A dog tale that won't lie down

On the afternoon of June 28, a bit of drama unfolded on Wildhorse Lane involving several dogs and two people. Sadly, one of the dogs died, a woman was injured and one of the dogs got shot in the butt with a pellet gun.

Three of the dogs involved happen to belong to two local law enforcement officers, two of them pets and one, Sally Sue, a police K-9 trained to passively sniff out drugs.

There's little dispute over what happened that afternoon, as it's been investigated by the police, looked at by media throughout the region as well as the mayor and city council, an Idaho Congressman, Panhandle Health, School District 101, Boundary County Commissioners and the Idaho State Police.

Farice Basler was working in her yard when she heard the frenzied din of barking dogs and noticed that her toy Pomeranian was no longer in the yard.

Bonners Ferry Police Officer and DARE Officer Tiffany Murray also heard the barking, looked in her yard and saw that her three dogs; Oreo, a Boston terrier, Panther, a black Lab, and Sally Sue, a chocolate lab, were missing. She found them right away.

Basler spotted her dog on the Murray property being chased back into her yard by the three dogs. She ran to her dog's rescue and tried to separate the fighting dogs, getting scratched on the arm in the process. Despite her best attempts, she was unable to save the Pomeranian.

Basler ran into her garage, followed by Oreo, while the two Labs fled. She was able to lock the terrier in just as Murray arrived. They called to request an officer at 3:53 p.m. while her husband, sheriff's deputy Kevin Murray, went to find the two Labs.

Moments later, and as yet unaware of what had happened at the Basler residence, neighbor Gerald Higgs saw two dogs go after his four dachshunds in his yard.

He snatched up his air rifle and popped off two shots, hitting the black Lab he called “Cujo” in the butt. That dog yelped, ran a few yards down Higgs' shop driveway and lay down, while Sally Sue, answering Tiffany's calls, ran to her. Higgs' four dogs broke off as well, darting into his fenced back yard, where he penned them.

Higgs then went to “Cujo,” pet him and led him into his garage, where he locked him up, went inside and called in a report that his dogs had been attacked and that he had one of the attackers locked in his garage.

“That's one of the dogs we're looking for,” he was told. Within seconds, three law enforcement vehicles were in his yard.

“Ofc. Tiffany Murray took Cujo and appeared to perform a full physical exam on him checking him for wounds and injuries,” Higgs read from a letter to the Bonners Ferry City Council July 23. “I felt this strange since I had yet to tell them I was forced to shoot twice to defend my dogs, given air rifles are nearly silent.”

“I checked Panther because Higgs told me he'd shot at him and because Mrs. Basler had scissors in her hand when she had tried separating the dogs,” Tiffany said.

The officers, he went on, left quickly without asking why he had their dog locked in the garage, telling him, “there was an incident down below.”

“I asked Higgs immediately how my dogs approached him and he said they were friendly,” Tiffany said. “He did not mention an attack to police on the scene.”

It wasn't until he called the Basler residence two hours later, he said, that he learned what had happened there.

“Immediately, I realized I had relevant information to any investigation of the events,” he wrote in his letter to the council. “I tried to re-contact the BFPD, but it was a busy police night. Since two law enforcement officers lived down the street, at approximately 10:30 p.m., I went to the Murray residence and both came to the door. I did not recognize them from when they picked up the dogs and I proceeded to tell them the full sequence of events. It was only after I told them my full experience that Ofc. Murray said, 'oh, they are our dogs.' At that point, I felt any investigation might be compromised.”

He drove to the sheriff's office, he wrote, where he “repeated the whole experience” to Bonners Ferry Police Officer Heiko Arshat. He asked that Police Chief Rick Alonzo contact him the next day.

Both Murrays said he did not relay to them the full sequence of events as they cut him off, telling him to talk to the officer then on duty.

And Alonzo was already aware, as Tiffany called him at home immediately after things calmed down and explained what happened.

The following morning, Alonzo went to Higgs' home and determined that neither Higgs nor his dogs had been injured. He learned that Higgs' main concerns were that he'd be cited for discharging a firearm in city limits and that such an incident might happen again.

Alonzo assured him that, as he was defending property, he was well within his rights, and later told him all that was being done to bolster the fence.

“He seemed satisfied,” Alonzo said. “I thought the situation had been taken care of.”

His next stop was at the victim's house, he said, where Mrs. Basler told him her Pomeranian had wandered out of the yard and over to the Murray's house.

Despite her injuries and the death of her Pomeranian, Alonzo said, Mrs. Basler didn't want any action taken.

“They're dogs,” she told him, “just acting like dogs.”

She told officers, including the Murrays, that it was her Pomeranian that went after Oreo, and that Oreo was the only one of the dogs that fought back.

Meanwhile, Tiffany and Kevin Murray were already on their way to Home Depot, where they bought material to fix their fence as well as railroad ties to line it, making the likelihood of recurrence a remote possibility.

Higgs was apparently not satisfied, however. In the days following, he called media throughout the region and related the tale, notified Panhandle Health that there might be a concern about rabies.

“I started getting calls,” Alonzo said.

And Murray was surprised by the sudden attention as well.

“He stopped me in traffic a few days afterward to tell me 'no hard feelings,'” she said. He even gave her biscuits to take to the three dogs.

Not getting the media coverage he expected, over the next month Higgs told the city council and school superintendent Don Bartling that a trained police dog involved in this type attack should immediately be pulled off the force and retrained, that city ordinances should immediately be written to protect citizens from vicious dogs, particularly officially sanctioned canines that wear the badge and accompany police officers into classrooms. He wrote state representative George Eskridge demanding action and an outside investigation.

Alonzo had already requested review of the incident by the Idaho State Police, and captain Clark Rollins concurred that while unfortunate, no crime had been committed and no further action was necessary.

Higgs begs to differ, pressing his case ever wider, berating the media for not publishing and saying the Murray dogs, by their actions, are vicious animals, even though two are house pets and Sally Sue is specifically trained to be passive; to locate drugs, to sit and look back at her handler, then point her nose at the suspected contraband.

“He thinks we're trying to cover up something,” Alonzo said. “He said we're acting 'ad hominem,' appealing to emotion rather than reason. Several times I thought we'd adequately addressed his concerns. Each time, he said he agreed, and then I get a call from somebody else wondering why we haven't looked into it.”

In his message to the city council, Higgs demanded a re-writing of city dog ordinances to forbid the “housing of any police K-9 unit, present or past, with other household pets,” requiring an inescapable enclosure for such dogs, and that the city adequately define in its new dog laws what is meant by “vicious dog,” “provocation” and “multiple attack,” as well as establish dog restraint requirements within businesses, schools and “arterial” areas of the city.

Even with such laws on the books, though, it would be hard to charge a dog for being a dog.

Under Idaho Code,where bad dog behavior crosses the line is when a dog, unprovoked, leaves the property he or she is confined and attacks a person of the two-legged persuasion.

“You can train a dog to do some amazing things,” assistant police chief Joel Minor said, “but you can't train a dog not to be a dog.”