A devastated Harlem woman is hoping police can track down the owners of an out-of-control pit bull who killed her pet Maltese at the Marcus Garvey Park dog run over the weekend. However, it's unclear what charges police can potentially file against the owners.
On Saturday afternoon, Anastasia Pavlova took her tiny 3-year-old pooch, Bentley, on their daily jaunt to the park, where, as always, she asked other owners whether their dogs play nicely with small breeds, DNAinfo reports. Everyone said yes.
Bentley had barely entered the gate when he was snatched up by a pit bull, who refused to drop the smaller dog. Eventually Pavlova was able to retrieve Bentley and take him to Harlem Animal Hospital, but vets there could not save him.
“This is my baby, I don’t have a husband, I don’t have a child, I don’t have a family," said Pavlova, a Siberian immigrant. “My dog died in my hands.”
Members of the dog run community are now on the hunt for the dog's owner, and have posted on Facebook an image of the two men believed to have brought the pit bull to the park. "We do not record dog on dog attacks,” Captain Thomas Harnisch of the 25th Precinct told DNAinfo. “As far as this particular incident, it’s really a matter of civility and just being a good neighbor."
In fact, owners whose pets are attacked have little recourse when it comes to seeking justice. Greenpoint resident Lauren Schneider was in a similar predicament last year, after a German Shepherd mix killer her Pomeranian, Arlo, as she walked him down Manhattan Avenue. Unfortunately, Schneider discovered that the NYC Health Department restricts the definition of a "dangerous dog" to one that menaces or bites a human, meaning there was nothing she could do.
"When I contacted the NY Department of Health to inquire about a Dangerous Dog Hearing they stated since it was not a dog-on-human attack they would not allot me a hearing," Schneider wrote in her petition. "This means the dog can continue to attack and kill other dogs without the owner being held accountable for training the dog or muzzling the dog when in public places. Other dogs' lives are at stake, and who's to say it won't be a small child next?"
