Originally Posted by RebelR

It's unfortunate that the dog got shot. You can clearly tell that there are a lot of dog owners in here chiming in, but we need to take into account that not all cops are dog owners, or dog lovers for that matter. Even quite dog savvy people don't necessarily know how to read a dog's body language and interpret their behavior.

Unfortunately in this instance, the owner of the dog set into motion, a chain of events that got his dog killed. Had he left when asked to, or secured his dog in the car with the windows up, or had him trained enough that he would have sat and stayed when told to, things might be different. It wasn't the responsibility of the cops to do any of those things, and when the dog advanced the cop did what he felt was necessary to protect himself and his fellow officers.

Who knows, maybe the officer had ulterior motives, whether to teach the guy a lesson, or just hated dogs because he didn't get one as a kid, we'll never know, but he was still within his rights to shoot it. They will still have to suffer through the bad PR that this brings though.