Chuck Allen and Tasha Karrick lit the candles on a two-tiered Mickey Mouse cake as family members gathered to sing for their son Covil on what would have been his fourth birthday.
“We’re trying to remember him the best we can,” Karrick said after the birthday party this month. “But it wasn’t the same without Covil. It’s never the same without Covil.”
The Coon Rapids couple in July lost their younger son, a 3-year-old toddler with bouncy blond curls and blue eyes, after he was mauled by two dogs in Brooklyn Park.
The attack was among a string of dangerous incidents that has city officials considering ways to crack down on animal ordinance violations and more frequently cite owners.
Officials also want to amend city laws, including to require microchipping and regulate backyard breeding — cases where residents are selling puppies out of their home without a license and often without training the animals.
Days after Covil’s death, Brooklyn Park police said a loose dog attacked a 7-year-old. The next month, two dogs escaped a yard and attacked a neighbor. In September, a woman was severely injured and hospitalized after she was mauled by her two dogs at a Brooklyn Park apartment, where the owners were selling puppies.
“Anecdotally, these extreme cases haven’t been common,” police inspector Toni Weinbeck, said. “There have been previous attacks, but it was always kind of one-off instances. To have these back-to-back that quickly was concerning to us.”
The debate comes as communities across the Twin Cities metro since the pandemic have reported an increase in stray dogs and rescue facilities overcrowded with animals. In Maple Grove, an animal holding facility that serves eight area cities closed four times last year because it was over capacity.
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