How do you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?

Stories like this rarely appear in the Chronicle Herald: A very reliable source told me about a vicious attack on September 12 in the Bayers Westwood area: a dog ran loose and attacked a child. No idea if the child "provoked" it; I only know that when the child's mom tried to intervene to stop the attack, the dog bit her. Both child and mother needed stitches. It was reported. Yet well over a week later, I am told Halifax animal services did not show up to seize that dog. The owner was fined.

Let me say right up front, I am not a fan of seizing dogs, let alone killing healthy dogs for any reason.
But when Halifax keeps harping on in court briefs and arguments about how Brindi - who has never attacked humans, even the ones who foolishly kicked her repeatedly - is such a threat to public safety and must not be allowed to go home, or to anybody's home - I cannot help feeling very outraged when it fails yet again to seize a dog that attacked humans. It seems to me that if they consistently applied the logic they used to seize and kill Brindi without investigating, they ought to be seizing any dog ever reported for attacking.
And unlike the two pit bulls that killed the shih tzu last summer, Animal Services knows and can prove who the owner is, so there's no excuse there. Regardless of whether this was the first time the dog was reported, this attack was sufficiently severe to justify seizing this dog.

Against such cases - and trust me, there are many, many more, going back years - how can Halifax insist it has not singled me and Brindi out? Or taken retaliative actions from evictions to demolition orders and now a pending tax sale seizure/auction?

All because why? Apparently because way back when, I asked them - politely - to please not kill my dog; because, when they refused, and told me to hire a lawyer, I did just that; because when they refused to negotiate with my lawyer, and refused to release Brindi even after a positive behavior assessment, I had to go to court to get euthanasia order quashed along with part of the by-law because it denied due process and was thus unconstitutional, and because they lost that and lost again when they belatedly laid charges and dragged it out another 18 months. And they kind of lost again this past March - because the judge didn't issue the order to destroy that it so wants. Instead she dumped the whole thing into HRM's lap.
They still have custody and control of Brindi, but they can't really make a move!

Meanwhile, the by-law is still unconstitutional, and Halifax made it worse by adding the "additional penalty" clause, which is doubly unconstitutional, if such a thing were possible.

Even if it weren't incredibly hypocritical in its enforcement of the by-law, I don't see how it can be denied that the city has been targeting us - starting with the way Officer Tim Hamm and Lori Scolaro changed the fine he originally decided on to a muzzle order, after a clandestine exchange with another dog owner who feared - without cause - that I might not pay her entire vet bill. The amount of the bill, totaling $143,  $70 of which was a general exam cost charged to all new patients, because she chose to take her dog to a new vet as her own vet was closed on Mondays.*

But in court, the prosecutor actually tried to ridicule the idea that the city has targeted us unfairly. This was not one of my chief arguments, as I was well aware of how futile it would be in court. But she evidently felt it useful to ridicule me about it anyhow. Discredit the witness; blur the categories.

No matter what, and without comparing her to any other case, it's utterly absurd - and worse - for Halifax to claim that Brindi is just too much of a threat that she can't remain at home pending trial, or even be put in anybody's home. But against this new story, the truth becomes even more black and white.

It seems to me that the attack in Bayers Westwood shows that the average Haligonian has good reason not only to doubt the HRM party line, but also to fear for their lives, given its failure to protect against bona fide threats to public safety.
Off the top of my head, there was the dog that killed a kitten in Dartmouth, and in court in 2010 the same prosecutor making my life hell told a judge "It's a first offence" and said HRM only wanted to fine the owner - who had let the dog run loose and get into a neighbor's yard. She also never registered the dog in ten years. Nor did the declared owner show up in court - her husband did. (Apparently, in Nova Scotia it's not contempt of court to not show up yourself, if you have a husband who will.)

There was the police officer who owns a mastiff-type breed, which got out of the house many times, according to the mother of the newspaper boy who called me one night in 2009 after Brindi was on the news. She said the dog not only attacked neighborhood dogs, and was reported, but also attacked her son, biting him in the arm. Only after she contacted a reporter did HRM make an effort to lay charges. She had to work harder to find out when the court hearing was, only to witness a judge dismissing the case. He said because the owner had changed addresses since registering the dog, it couldn't be known whether it was the same dog who attacked the boy. Hard to believe, but true.

There was the pit bull that attacked a woman in the face and neck in 2011 on Martinique Beach, a busy beach where dogs are not allowed to be off-leash. The dog was off-leash, and evidently not under control of the owner. No seizure, only fines. No muzzle.

Then there was those two pit bulls that tore apart the shih tzu last summer. HRM seized them eventually, but seven months later, the current prosecutor, Katherine Salsman, somehow failed to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" belonged to the man HRM believed to be the owner, despite two witness statements. (Reasonable doubt is not the standard of proof in such offences, yet evidently HRM failed to realize that, and/or file an appeal on that very basis. The same judge used a lesser standard of proof in our trial in 2010 - "on the balance of probabilities".)
So these proven-killer dogs were set free in February - to a man who was also homeless, at least momentarily, as he was also evicted the same month for unpaid rent. Not even a muzzle order...

There were the dogfights in Sackville between dogs that allegedly repeatedly got loose and inflicted some serious injuries on one another, as well as humans, which was reported. I posted about that one.

These are just some of the cases I've heard about over the last four years.

None of these people sound like particularly responsible dog owners.

None of them had to suffer the emotional ruptures of having a dog seized and held, and being refused vists for years at a time.

None of them had to fight a euthanization order issued before any investigation was done.

None of them had to hire a lawyer, let alone pay him their life savings to fail at the task of getting a dog out of the pound that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

But I still wouldn't want them to go through what I have. I don't want anybody to go through that.

And at the same time, my heart goes out to the mother and child, I hope their stitches heal very soon!

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*Note that $73 for treatment of the injury is very low for any vet work. Were emergency treatment needed, she would have gone to the emergency clinic the same day, and paid hundreds. This underscores how minor the injury was. However, Hamm's affidavit to the Supreme Court cited the bill amount as $364, and this error remains in the court record to this day despite my submission of the original bill.)