The director, the staff and the volunteers at the Dan Cosgrove Animal Shelter were stunned to learn that a 2 1/2‑year-old dog named Booker attacked a 93-year-old woman on Harbor Street last Sunday., They knew the dog well, they said; he had never shown any signs of aggression.
Meanwhile, the elderly woman, who’s well-known in the neighborhood, was rescued by two men, who used a baseball bat and her cane to fend off Booker, her son told the Eagle. The dog also tried to attack them but did not succeed. The woman is recovering from serious injuries. He said the surgeon told him yesterday that “the best thing is she will walk again and the worst thing is she will lose her leg. It could go either way.”
Laura Burban, the director of the shelter, said the Matthew Radulski family, which lives at 136 Harbor St., adopted Booker on Oct 2, 2013. He came to the shelter about six months before after having been found in North Branford by a woman who saw a white pick-up truck stop on a road and discard him. The dog tried to run after the truck but it did not stop.
Once at the shelter, Booker went through all the hoops to determine if he were eligible for adoption. Were he found to be aggressive or vicious, he would not have been “adopted out.” Burban said he never showed the type of behavior evident when he attacked the woman. If a dog cannot be rehabilitated after it arrives at the shelter, the dog is sent to a sanctuary. And if the dog is really vicious and mean, it is put down, Burban told the Eagle in an interview. Neither of these scenarios applied to Booker, she said.
“We had no idea this could happen.” She said her staff and the volunteers who took care of Booker are stunned and teary-eyed. “This is a really, really sad, terrible thing,” she said of the attack.
Booker Was Socialized
She described Booker as well socialized. He was open to learning. “We took him to adoption events. He liked people. He was like a teenage boy. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s go for a run. Let’s go swimming. He loved to swim. He loved the water.” He was part Labrador retriever, Burban said, and Labs love the water.
“We had a ton of interaction with this dog. Everybody here, including volunteers, trainers and the vet knew him well. So none of us would have predicted or had any inclination that the dog would turn on a human because we have all handled the dog.”
He was put through all the tests. “He was hyperactive,” she said “and he wasn’t neutered. So we had him neutered and that calmed him down. The only thing we knew was he didn’t like was cats. We brought him into the cat room one day and he went ‘Oh my god.’ But that was all. Just cats.”
Still not known is what happened last Sunday afternoon, a sunny, mild day. Pieced together from conversations it appears that the owner had taken Booker out for a walk, came back to his home, took off the dog’s collar and leash and went into another room. Then Booker somehow got out a back door, ran across the street and seeing a woman walking with a cane, attacked her, biting her badly on her left leg.
Son Discusses Mom’s Medical Condition
One of her sons told the Eagle yesterday the wound was massive and stretched from her calf to her ankle. He also said she has a broken bone in her ankle, which cannot be set at this time.
Yesterday she had her second surgery, he said. The wound is so big, so deep their fear is they don’t know what they will be able to do. They are discussing skin grafts.” Her recovery is not in weeks, but months he said.
The attack came near the intersection of Harbor Street and McKinnel Court. The woman has lived on McKinnel Court for 64 years, her son said.
She is very well known in the neighborhood. Two men came to her rescue, one using her cane to fend off the dog, the other using a baseball bat to subdue him. The dog lunged at them, too, but did not bite them. Eventually the owner heard the commotion on the street and got the dog into a crate. He had no idea what had happened.
Family Did Everything Right
Burban said that when the dog was adopted six months ago the family was given the option of having a trainer, which the shelter provides through a grant.
“We provide trainers to people. The trainers work with our dogs here. They train our volunteers how to handle the dogs so that the training is consistent. The same people are training the dogs and they are training our staff and our volunteers. When we send the dogs to a home we offer people the trainer. We have a grant that will pay for it. That way the training is consistent and cohesive,” Burban said.
The family that adopted Booker agreed to take the trainer, and dog and trainer were often seen together on Harbor Street.
“They did everything right,” she said. “These were very, very nice people. In my mind they did the things they should have been done. God knows if they thought Booker were capable of something like this, they wouldn’t have kept him either. And if we thought he was capable of this we wouldn’t have adopted him out.
“We don’t know what happened to him to make him bolt” the day of the attack on the 93-year-old woman, Burban said.
There were no current or past complaints about the dog; that is, that he was roaming in the neighborhood or had harmed someone else in the past, she added.
There was one report that he might have heard a fire engine go by and went to follow it. So far, Burban said, Booker’s family has not called the shelter to discuss the case or the dog’s behavior leading up to the event. She hopes the family will.
Burban, who is well-trained in dog behavior, said the dog “was focused on that woman. And later I found out she was walking with a cane. I wonder if he felt threatened because of the cane, that the cane was a threat and he went after the cane. I just don’t know what was going through his head.”
As for the 911 calls describing the dog as biting other people, she said the dog was lunging after the two men who intervened to save the woman’s life. The rescuers fended off the dog. Booker did not bite them though it may have appeared that way to witnesses.
The Media and the Pit Bull
Pit bull mix is how police described the dog. Burban called Booker a terrier-lab mixed breed. The terrier reference generally applies to just two breeds: the American Pit Bull Terrier (APBT) and the American Staffordshire Terrier (AmStaff).
One of the sons with whom we spoke said: “I don’t know what triggered the dog to act. With that breed anything is possible.”
Burban disagreed.
“Everyone is focusing on his breed. This was a dog issue, not a breed issue,” Burban said. “This was specifically his issue. What people don’t recognize is that there are golden retrievers and yellow labs that bite every day and don’t get this kind of media attention,” she said.
“Do they do the same damage? If you looked up some of the stories you would see that golden retrievers have killed children and done all kinds of other terrible things. But we never hear about it.”
Booker is now at the animal shelter where he will be under quarantine for 20 days. Burban said he is acting just fine, as if nothing had happened.
She said Booker’s owners will make the decision on what happens next. Will he be euthanized? She said the owners have not yet called the shelter so she does not know. But that decision is theirs to make, she said.( In some cases, a judge orders a dog put down.) Burban had been at a conference in Vermont when the attack took place and returned to Branford yesterday.
We learned that Booker’s parents have visited their elderly neighbor at a New Haven hospital. They were devastated by the attack, one of the woman’s sons told the Eagle yesterday.
“They are very nice people, very nice neighbors. This is an accident. They have been to the hospital. They know my sister-in-law from Trinity Church. They couldn’t feel any worse,” the son said.
“I feel for them to a point but this is a life- changing thing for my mom and for the rest of the family. I don’t know how many more years she has but to live that long and then have your life basically end this way is unfair,” he said sadly.
As for his mother, she has no memory of being bitten by a dog. In some sense she said, he is grateful she does not understand. “She is cheerful,” he added.
It is still hard for all sides to comprehend how random life can be.
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