This is from today paper..
By Jennifer Pritchett
Local News - Tuesday, October 25, 2005 @ 07:00
Whig-Standard Staff Writer
A Kingston woman whose Lhasa
apso was killed by a rottweiler outside a Kingston coffee shop fears the aggressive dog with a violent history will attack again.
Ann Marie McCann could only scream when a 34-kilogram rottweiler, tied to a post outside Tim Hortons in Portsmouth, broke from its leash and lunged at her lap dog.
The little Lhasa apso, named Bilbo, tried to run underneath a nearby car, but it was too late.
“I’ve never seen anything so violent from out of nowhere in my life,” said McCann. “Here’s this rottweiler and my poor little dog is in its jaws and he’s shaking the life out of him.”
It took two men to wrestle the raging rottweiler to the ground and pull the badly injured little Lhasa apso out of its mouth.
By the time the owner of the large dog came out of the coffee shop, the damage was done.
The attack occurred Oct. 8.
McCann scooped up Bilbo. A passerby, Bill Matthews, drove them to the veterinary clinic where she discovered the extent of her dog’s injuries.
“We laid him on his back and as his legs separated, you could see how his whole chest was ripped open,” she said, weeping. “You could see where the dog had ripped the tissue underneath and it was so deep, I could see his heart beating.”
It’s an image that haunts her still.
“I’m a little traumatized by this myself,” said McCann.
“I wake up in the middle of the night and I say, ‘Where’s Bilbo?’ and then I realize he’s not here anymore.”
Bilbo, a Christmas present from a couple of friends, had to be euthanized because of the seriousness of his injuries.
“I’m on a disability now and that’s why Bilbo was such a godsend to me,” McCann said. But what upsets her most is that the attack on her dog wasn’t the first time the aggressive rottweiler named Poncho hurt another dog.
Poncho attacked a dog earlier this year, an incident that resulted in a complaint being laid with the city’s animal control department. At that time, animal control issued a muzzle order on Poncho under the city’s animal control bylaw.
When McCann’s Lhasa apso was attacked, Poncho wasn’t wearing a muzzle. McCann said the rottweiler is a danger to the public and should be put down.
“If he doesn’t get put down, this is going to happen again and it could be a kid that gets killed, not somebody’s pet like my Bilbo,” she said.
“I’m just so upset because I could still have a dog if this guy had got a muzzle. You would think that the owner of a rottweiler would have his dog on a metal chain. No, no. He wasn’t on a super-duper rope or a chain or anything.
“I just don’t want to see anyone else hurt by this dog.”
She reported the incident to both Kingston Police and the city’s animal control.
Her brother, David McCann, is so upset about what happened that he wrote letters to a slew of officials, including Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Attorney General Michael Bryant, Kingston and the Islands MP Peter Milliken, Kingston city councillors and Kingston Police Chief Bill Closs.
“I hope that you will move swiftly and decisively to protect the citizens of Ontario from this vicious dog and others like him,” his letter stated.
The owner of the rottweiler, Vanja Andrin, disagrees. Despite the two attacks, he doesn’t believe Poncho should be euthanized.
“She doesn’t attack people,” he said. “She doesn’t always attack other dogs. She’s just violent. I knew that she was an aggressive dog, but there are dogs that are much worse that Poncho is.
“I don’t feel that it’s my right to say whether a dog loses its life.”
He said he feels awful about what happened to McCann’s dog.
“I mean, I cried,” he said. “I talked to the lady. It’s not like I’m some sort of savage beast that owns aggressive dogs. If people could see Poncho and if they knew what she was like 90 per cent of the time …”
Andrin, a music student at St. Lawrence College, said Poncho wasn’t wearing a muzzle at the time of the attack because he hadn’t been able to find one that was big enough for the dog.
He confirmed there had been an attack earlier this year against another dog, when Poncho got out of the house and bit a dog across the street.
Andrin said that dog wasn’t seriously injured, but it did have to go to the vet for treatment. He said he paid the bill.
“She didn’t kill it or anything because I got out there pretty quick and I stopped it,” he said.
He told The Whig-Standard that he has since been able to find a muzzle for Poncho and he has given her away to a family that lives on a farm.
“She’s gone and she’s fully muzzled,” he said.
He declined to say who has the dog now.
Kim Leonard, the city’s supervisor of licensing and bylaw enforcement, was unaware of the specifics of the attack against McCann’s Lhasa apso.
Typically in cases like these, she said, the city’s animal control office starts an investigation after it gets a report from Kingston Police.
Before a dog is ordered put down, the case goes to court and a justice of the peace makes that decision under the Dog Owners Liability Act.
Leonard knows of only one case of a dog attack that has resulted in a judge ordering that the pet be euthanized.
The Dog Owners Liability Act was amended at the end of August to keep communities safer from dangerous dogs. The new legislation increased fines to a maximum to $10,000 and allows for jail sentences of up to six months for individuals who own dangerous dogs that bite, attack or pose a threat.
Bilbo is a main character from the Lord of the Rings, that is a cute name 
