Humane Society of the U.S. rep Annie Hornish’s pit bull is still alive five years after killing a 95-year-old guest
In his remarkable book, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals: the Lost History of Europe’s Animal Trials (1906), E.P. Evans notes that in past times, “animals which were in the service of man could be arrested, tried, convicted and executed like any other members of his household.”
A homicidal pig or dog might be regarded as the devil in disguise.
But a supernatural element wasn’t always necessary to treat the killer animal as if the animal were a human person. The animal was placed on trial and held to account for murderous conduct.
A dog named after a TV serial killer
Today, we judge homicidal animals in an ethological and psychological light, with a view to assessing if behavioral euthanasia is warranted in the name of public safety.
I was made to think of Evans’ book by the ongoing case of Dexter, an alleged “pit bull/pointer mix” who killed 95-year-old Janet D’Aleo in Suffield, Connecticut, back in November 2019.
(See Pit bull kills guest in home of HSUS Connecticut state rep Anne Hornish.)
In subsequent legal proceedings throughout 2020, the Connecticut State Department of Agriculture and the County Court of Suffield both recommended that Dexter be euthanized.
But Dexter’s owners, Annie and Neil Hornish, have appealed the decisions.
At this writing, Dexter is still alive. He is being held by the Town of Suffield as an impounded “vicious dog,” But the bureaucratic process toward euthanasia has been stalled by the Hornish’s ongoing legal appeals.
(See HSUS rep Anne Hornish & husband fail to pay boarding fees for killer pit bull.)
“Do they have a heart? Do they have a brain?”
Shame on Annie and Neil Hornish!
And shame on their enabler, Diana Urban!
What is wrong with these people? Do they have a heart? Do they have a brain?
Dexter killed Janet D’Aleo. Her injuries were extensive. The investigating police officer spoke of “flesh, muscle and tendon loss in the lower extremities,” typical of a serious dog mauling.
When a dog kills a human being that should be an automatic death sentence for the dog.
(Beth Clifton collage)
A bear in the woods is a different case
I’m a dog lover and an animal rights type but I don’t see anything wrong in euthanizing a dangerous domestic animal. A dog who has taken a human life is a threat to do so again.
We do not have the space and the resources to house every dangerous dog in society. Hence the necessity of behavioral euthanasia.
I do not necessarily support euthanizing wild animals who kill people, unless the animal insists on remaining near to human settlement. If a bear mauls someone to death in the depths of the woods, I would not seek out the bear with a view to killing the bear. The bear was in the bear’s natural habitat. The unfortunate human victim just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That is all there is to it.
A domestic dog can live safely within our households
It is quite another matter when a domestic dog kills a human being in a human community. That dog has forfeited any right it had to live among humans. The whole point of a domestic dog is that the dog can live safely within our households.
That is obviously not true when the dog is a killer.
These elementary ideas are too much for Annie Hornish to comprehend.
Hornish is the Connecticut state representative for the Humane Society of the United States, an organization that is well-known for pit bull advocacy and for protesting against breed-specific legislation.
(Beth Clifton collage)
The Cult of Animal Worship
Hornish wrote in a Facebook post that “What is happening to Dexter is unfair, unkind, and unnecessary.”
Hornish has lost all critical faculties in the Cult of Animal Worship. It is a mark of our demoralized world that so many people are unable to make meaningful moral distinctions between animals and humans. The end result of this failure of imagination is that they end up idealizing animals and trivializing human life.
Annie and Neil Hornish have consistently stated that Dexter, involved in three previous biting incidents, is a “gentle” dog who was provoked into attacking D’Aleo. Annie claims that Dexter was only offering D’Aleo an “exuberant greeting,” and that D’Aleo’s nurse aide overreacted by striking Dexter with D’Aleo’s metal walker, driving Dexter into a violent fury.
Multiple level 6 bites
Bear in mind that Annie was not present at the attack. How does she know that Dexter was only being “exuberant”? Annie Hornish wants us to believe that the humans who were present at the attack completely misunderstood Dexter’s friendly energy for aggression.
But if Dexter was so friendly, why did he take D’Aleo down to the ground and proceed to maul her with savage determination? A dog who inflicts multiple level six bites––a bite severe enough to be fatal––on a 95-year-old woman doesn’t sound “gentle” to me.
Annie Hornish contends that Dexter passed three behavior evaluation tests. So what? The real test of a dog’s character is real life. Who cares if the pit bull Dexter passed some meaningless arbitrary test when he killed someone in real life?
Where is her moral compass?
Would you call someone a good driver who passed the driving test on Monday and then killed someone on the road on Tuesday?
Where is the sense in what Annie Hornish is saying? Where is her moral compass?
Annie Hornish denounces the board of selectmen for the Town of Suffield for their allegedly irrational desire to euthanize Dexter. She criticizes the selectmen for their “hateful eye-for-an eye, punitive state of being.” She dismissed the Department of Agriculture’s hearing on Dexter as a “kangaroo court.” Apparently, Annie Hornish, a former Connecticut state legislator, has no respect for the legal process.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“He killed her! That changes everything!”
But when a dog kills someone there must be some sort of legal sanction for both the dog and the dog’s owner.
Evans points out that the real purpose of putting homicidal animals on criminal trial was not to punish the animal as such; rather, it was to affirm the sovereign power of the law and the cardinal moral principle that human life has value. Dexter did not simply bite Janet D’Aleo, leaving her scarred and in need of a few stitches. He killed her! That changes everything.
Colin Moll, the First Selectman of Suffield, acknowledges that Annie and Neil Hornish would like Dexter to remain alive, whereas the town “firmly believes that it’s in the best interest of the public to have this dangerous dog put down.”
“Send Dexter to a hobby farm”
Annie Hornish contends that the best solution to the stalemate is to send Dexter to a privately owned hobby farm in Chatham, New York, operated by Diana Urban, also a former Connecticut state representative.
Urban claims that Dexter will be kept safely at her farm. She says that the decision to euthanize the pit bull is “insane.”
Urban supposes that euthanasia is about making the dog “understand that he did a bad thing.” But, as Evans tells us, this view is incorrect. The point of holding the dog to account under the law is to uphold the value of human life and to prevent further loss of life in another possible attack. For better or worse, the animal’s “understanding” of its actions is no part of the proceedings.
“Dexter should be sent to the Great Kennel in the Sky”
Urban should not be given custody of Dexter. Dexter should be sent on to the Great Kennel in the Sky. He is not safe. Suppose he escaped from Urban’s farm. Is it fair to the community to have a killer dog running loose?
Shame on Diana Urban for offering to take Dexter into her farm, where incidentally she apparently gives children horse-riding lessons.
Virtue is repulsive when it is so self-righteous. Urban ought to concentrate on all the animals who really do need rescuing. She is not doing anything socially worthwhile when she extends the helping hand to a killer pit bull.
Maybe Urban thinks that she will go to heaven for helping animals like Dexter. My advice to her: have some respect for the victim’s family and friends. Keep quiet and go about your business. Your self-righteousness isn’t wanted.
“A member of the Hornish family”
Before he killed D’Aleo, Dexter had been involved in at least three previous biting incidents. The Hornishes describe Dexter as a “member of our family,” even though the dog had lived with the couple for only a few months.
Janet D’Aleo was mourned by people who had known and loved her for decades.
I wonder how Hornish and Urban would feel if a vicious dog tore to pieces someone they loved. Would they campaign for the dog as if the dog was the real victim?
Annie Hornish wants all kinds of immunity for both herself and her homicidal dog. Hornish did not have a dog license for Dexter. She failed to disclose to her insurance company that she had pit bulls in her household. She does not accept that her dog is “vicious,” even after he killed someone. She refuses to pay the daily care fees for Dexter while he is kept in a facility by the town of Suffield.
The Hornishs agreed to pay $2 million to the estate of Janet D’Aleo, but they still do not accept that their dog was responsible for D’Aleo’s death.
At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that U.S. Presidents enjoy near absolute immunity for “official acts,” Annie Hornish would seem to be the perfect pit bull owner in the Age of Trump: never in the wrong and not responsible for anything!
About guest columnist Jerry Phillips:
I am an Associate Professor of English Literature and American Studies at the University of Connecticut. I am a life-long animal lover and a lover of dogs. I have just completed a book manuscript on dogs which I will be looking to publish. And a future project I have in mind is to write a book on animals, humans, and the question of personhood.
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What I completely don’t understand about this is that the Hornishes had Dexter for a limited number of months (maybe 3 – 4). This murder occurred in November, 2019. The Hornishes haven’t seen and interacted with Dexter for years. They probably wouldn’t recognize Dexter, and he wouldn’t recognize them.
Why is Dexter’s life so valuable? He probably lives in a kennel run and isn’t allowed to play with dogs or people.
Is the law case in the best interest of Dexter or where he lives? Or is there some other reason for this nonsense?
I totally concur. I find it unconscionable that shelters and rescues refuse to recognize their duty to protect the public from dangerous dogs.
Your article is spot on. I am extremely alarmed by the proliferation of pitbulls everywhere. In 2 weeks in Laos PDR I saw 2 pitbulls nether of which were under control but in the vicinity of many children. In Vancouver Canada they are everywhere and never muzzled as required by law. To put a dog ahead of a human is reprehensible. I agree with the comments on bears as an avid hiker.
I have made a small donation to Animals24/7 in the past as your posts are much needed.
Great article! Thank you. And thank you for all that you do.
It makes me crazy when people start in with the, “It’s the owner’s fault” when a pit bull/pit mix mauls/kills someone. They’ve been bred to kill. That’s it. When a pointer expresses their behavioral genes and points without training or prompting, I’m pretty sure that no one gets hurt. When a pit bull/pit mix expresses their behavioral genes and attacks, someone or something is probably going to die.
My 13 lb. poodle mix and I have been attacked twice while on neighborhood walks. I carry a side arm loaded with frangible ammo (no ricochet), bear spray, a plastic tent stake for a break stick, and a folding knife (last resort.) I shouldn’t have to carry all that protection. What’s worse is that should I need to use any of it, I will probably be charged criminally. In Florida, you can shoot a dog only if it is killing your dog. Wouldn’t your dog need to be dead to prove that it was being killed?
Owning a pit bull is like keeping a loaded sub machine gun on your kitchen table. There’s a significantly greater than non-zero chance that that thing will be involved in someone’s or some animal’s death or life-changing injury at some point down the road. Why take the risk?
I absolutely agree with Prof. Phillips about “wild” animals in their own habitat, and also about dogs that kill not only humans, but members of any other species. The dog should be destroyed, not to ‘teach it a lesson’ but to end its life and thereby ensure it does not harm anyone else.
Sharing with gratitude.
Well here in Virginia we can at least best the number of years a dangerous animal was held. “Niko” was kept for 7years in the Charlottesville/Albemarle SPCA, a quasi public/private facility financed in part by the taxpayers. Not only was the dog suffering and even more dangerous as time went on, one can’t help but wonder at the cost to the citizens whose hard earned money helped finance this disaster. The SPCA refused twice to answer my FOIA citing “privilege” as a private entity despite the fact that is not allowed by statute when public funds are also used.
Without knowing the specifics of Dexter’s confinement I’ll make an educated guess that four of the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare are not being met. Having worked in public shelters I’ve seen a fair share of quarantine dogs waiting for their day in court, sometimes for over a year. I can’t remember a single instance where I thought that was anything more than a miserable existence watching them deteriorate. Whether it’s their own animal or not I wonder how anyone in the animal welfare field could reach a different conclusion.
Two of the bigger risks of bites I’ve experienced in years of working with dogs are that of dogs for a lack of a better term that are “bipolar” (meaning they are fine with a stimuli one day and reactive towards it the next) and dogs that disproportionately respond to perceived threats. Admittedly I don’t know the specifics behind Dexter’s previous bites, but I’d wager he fell into both categories long before he killed Janet D’Aleo.
Behavior testing especially in a public shelter is never going to be perfect. Resource or territorial behavior may never been seen until the dog is in a home or has an owner it feels a bond with. Some dogs might do well in the structure of a shelter or with an experienced handler, but not in a chaotic house. Nevertheless when multiple bites occur I fail to see how that can be ignored in responsibly placing a dog.
While training often helps, I think it has been touted as a panacea if not sensationalized by “reality tv.” If it’s all training organizations with multimillion budgets and access to top trainers would not have “no handle dogs” warehoused for years. For many of these dogs management may be the only safe way for them to stay alive. And as the saying goes management often fails. Gates get left open, leashes/collars break, people turn their back for a minute and here we are.
Not only are there not enough experienced/responsible owners for the number of dogs with serious behavior issues, management can be terribly limiting for both. Keeping dogs that can’t be responsibly rehomed alive in so called sanctuaries where they likely spend their days alone in a cage seems more about human gratification than the welfare of the animal.
With respect to public sheltering we seem to be in a race to the bottom led by ideologs at national organizations. Don’t Shop Adopt only works if people trust the organizations they are adopting from. There are still 100s of thousands of perfectly nice dogs dying in shelters each year and I don’t think they are being done any favors when known unsafe dogs are foisted on an unsuspecting public.