“Where is the evidence that the dog was “lunging” at people”.
I thought that myself. I own a GSD. They are unbelievably fast and IMHO, if one was really after someone... let’s just say the dog could take someone down in a matter of seconds. Good luck at trying to outrun one. However, if the officer has other people stating the dog was snarling, showing aggression etc... than the safety of people is paramount. In all my life, I have never seen this type of behavior from a GSD (maybe other FR’s have). Usually, they are very docile and like people. Wonder if the dog got loose and was just playing?!
I think that sadly, the dog may or may not have been a real danger. The problem is, the officer appears to have been acting on her best evidence at the moment. I can really envision the kids, scared (or acting scared, I have seen that too, having taught high school, kids screaming, some attention getting behavior, some really frightened others just getting into the whole *game*), the dog getting excited, and some dogs actually can’t turn that off either. We had a GSD when I was a kid. She was a great dog, with us, but she actually almost bit a little boy once when he got too rough with my brother. So, it’s possible this dog got out of hand in *play*. Sometimes and with some breeds it’s a very fine line between the two.
It’s hard to say, and the fact that the dog was trained (according to the comments from the supposed owner, altho I sort of discount all of that since I don’t know if that was really the owner) as a drug detection dog who apparently washed out—what is the real story there? Did the dog have a stable temperament? I have seen some VERY squirrely GSDs (I show dogs, I have seen a lot of dogs thru the years, and I used to train for other people, just general obedience). So, who knows what this dog was like?
The owners would naturally be upset and angry. Who wouldn’t be? I don’t find enough information in the article to really determine what really happened.
Exactly, if the dog wanted to attack someone, it could have done so easily and before the cop arrived on the scene.
More likely, there were students who were playing with the dog, AND students who were running away from the dog (because they are scared of dogs/large dogs), not defacto because the dog was displaying aggressive behavior.
Unfortunately, these students apparently were not told that if you run *from* a dog, you trigger its instinct to run *towards* you. This does not mean that that dog of necessity will bite, it just means that a dog’s instinct is to chase it if it runs (or moves quickly).
Moreover, dogs *sense* fear. If you are afraid of a dog that is outside, the worst thing to do is to stay outside, in its vicinity.
But none of this explains why, if this dog was behaving so aggressively, most of the students did NOT go inside to avoid the dog, even when the cop told them to do so.
Either those high school students are so deficient in the area of common sense that they do not remove themselves from an area with an aggressive animal, even when told to do so, or the animal’s aggressiveness was fabricated.