GreeneStreets. Feature photo of a back country road in Greene County, Indiana.


Dog bites man, man shoots dog, owner in trouble for harboring a non-immunized dog

A rural Bloomfield woman is being summoned to appear in court after her dog bit a neighbor and prevented him from getting inside his house. He shot the dog which allegedly had not been to a vet and had not been immunized.

Tia C. Wagner, 25, Bloomfield, is being ordered to appear in Greene Superior Court on December 10 as a result of an incident that occurred on Thursday, November 1.

Greene County Sheriff’s Deputy Terry Wade responded late that morning to an area on North Wolf Road on the report of an animal bite.

Wade said he talked to the man who had been bitten who told him he’d been inside a detached garage and when he left the garage to go into his house, the neighbor’s dog, a German Shepherd mix, was near the steps and wouldn’t let him get inside. The dog then bit the man on his calf and Deputy Wade said he observed a puncture wound and the start of bruising.

According to Wade, the man said the dog left the property after biting him, but it came back several times. He said as the dog was going back and forth, he talked to a neighbor woman who is the mother of the dog’s owner and she said she could not control the dog. He said he told the woman he was going to shoot the dog and she advised him to shoot it.

He then shot the dog.

Deputy Wade said when he spoke to the woman, she told him when she’d let the dog out, it ran to the neighbor’s several times and she confirmed that when the man told her he was going to shoot it, she agreed.

Wagner, the dog’s owner, was at work at the time of the incident. Deputy Wade talked to her by phone and reported she said the dog was one-year-old, had not been to a veterinarian and had not been immunized for rabies.

Wagner is facing a charge of harboring a non-immunized dog which caused injury, a Class B misdemeanor.