They tore some woman to pieces outside her apartment house.
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SFGate
S.F. Neighbors Say Dog Was Aggressive
'This woman died from our negligence'
Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 28, 2001
One neighbor referred to him as "Killer Dog." Others, "Dog of Death."
Bane, the Canary mastiff that mauled to death a 33-year-old Pacific Heights woman Friday, tragically lived up to their fears.
Yesterday, a number of neighbors said they knew that 3-year-old Bane was aggressive and regretted that they hadn't reported him to the city before.
One neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said she went so far as to work out a schedule with Bane's owner, Robert Noel, so their quarreling canines would not cross paths.
"None of us ever filed a complaint, and that's what makes me sick now," said Cydnee Dubrof, a dog owner who lives a few doors away from Noel and his wife, Marjorie Knoller. "This woman died from our negligence.'
On Friday afternoon, the 123-pound Bane lunged at Diane Whipple, who lived next door to Bane's owners in an upscale apartment building at Pacific Avenue and Fillmore Street. Whipple had just returned home from her job as women's lacrosse coach at St. Mary's College in Moraga.
"Marjorie just about had the dogs completely in the apartment when the elevator door opened and our neighbor came out," said Noel, who arrived home shortly after the attack. "Bane sort of perked up and headed down to the end of the hall. The woman had the apartment door open and was just standing there" when the dog attacked.
Despite the efforts of Noel's wife to come between the two, Whipple sustained deep bites to her neck and died at San Francisco General Hospital about five hours later.
"Marjorie was telling the woman to stay still, but she kept moving and Marjorie would try to cover her again," Noel said.
Whipple weighed less than the dog that killed her, said Susan Scheetz, a longtime friend who was Whipple's lacrosse coach at Penn State University. Scheetz guessed Whipple weighed 110 pounds and stood 5 feet 3 inches.
Bane, not a bull mastiff as initially reported but a lethal mix of English mastiff and Canary Island cattle dog, was destroyed at the city's animal shelter later Friday night. The couple's other dog, Hera, who was also in the hallway but according to Noel did not join in the attack, remained at the shelter yesterday. A shelter spokesman said the fate of 112-pound Hera, also a Canary mix, depended on the outcome of a police investigation.
Noel said he would be meeting with shelter officials today.
Yesterday, no charges had been filed against Noel, 59, or Knoller, 45, both attorneys who work out of their sixth-floor apartment.
In fact, police say they're not even sure what the charges would be, it's so rare for a person to die from a dog attack.
At St. Mary's last night, spectators held a moment of silence before the men's basketball game against Pepperdine. Members of the women's lacrosse team,
wearing small black ribbons, huddled in a corner of the tiny gym.
Athletic Director Carl Clapp, who had been in Los Angeles with the women's basketball team, flew back to lend his support.
"The thing I remember most about Diane was her passion," Clapp said. "Whenever she talked about the women's lacrosse team, her eyes would start to water."
Friends described Whipple as an animal lover. She had two cats; she once owned a chinchilla, and she really loved dogs, they said. Heidi Peterson, an assistant coach at St. Mary's last year and a longtime friend, said she had to talk Whipple out of adopting a dog about two weeks ago.
"That's why this is so absolutely, completely ridiculous," Peterson said of the tragic incident. "I can't think of any other word for it. It's just ridiculous."
Despite neighbors' fearful accounts, Noel insisted that neither dog had ever shown aggression toward humans. In fact, Bane had in the past befriended a kitten, whom he would gently carry around in his mouth.
Noel recalled a greyhound he once owned who nipped at some children. "Inside the hour, that dog was at the vet with a needle in his arm," Noel said.
"If Bane had shown any aggression toward people, he wouldn't have been here."
Noel recounted numerous stories of people, young and old, stopping on the street to pet his unusual charges.
Noel said he adopted the dogs about three months ago after suing, pro bono, on behalf of a client to have them released from a breeding facility that was leaving them chained outdoors.
The couple is known for their pro bono work, particularly on behalf of the city's homeless.
When Noel won the case, it was discovered that Bane and Hera were ineligible for breeding because of health problems. Noel decided to adopt them to keep them from being destroyed; the other dogs were returned to their owner,
who wanted to breed them.
Both were underweight; Bane had sores the size of half dollars on his ears from horsefly bites.
Noel remembered the first time he met Bane, whom he affectionately called 'The Big Guy.'
"The first thing Bane did was he sniffed me and licked my hand, then started licking me from my toes on up."
With women, Bane would usually give a few "well-placed sniffs," then roll over on his back so his stomach could be scratched, Noel said.
As for Hera, "She's a very perceptive person," Noel said, refusing to call her a dog. "When I'm feeling down, she'll sit down next to me and start licking me. She won't stop until she has me laughing."
The Canary dog is a powerfully built animal bred for dog fighting, according to information provided by the Animal Care and Control Department. The breed nearly became extinct in the 1960s because of a ban on dog fighting in its homeland, the Canary Islands.
Noel said Bane had his share of run-ins with other dogs -- one which ended in Noel having his right index finger almost severed.
The incident took place at Crissy Field a few months ago, he said, when another dog ran up and attacked him, and then Bane.
"I don't know who did it, but when the dust settled, I looked down and my finger had been almost completely severed," he said.
Knoller was recovering from injuries herself yesterday, Noel said, and did not want to talk to the press. She opted not to be treated at the emergency room at S.F. General because the couple were not ready to face the victim's family, who also were there, Noel said.
Noel said his wife has received death threats over the phone because of the incident.
He was at a loss to explain the attack on Whipple, who moved into the building to live with a friend about a month ago.
"Bane and I had encountered her at least four or five times in the past month," he said. "He had never shown the least bit of interest in her.
"It's a horrible tragedy for everybody involved," he said. "For our neighbor, her parents and family and people who loved her, it's got to be like ripping your heart out."
Yesterday, bouquets of flowers collected at the entrance to the apartment building.
Inside, the rug where the attack had taken place had been torn up and lay in a heap in front of Whipple's apartment door. A man who identified himself only as the building manager was scraping the floor.
Although Noel described his pets as gentle, experts on the breed say the dogs are notoriously aggressive.
Merry Johnson of Baltimore has bred and shown mastiffs for the past 25 years. She said in an interview that the Canary Island mix, Presa Canario, was bred for fighting contests in Spain.
So dangerous were the purebred Canario that Spain outlawed them in the 1930s, Johnson said. Mixing such a ruthless fighter with the large English mastiff, bred for pulling coal carts during wartime in England, is foolhardy, Johnson said.
Dr. Carl Semencic, in his book "Pit Bulls and Tenacious Guard Dogs," says of the breed: "As a guardian breed with man-stopping ability there is no dog that is more effective than the Canary Dog. . . . This dog . . . will not hesitate to attack anyone whom it perceives as a threat to its family or home. Such an attack could only be a hopeless situation for any man involved."
The descriptions come as no surprise to dog walkers familiar with Bane and Hera.
"He looked like the beast of death," said Dubrof, who referred to Bane as "Killer Dog" to her friends. Whenever she and her shepherd-Doberman mutt neared Bane, Noel would try to keep his distance, she said. "He definitely took evasive measures."
Another neighbor who worked out the dog-walking schedule with Noel said she began walking her dog in tennis shoes and bought pepper spray in case she ever needed to react quickly. "I literally changed my behavior. I needed to be prepared if the dogs got into a fight."
She became particularly concerned when she began to see Knoller walking both dogs. She had doubts that Noel could control one dog; she didn't think his wife would be able to control two, she said.
"I literally would take my dog and walk back into my apartment" if she saw them, she said.
She had never experienced such a problem before.
"He's the only dog in the neighborhood I've ever had an issue with," she said.
Lynn Gaines, a professional dog walker who has worked in Pacific Heights for four years, actually asked Noel to put a muzzle on his dogs after they scared her charge.
"I predicted there would be bloodshed," Gaines said. "If they wear a muzzle,
they can't sink their teeth into somebody's neck," she said.
Although he disagrees with his neighbors' assessment of his dogs, Noel is aware of how they feel. It's because of that sentiment, he said, that he may find another home for Hera if she's released by the animal shelter.
"I think she'd be fine here, but I don't know how the neighbors would feel, " he said.
For their part, Noel and Knoller, who have lived in their rented apartment about 11 years, have no plans on moving.
Reached at her apartment, Whipple's roommate declined to comment.
Whipple, a former member of the U.S. lacrosse team, had worked at St. Mary's since October 1999. Formerly, she was the head coach at the Menlo School, a college preparatory academy in Atherton.
The attack further riled debate over the city's leash law, which requires dogs to be leashed in public except in sanctioned dog parks, like at Crissy Field.
The Golden Gate Recreation Area's Citizens Advisory Committee last week delayed for 120 days a decision on whether to overturn a 22-year-old policy allowing dogs to run free on recreation area land.
The last dog attack that made headlines in San Francisco occurred last March when an Old English sheepdog bit a San Francisco police officer who was responding with her partner to a 911 call in the Castro.
The partner fired at the dog and missed, instead injuring the officer and an 11-year-old boy in the home.
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/28/MN159234.DTLThis article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle <<
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I heard that along time ago, probably on some Animal Planet show. And it's good too. 
