listening to another episode of Starlight Pet Talk. I know I always say at the end of the podcast you know, make sure to share with your friends, your families who love animals. But I would like to say for this particular episode, if you don't share this episode with your friends and family, you are doing them a disservice, and if you never listen to another episode of Starlight Pet Talk, I would be happy that you just listened to this one because I think it was just so important. So, thank you all so much for listening and, like I say every week, show your pets some love, but let's change it to species, appropriate Species, appropriate attention this week. And thank you very much.

Announcer: 56:47

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