Dog-loving San Francisco in uproar over mauling

Since then, dog owners say police are issuing unprecedented warnings for walking the pets without a leash. People on the streets are going out of their way to avoid big dogs. Talk radio is full of opinions about animal euthanasia.

On a recent afternoon, Todd Campbell watched his mastiff, Cassius, lumber around a hill at Alamo Square Park.

"People cross the street every day," Campbell said of the reaction to the big dog. "He's even more intimidating when he's not on a rope. After the incident, we're straight leash. Everybody's real sensitive."

From the dunes at Fort Funston to the back seats of BMWs on Fillmore Street, dogs are everywhere in San Francisco. The pricey shelter has a staff of animal behaviorists and private rooms furnished with wicker furniture, pillows, framed prints and TVs that play cartoons. There was even a push two years ago to have city officials change the term "pet owner" to the more compassionate-sounding "pet guardian," though the plan was eventually vetoed.

Whipple, the lacrosse coach at St. Mary's College, was killed by two mastiff-Canary Island dogs a few steps from her apartment door as she returned from a grocery store. Each dog outweighed the 110-pound woman.

The animals lived next door with Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, two lawyers who could face manslaughter charges if prosecutors conclude the couple knew their animals were dangerous.

Officials at Pelican Bay State Prison said two inmates serving life sentences bred Bane, Hera and other dogs for the Mexican Mafia to guard methamphetamine labs and other criminal operations.

The inmates, Paul Schneider and Dale Bretches, are members of the racist Aryan Brotherhood. Noel and Knoller had been raising the two dogs for the past several months. Recently, the couple adopted Schneider as their son; the adoption became final three days after the mauling.

The couple have said they were impressed by Schneider after meeting him in 1996 when they represented a guard at Pelican Bay.

Noel held a news conference Friday outside Pelican Bay, where he was visiting Schneider, and said Bane never had shown any tendency to attack people. The 59-year-old tax lawyer said he should not be held responsible for the mauling.

Earlier this week, he sent a letter to prosecutors blaming Whipple for the attack, suggesting she should have gone inside her apartment and not aggressively reacted to the dogs. He also said Whipple struck his wife as Knoller tried to pull one of the dogs away.

Noel also said that the attack may have been brought on by pheromone-based cosmetics Whipple might have been wearing, or that the lacrosse coach may have used steroids that could have attracted the dogs.

"I'm not blaming the victim," he said Friday. "I'm just telling you what happened from the view of the only witness."

Police and neighbors say Whipple had been bitten before by one of the dogs and lived in fear of them. And a woman who raised the animals before Noel and Knoller told the San Francisco Chronicle that the dogs ate her sheep, chicken and house cat.

One of the dogs, Bane, was destroyed after the attack. The fate of the other, Hera, remains undetermined.

"People are calling in saying, 'Why don't you just kill the dog now? I'll come down there and do it myself,"' said Richard Schulke, chairman of the Animal Welfare and Control Commission, whose office has received 50 to 100 calls a day since Whipple's death.

City animal control officials deny they have stepped up patrols for off-leash dogs, but the agency next week will consider whether dogs out in public must be muzzled as well as leashed.<