It’s been two weeks since Sean O’Neal’s 10-month old dog, Dice, was shot by a Lawrence police officer.

His leg amputated as a result of the damage done, Dice now lingers a bit behind O’Neal’s other dogs, B.J. and Blackjack when the three play inside the fence. Besides a four-inch scar where the leg used to be, O’Neal said his pet has remained the same dog it was before the incident.

“Same old dog,” O’Neal said of his dalmation-boxer-pit bull mix. “You stand over there and see him from the side, you wouldn’t ever know anything happened.”

According to the police report, what happened on March 28 outside O’Neal’s North Lawrence home was a response to two dogs running loose. One of the dogs was Dice, and the other was neighbor Kathy Coffey’s labrador-hound mix, Sid. When animal control officers were unable to control the two dogs, they called for police backup.

The report said a 10-year old boy approached the area on his bike, and when the officer felt the boy and himself were being threatened by Dice, he pointed his gun at the dog.

The dog initially retreated, but then again approached the two, and the officer fired one shot. Dice retreated to Coffey’s front porch, but Sid charged the officer and was shot twice and killed on the scene.

Messages left with Lawrence Animal Control were not returned.

While many cities — including Kansas City and Lee’s Summit, Mo. ­— are moving toward pit bull bans, Lawrence currently abides by a “dangerous dog” ordinance. The ordinance, which was passed in 2003, can require owners to keep their dogs in muzzles or in cages if the dogs are cited for “dangerous” behavior. None of the three dogs at the scene had been reported as dangerous before the incident.

Midge Grinstead, executive director of the Lawrence Humane Society, said the ordinance had been successful in limiting the number of dog bites in the county since its inception. She said the ordinance was a more well-rounded approach to controlling a city’s animals than breed bans, which focus on single breeds of dog.

“The difference is, we’re not waiting for someone to take care of it,” Grinstead said. “Our job is to protect the public, and we’re doing it.”

Grinstead said breed bans cast an unfair opinion of certain dogs, most often pit bulls. She said the media played a role in portraying the animals as vicious.

“They’re not any more aggressive than a German shepherd or a rat terrier. We should be tracking the owner,” Grinstead said. “If something happens and it’s a pit bull, it’s getting reported.”

The police report referred to Dice, Sid and Blackjack as pit bulls. Sid was not a pit bull, and Blackjack, the only purebred pit bull, was inside the gate when officers responded.

Currently, the Lawrence Humane Society has 31 animals catalogued as “dangerous”, though some of them have been removed from the area or have been euthanized for additional violations.

Coffey said no police or animal control units had ever been called to her residence, and that her dogs had never been mentioned as “dangerous”. She was troubled by the police’s response call being treated as a pit bull attack, when neither of the dogs involved was a pure pit bull.

“Pit bulls are a product of their owners,” Coffey said. “Give them the time and attention they need, and they know when you care for them or when you don’t. Sid was my puppy in a big dog’s body. He was my goofy dog.”

Coffey and O’Neal said Lawrence’s current laws were doing a fine job, and that neither dog had previously been cited for any type of violent behavior. What they wanted to see, they said, were changes in the way animals were identified and treated.

“Aggressive dog calls need to be labeled as such, not pit bull attacks,” Coffey said. “I think the LPD are doing what they’ve been trained to do, which is fine. They just need more training in breeds so they know what they’re responding to.”

O’Neal also said he didn’t blame the officer who shot his dog. He said he wondered why it took animal control units an hour to control a dog that he calls calm and loving.

“I’d definitely like to see that animal control could do its job,” O’Neal said.

O’Neal said the animal control officer he spoke to told him when they tried to restrain Dice, Sid would move in and vice versa.

“Why is that so hard? It shouldn’t be that difficult to understand,” O’Neal said. “Hell, my seven-year old son can understand patterns.”

O’Neal said the message he wanted the public to take from the incident was that his dogs were not violent, and not all pit bulls should be grouped by stereotypes. “I’ve seen pit bulls that were trained to fight, and it makes me sick,” O’Neal said. “But anyone who wants to come see my dogs, I say come see them. They don’t know you from Tom, Dick or Harry, but they’ll come running up to you like they know you.”

Kansan staff writer Erick R. Schmidt can be contacted at eschmidt@kansan.com.

— Edited by Mark Vierthaler