Interesting. I guess posters here are OK with armed Instacart shoppers visiting their homes.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate untrained dogs. But shooting the animal is pretty extreme. Carrying pepper spray or a baton would seem to be a better option.

But yes, if you have an untrained dog that will jump happily or get aggressive with strangers, don't let it run around loose when you are expecting a delivery! Also, train your dogs to have better manners and know how to heel and get called off.

Please, enter a property with pit bulls present and let us know how baton and pepper spray work out for you.

Pit bulls were bred for thousands of doggy generations to be nearly impervious to pain - they will hang on to the death in a fight against a bull, a person, another dog, etc. Pepper spray is very likely to make them angrier and more lethal, but not very likely to make them whine and run away.

I used to live in Montana and engaged in back country hiking. Everyone with any common sense knew that carrying bear spray was only any good if you carried two cans, and a gun to boot. The bear (pepper) spray might make a grizzly back off initially, but they are very likely to come back more enraged and ready to kill.

Bullets are far more efficient than capsaicin spray or sticks.

The dog was not a pit bull. It looked like a small hound dog.

That doesn't matter. Dogs bite - ALL dogs are capable of biting. 4.5 MILLION Americans are bitten by dogs every single year. Pit bulls are responsible for more lethal attacks, but all breeds are represented in the dog bite statistics. These statistics are readily available many places online, go google it. GSDs are in the top 5 or 10 of lethal attacks and are a notoriously aggressive (POLICE DOGS, anyone?) breed which are quite often poorly trained in the hands of regular Joe owners.

Out of the 4.5 million people who are bitten by dogs every year, many of them develop ptsd and lifelong fear of dogs. They are not going to do a doggy dna test on the dog charging at them before deciding to be fearful for their well being. A dog that looks like a shepherd is going to scare a lot of people when it charges at them. I used to own a very sweet shepherd mix that I could clearly see some people were fearful of, because she was a shepherd and black to boot (black dogs are euthanized at 4x the rate of other dogs at animal shelters). I now have a freckle faced border collie mix that people beg me to pet when we are out on a walk.

People have fears of dogs for legitimate reasons. The eggshell-plaintiff doctrine protects the rights of a plaintiff whose pre-existing fragility makes them particularly susceptible to injury. The tort-feasor takes the injured plaintiff as she is found.

Sure, but also if you are so scared of dogs that a sweet shepherd bounding at you makes you want to shoot, being an instacart driver or post office worker or in-home technician etc isn’t the job for you.

You are thick. A stranger has no way to know that the dog is 'sweet,' and I've lost count of the lethal and nonlethal dog attacks I've read about where the clueless negligent owners blathered about how 'sweet' and loving their dog was before it mauled or killed a family member, neighbor, or stranger.

The only party at fault here is the dog's owner, PERIOD. Legally and morally she is at fault for the death of her dog.

Postal workers and delivery drivers are bitten, mauled and even killed by dogs every year. They are not the problem - the dog owners are the problem, PERIOD.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amazon-delivery-driver-found-dead-apparent-dog-attack-rcna53834

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2023/0601-usps-releases-dog-bite-national-rankings.htm

The fact remains that postal workers and delivery drivers interact with dogs ALL THE TIME. If you are terrified of dogs, that isn’t the job for you. You can quote scary news articles all you want but the point stands.

No they aren’t rolling around, playing fetch with doggy or even allowed to pet or motion to the dog. They are doing their drop offs then heading to the next location per job. They aren’t interacting with dog . Half the problem is Dog owners and dogs think everyone should interact or engage with the dog . They are doing a job to drop off the mail or package and then move on.

USPS workers are not required to deliver mail if there is a dog in the yard. We have a dog and our carrier is afraid of dogs (had been bitten in the past) and we worked with the post master on moving our mailbox to a place outside the yard because the post office couldn’t give us a regular time window for delivery (like 8-noon or noon to 5) and our mail just gets delivered at 8am one day, 5pm the next and then 9pm the day after next so there is no schedule. This caused us to never know when we could have our dog in the yard where he absolutely prefers to be. It was during these discussions we learned of the USPS policy.

This. There is no requirement that delivery drivers love dogs or have any comfort around them. In fact, I think a healthy fear of any unknown dog would be an asset in these jobs, as it would keep you safe and help you avoid a situation where you might be attacked. A delivery person who is afraid of dogs will avoid delivering if there is an unrestrained dog (or even a restrained but unattended dog) at an address, or may insist that the dog be restrained before entering the property. That's appropriate. In fact, if that had happened here, the dog in question would still be alive.

Dog owners need to let go of the idea that they are going to convince the whole world that their dog is great and everyone will want him or her around all the time. Your dog is your dog. No one else has any obligation with regards to him.

This whole incident reminds me of when my idiot condo neighbors tried to insist that it was fine for them to let their dog off leash in the building's common areas, and would sometimes even leave their dog unleashed and unattended in the yard "so he can run around a bit." They were pretty quickly shut down by the condo board but threw a massive fit about how everyone was overreacting and how their dog was so friendly and would never hurt anyone and how all the people who wanted them to restrain their dog (and not leave him unattended in shared spaces!) hated dogs and was being unreasonable. It was really crazy watching them melt down over something that the vast majority of people, both dog owners and not, could see was just irresponsible, obnoxious behavior on their part.

Some people are very dumb about their dogs. I don't know why.

This is Harmon's fault. Should the guy have had a gun on him? I don't think so, but I also don't live in North Carolina or anywhere that permits concealed carry and wear gun ownership is incredibly common. If I DID live in such a place, I would train myself to assume that anyone I meet, or invite into my home, might have a gun on them, and also comfort with using one. It is simply how it is in much of the South and the West, even if it's not how I choose to live.

Knowing that, she scheduled a delivery and then failed to restrain or isolate her dog when the delivery driver arrived. Stupid. We'll probably never know if the dog did anything to provoke being shot. But even if we knew, it will always be subjective. I've been attacked by a dog before, and escaped only because I was able to put a door between me and the dog before he could reach me. It is terrifying. The owner in that case laughed it off and didn't even apologize, just said "oh, he can be protective around strangers." Uh, okay, then don't leave him off leash when you know a stranger will be in your house, you absolute $hitbag of a dog owner.

So the dog might have just barked in a friendly way at this guy, but as a total stranger, he has no idea what that means. Maybe the dog bounded up. Could have seemed totally non-threatening to one person but be terrifying to another. If you live in a place where people often carry guns and where the concept of shooting to protect yourself is sort of built into the culture, WHY would you allow your dog to approach a total stranger this way? Stupid stupid stupid.

I'm not defending the delivery driver, but this is 100% Harmon's fault. And it's typical behavior of many dog owners who for some reason have no sense of perspective about their dogs and give no though to how their dog or dog's behavior might be perceived or experienced by others.

Her dog is dead because she's a bad dog owner.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate untrained dogs. But shooting the animal is pretty extreme. Carrying pepper spray or a baton would seem to be a better option.

But yes, if you have an untrained dog that will jump happily or get aggressive with strangers, don't let it run around loose when you are expecting a delivery! Also, train your dogs to have better manners and know how to heel and get called off.

Please, enter a property with pit bulls present and let us know how baton and pepper spray work out for you.

Pit bulls were bred for thousands of doggy generations to be nearly impervious to pain - they will hang on to the death in a fight against a bull, a person, another dog, etc. Pepper spray is very likely to make them angrier and more lethal, but not very likely to make them whine and run away.

I used to live in Montana and engaged in back country hiking. Everyone with any common sense knew that carrying bear spray was only any good if you carried two cans, and a gun to boot. The bear (pepper) spray might make a grizzly back off initially, but they are very likely to come back more enraged and ready to kill.

Bullets are far more efficient than capsaicin spray or sticks.

The dog was not a pit bull. It looked like a small hound dog.

That doesn't matter. Dogs bite - ALL dogs are capable of biting. 4.5 MILLION Americans are bitten by dogs every single year. Pit bulls are responsible for more lethal attacks, but all breeds are represented in the dog bite statistics. These statistics are readily available many places online, go google it. GSDs are in the top 5 or 10 of lethal attacks and are a notoriously aggressive (POLICE DOGS, anyone?) breed which are quite often poorly trained in the hands of regular Joe owners.

Out of the 4.5 million people who are bitten by dogs every year, many of them develop ptsd and lifelong fear of dogs. They are not going to do a doggy dna test on the dog charging at them before deciding to be fearful for their well being. A dog that looks like a shepherd is going to scare a lot of people when it charges at them. I used to own a very sweet shepherd mix that I could clearly see some people were fearful of, because she was a shepherd and black to boot (black dogs are euthanized at 4x the rate of other dogs at animal shelters). I now have a freckle faced border collie mix that people beg me to pet when we are out on a walk.

People have fears of dogs for legitimate reasons. The eggshell-plaintiff doctrine protects the rights of a plaintiff whose pre-existing fragility makes them particularly susceptible to injury. The tort-feasor takes the injured plaintiff as she is found.

Sure, but also if you are so scared of dogs that a sweet shepherd bounding at you makes you want to shoot, being an instacart driver or post office worker or in-home technician etc isn’t the job for you.

You are thick. A stranger has no way to know that the dog is 'sweet,' and I've lost count of the lethal and nonlethal dog attacks I've read about where the clueless negligent owners blathered about how 'sweet' and loving their dog was before it mauled or killed a family member, neighbor, or stranger.

The only party at fault here is the dog's owner, PERIOD. Legally and morally she is at fault for the death of her dog.

Postal workers and delivery drivers are bitten, mauled and even killed by dogs every year. They are not the problem - the dog owners are the problem, PERIOD.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amazon-delivery-driver-found-dead-apparent-dog-attack-rcna53834

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2023/0601-usps-releases-dog-bite-national-rankings.htm

The fact remains that postal workers and delivery drivers interact with dogs ALL THE TIME. If you are terrified of dogs, that isn’t the job for you. You can quote scary news articles all you want but the point stands.

No they aren’t rolling around, playing fetch with doggy or even allowed to pet or motion to the dog. They are doing their drop offs then heading to the next location per job. They aren’t interacting with dog . Half the problem is Dog owners and dogs think everyone should interact or engage with the dog . They are doing a job to drop off the mail or package and then move on.

USPS workers are not required to deliver mail if there is a dog in the yard. We have a dog and our carrier is afraid of dogs (had been bitten in the past) and we worked with the post master on moving our mailbox to a place outside the yard because the post office couldn’t give us a regular time window for delivery (like 8-noon or noon to 5) and our mail just gets delivered at 8am one day, 5pm the next and then 9pm the day after next so there is no schedule. This caused us to never know when we could have our dog in the yard where he absolutely prefers to be. It was during these discussions we learned of the USPS policy.