http://www.ktvu.com/news/4473859/detail.html
Someone told me about this article on LiveJournal. Stories like this always scare me a lot.
Anyway, the law mentioned at the end of the article is a good thing. I wish everywhere had laws as harsh as that! It might make people think twice about letting their pets bother guide dogs! Some people let their dogs bother guide dogs on purpose. If I get a guide dog, I can tell you right now I'm not going to take any crap from people like that! They either don't realise how dangerous it is or know and don't care.

Believe it or not, the town where this happened is only about 20 miles from where I live. (The world is an unbelievably small place at times.) If it's any consolation, the courts and juries have little tolerance for this kind of thing here. A San Francisco couple were both sent to prison after their unleashed dog mauled someone a while back while they stood by and did nothing.

Unfortunately, there's never a shortage of irresponsible pet owners. I always thought they should license pet owners themselves before they can own a pet like a dog (like getting a driver's license before being allowed to drive a car). That hurdle would discourage a fair number of irresponsible people before they ever got a pet. I volunteer with the
German Shepherd Rescue of Northern California and we see far too many neglected and sometimes abused dogs. These all come from people who never should have owned a dog in the first place which is basically the root of the problem. I'd like to think this could change some day.

Oh, there's been a huge increase of animal abuse in my state recently, it's just horrible. The laws are toughening up because of it, which I guess is good. 'Twould have been better if it didn't take provocation to cause action.

I'm very worried about having a guide dog here because people are shocking! There are dogs running around everywhere! It's ridiculous. One of my friends doesn't like walking anywhere because she's worried about getting attacked.

Recently my sister's dogs were put to sleep because they attacked a woman after she tried to stop them from killing her chickens, and they were never aggressive before that.

My cousins had a dog that was very aggressive before they got it, but it was fine once it was with them. I think the person who had it before might have mistreated it and that was the only reason it was aggressive.