That's all the time he had. Most decisions to fire have to be made "in a snap."
If you think that a police officer should hesitate to defend himself from serious injury rather than kill a dog, then you might as well join PETA.
Maybe police officers should just automatically slay any dogs in any vehicles they stop.
That way, the potential threat (from the dog anyway) would be reduced to zero.
Their safety is paramount, after all.
Gimme a break. There is no comparison between what this cop did to a family's dog and what the a-holes from PETA scream about when you bite into a Chicken McNugget.
As for snap decisions...why wouldn't a warning shot be in order? And aren't these cops trained to assess these types of situations in seconds so that they don't have to use deadly force? If not, then ol' Barney shouldn't be carrying a firearm.
And if you've seen the video, you cannot tell me that the demeanor of the dog warranted the response it got. An attacking dog would have gone straight for him with its head lowered.
And one last question. If this overpaid, undereducated, doughnut eating flatfoot was so highly trained that he can assess a situation in "snap" and respond appropriately...why didn't he just closed the damned car door as he was requested to?