Pit bull under quarantine after killing cat

Starting at about 4:10 a.m., the surveillance pictures show, a furious scene unfolded in the driveway and front yard as Brodie frantically whizzed back and forth, two pit bulls in pursuit.

Brodie was fast. But the dogs were faster.

Within 20 minutes, one of the dogs, the cat clamped in its jaws, hauled Brodie's lifeless white body across the front yard to the spot Reinecke found him.

"The issue that was so bad on Sunday morning when we first called animal control and the Anchorage police was that after the cat was dead, my daughter went to pick it up and the dogs charged her too," she said. "This is a safety issue; there are children in this neighborhood."

Neighbors say the dogs had been a problem for people and pets before, but this time Reinecke and her son-in-law, Ricky McElroy, started posting fliers with the warning "2 dogs are terrorizing our neighborhood." They traced the dogs back to a mobile home on an unfenced lot two blocks away near 68th Avenue and Lake Otis Parkway.

Owner Chris Short, 35, in an interview Tuesday, said the dogs, Rusty and Dozer, are generally good animals that escaped and went wild Sunday morning. It's not the first time they've escaped, he conceded, but they had never killed anything before. He faults himself for leaving for work without locking them in their kennel, allowing them to escape when his kids opened the front door, he said.

"She's mad her cat died. I'd be mad too. He viciously attacked that cat," he said. "That's his nature though. But I should have been more responsible with keeping them in the kennel."

Short voluntarily brought Rusty to the pound Monday night so he could be quarantined as a safety precaution. He is not planning to get him out of the pound when it's over in about two weeks, he said. Too much of a problem.

Scott Gower, spokesman for Anchorage Animal Care and Control, said the pound sees an average of 500 animal bites each year and animals are killed immediately only in cases where they seriously injure or kill a person. Repeat violent offenders that don't rise to that level -- by killing other animals, for example -- can sometimes be reclassified and seized to be put down, Gower said. The problem isn't with the pit bulls, it's with the owners, he said.

"Obviously with some animals, the owners have to understand the importance of keeping an eye on their animals and having them restrained," Gower said.

But Reinecke and McElroy say animal control and Anchorage police have so far done little to prevent a more serious attack from occurring.

"The police are doing nothing; the police are worse than animal control," McElroy said. "I thought our police were supposed to prevent kids from getting hurt. ... We've got to take action now. We can't just let this go for another day and another day."

The dogs had been known around the neighborhood as nuisances for some time, said resident Marc Johnson. The dogs rushed him the same day they killed Brodie, he said, leading him to grab a shovel in self-defense and follow one of them to find out where they lived. While in the road, it lowered its head, curled its lip and lunged at him, he said.

"The closer we got to his house, the more aggressive he got," Johnson said. "As soon as we got in front of the house, the party was on. ... I put him flat out with the shovel."

Police generally refer animal cases to animal control unless there is an attack under way at the time of the call, Lt. Paul Honeman said. In a case of an animal-on-animal attack, police try to break things up through nonlethal means and shoot only if the animal turns on a person, he said.

"As much as people don't want to hear us say it, it's not on the same level as the value of a human life," Honeman said. "We're supposed to defend (human) life."

The case of the pit bulls isn't closed. Gower said it is under investigation, and the animal owners, including Reinecke, could be facing fines starting at $75 for failing to keep their animals reined in.

In a KTVA news report that aired Monday, Dozer bolts out the front door and gets loose as a reporter approaches the home. The dog showed equal zeal Tuesday when another reporter showed up, though he did not appear aggressive as he sniffed and licked the reporter's hand.

"It's just a bad situation, and I'm sorry that it happened," Short said. "(Dozer's) not mean either, but I think he's going to go to the pound too. I can't deal with all this little drama."

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.