Dog owner expresses remorse over goat attack

Key Peninsula resident sounds off on incident, ordinances

Susan Schell

of the Gateway

Carly Moxson was not prepared for the figurative bomb that was ready to blow up in her face when she visited the Tacoma Humane Society on Feb. 25.

Two of her four dogs had been missing from her Key Peninsula home since the day before, when her 7-year-old step-son let the dogs out of the house while she was in the shower.

The two female dogs returned, but the male dogs breached a neighbor’s property, killing a goat and a goose and severely injuring a second goat.

The incident caused a public outcry among Key Peninsula neighbors who felt Pierce County ordinances were not strict enough to protect residents and their pets from attacks by vicious animals.

Moxson said that when she learned the dogs were loose that Sunday, she scouted the neighborhood looking for them, but she couldn’t drive around because her car was broken.

The following day, she called the humane society hotline, which gives a list of animals that were picked up along with the area in which they were found.

“A friend drove me down to pick them up, and five minutes later I found out what they did,” Moxson said. “I had to wait for the animal control officer to fully explain what happened.”

The humane society would not release the dogs to Moxson until Tim Anderson, the animal control officer who picked up the dogs at the attack scene, showed up.

Moxson was then cited for the dogs being unlicensed and being at large.

“He wrote me the tickets when I went in there,” she said. “He told me that Lisa Woods (the owner of the deceased pets) wanted to talk to me, but by law they could not give out my information because of privacy issues.”

Anderson previously told The Peninsula Gateway that he had been called out to Moxson’s residence before on a prior complaint of her dogs running loose.

“When we first moved in, one of the dogs ran next door to the neighbor’s house and a 16-year-old girl called animal control,” Moxson said. “She was intimidated because the dog was barking.”

Moxson said she believes her step-son let the dogs out on that occasion, too.

“He’s let them out before intentionally,” she said. “I’ve stressed to him what could happen if they got out, like being hit by a car. I can’t reiterate that to him enough. The child has issues with animals.

“I feel fully responsible for what they’ve done.”

The dog owner said she read accounts of the attack in the newspaper, but she didn’t want to talk to reporters at first.

“I’m a very big animals person myself,” she said. “I know the goat and the goose are not coming back. I know what my dogs did was wrong. I feel terrible.”

Moxson said she called Woods at Brookside Veterinary Hospital to offer her condolences but said she only talked to a receptionist.

Woods said she could not return Moxson’s calls because she did not leave a working phone number.

Under pressure from her landlord to get rid of the dogs, Moxson gave away the two female dogs and had one of the male dogs euthanized.

“I could have paid a fine to register him as a potentially dangerous dog,” she said. “But I couldn’t morally give that dog away. I searched Web sites trying to find adoptions or kennels, but how can you give away a dog that’s done something like that? If they could have done that to a goat, they could have done that to a child.

Moxson said three of the dogs were a mixture of Staffordshire terrier and Japanese Tosa, and one, “Scooby,” was a Japanese Tosa/American Bulldog mix.

“They’re really bizarre-looking,” she said. “They look like pit bulls. Scooby gets mistaken for a pit bull all the time.”

Scooby is the only dog Moxson still has. She said when she picked the dogs up from the humane society, the dog that was euthanized had blood all over it. Scooby did not.

“This dog is like my child,” she said. “We’ve installed an invisible fence that works quite nicely. They have a kennel outside, and we’re electrifying the kennel, as well.”

The law requires that Scooby wear a leash and a muzzle while being walked.

The incident also sparked Pierce County officials to review Ordinance No. 2008-14, which addresses animal control, vicious animals, fees and penalties.

One of the main issues arising from this case was the distinction between pets and livestock. Woods and other Key Peninsula residents felt that the attack would not carry a strong enough penalty because, technically, the goat and the goose were considered livestock.

Woods, her employees and her neighbors considered them pets, and they felt they deserved the same treatment as domestic animals.

“I would agree 100 percent,” Moxson said. “Who is to say that a horse or a goat or a goose is not more important to a person’s life or their heart than a dog or a cat?

“I have this huge burden of guilt at what she (Woods) has had to go through. I’m willing to take the necessary precautions to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Ordinance No. 2008-14

The Pierce County ordinance addresses animal control, vicious animals, fees and penalties.

The ordinance has been reviewed and is scheduled to go before the county council for a final hearing at 3 p.m. April 15 at the county-city building, 930 Tacoma Ave. S., in Tacoma.

Reach reporter Susan Schell at 253-853-9240 or by e-mail at susan.schell@gateline.com.