The owners of the dog declared vicious by a Pittsfield, Mass., court were ticketed Thursday for allegedly failing to license the dog once they moved to Schenectady.
Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett sent an animal control officer to their house after discovering that they had not applied for a license.
Lori Rohde and Adam Pollack were both ticketed. Rohde owns Zeus, the dog involved in an attack on a 9-year-old boy in Pittsfield in June. Pollack owns another dog, Cleopatra. Neither is licensed.
When called, Pollack did not want to discuss the matter with the press.
He added that he didn’t think it was fair that a court deemed Zeus vicious. “Zeus was innocent,” he said, then hung up.
While Zeus was licensed in Pittsfield, Cleopatra has always lived in Schenectady, according to Pollack. He did not offer any explanation as to why he had never licensed that dog.
Bennett checked on the licensing personally, saying he was concerned about Zeus. He objected to the idea of relocating a vicious dog, a decision made by a court in Massachusetts. Other city officials also objected but could not overturn the court ruling.
On Tuesday night, one of Schenectady’s animal control officers checked on the dogs and warned the owners that they needed to get licenses, Bennett said.
But by midday Thursday, they still had not done so. That’s when Bennett sent another officer to their house to issue tickets if they could not produce licenses.
“My concern is, when you have dogs with no license, you have no evidence of rabies vaccination,” Bennett said.
The vaccination serves as a protection for anyone bitten by the dog, he added.
Pollack apparently tried to offer some explanation to one of the officers, Bennett said. “But I don’t care. There’s no license,” he said. “He lived here before. He had dogs here before. What can I tell you? He knew what he had to do.”
Failing to license a dog is a violation, generally punishable by a fine.
This is not the first time the couple have gotten into trouble with their dogs. Pollack was convicted of having a loose dog in Schenectady a couple years ago. That dog later led the attack on the boy in Pittsfield and was euthanized.
The couple also had to call Pittsfield police in 2007 when their unneutered male dogs got into a fight, injuring both of them as they tried to stop it. Police later had to shoot one of the dogs when it attacked them as they tried to enter the house.
Rohde and Pollack say they are working with a dog trainer in an effort to train Zeus.
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