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Santa Clara’s Wag Hotel Responds After Dog Attacks Four Employees

Santa Clara’s Wag Hotel has implemented new policies after a dog attacked four employees, sending three of them to the hospital.

“While no one can predict animal behavior with 100 percent certainty, we have reviewed this situation closely and taken several new actions that go over and above the industry-standard procedures we always follow,” said Kristen Rau, Director of Marketing for Wag Hotel.

Rau says Santa Clara’s Wag Hotel has added additional intake questions for dog owners. It has also requested a current list of Santa Clara County’s ‘vicious dogs’ and has asked the county for regular list updates.

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Company-wide, Wag Hotel has created a working group to develop and implement additional safety-related procedures.

Santa Clara police were called to the Wag Hotel at 2000 Duane Ave. around 4:30 p.m. on June 13.

“When we arrived we did have multiple people with injuries,” said Santa Clara Police Department (SCPD) Captain Wahid Kazem. “The dog was not properly secured at that time. Our officers assisted with the securing of the dog as well as ensuring that the injured parties received medical transport to the hospital.”

Wag Hotel says all four employees are recovering and two of them have already returned to work.

Officials say the dog was a pit bull, though it might have been a mix. The Silicon Valley Animal Control Authority (SVACA) took the dog. Officials at SVACA say the dog was euthanized soon after at the request of the owner.

Rau said the dog had stayed at the hotel once before. During this stay, the dog was isolated in the company’s “special care” program and it was not a part of the hotel’s general dog population.

Police are now investigating whether criminal charges can or should be filed. Captain Kazem says while officers are very familiar with the penal code, they are now working with the Department of Fish and Game and the SVACA to see if other sections of code or law were violated.

“If this was a situation where the dog ran out in public and bit several people, we would have a different lens with which we would be looking at that incident,” said Kazem. “Versus one that the owner turns the dog in, this business willingly accepts the dog understanding what…some of the behavioral challenges may be with the dog and an incident like this unfolds with numerous victims.”

Some media outlets are reporting another employee at the same location was injured by a dog on June 15. Captain Kazem says there were no calls to dispatch or any police response to that location on that day.

Cal/OSHA also says it only received a report from the pet hotel regarding the June 13 incident.

“Employers must notify Cal/OSHA of serious injuries which are those that result in hospitalization,” said Cal/OSHA Public Information Officer Frank Polizzi. “It should be recorded in the employer’s injury log and Cal/OSHA would look into any recent incident as part of the current investigation.”

Cal/OSHA is investigating to see what caused the incident and to see if there were any safety violations. The department has six months to issue any and all citations. The facility will be allowed to operate while the investigation takes place.

If a violation is found, the Wag Hotel must correct the issue and may be required to pay a penalty fee.

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15 Comments
  1. Victoria 5 years ago
    Reply

    This irresponsible reporting
    It may have been a pit or maybe a mix
    I’m pretty sure theWag Hotel knew
    Stop jumping to conclusions to make your story sound more terrifying
    I demand a retraction or a statement the reporter was jumping to conclusions about the dogs breed

    • Meagain 5 years ago
      Reply

      Victoria demands a retraction LMAO!! Well you’re not getting one, nor do you even remotely deserve one. Will you be contacting the Officials you made the statement? Quit defending this mutant un-dog. Shame on you, but you are so typical of Pit fanatics who care nothing about human lives or the lives of beloved pets that are killed daily by them.

      • Seanye 5 years ago
        Reply

        Someone left /r/banpitbulls kennel open.

        • Rex 5 years ago
          Reply

          Hey dipshit, thank you for letting me know that community exists!
          I’m gonna go sub to them right now.

    • Meagain 5 years ago
      Reply

      Victoria – By the way, the injured staff have stated it was a Pit Bull. On VIDEO. Are you mad at them also that they aren’t keeping your dirty little secret?

    • Debbie Bell 5 years ago
      Reply

      Victoria, why would you want more dog killing dogs to be born and then to infest a community? The fighting dogs suffer as well.

      Become educated. Read game dog forums, read books by Douglas Link, Richard Stratton, Joseph Colby.

      Joseph Colby, pit bull breeder, fancier/fighter, author wrote: “Inasmuch as dog fighting is illegal…as long as these dogs are bred there will be pit contests to prove who has the better fighting dog.”

      Of course Colby was right. But his words also tell us how to stop dog fighting: stop breeding fighting dogs.

      It’s not possible to be educated, honest, compassionate and promote fighting dogs as normal pets at the same time. It cannot be done.

    • Alexa 5 years ago
      Reply

      Victoria, are you stupid? That’s what pits were bred to do. Gladiator breeds shouldn’t be kept as pets and especially not at places where other dogs and people are at such as pet hotels. Ignoring the breed’s hierarchy is pure ignorance! Pitbulls deserve media attention to protect the public and expose the truth hidden by million dollar pro-pit agenda & propaganda.

      • Seanye 5 years ago
        Reply

        Someone left /r/banpitbulls kennel open. I can’t believe you loons brigade outside Reddit, too. Actually, yes I can.

  2. Terry Huffman 5 years ago
    Reply

    Why demand anything when it was most likely a Pit Bull or a Pit Bull mix? Are you offended on behalf of a dog? Will Pit Bulls across America be offended or just the people who own/advocate for their poor and risky choices of fighting breeds as “family pets”? You have no high horse to get off of.

    • Meagain 5 years ago
      Reply

      This!

  3. Debbie Bell 5 years ago
    Reply

    Convicted dog fighter Tom Garner (google him) continues to selectively breed for unprovoked prolonged suicidal deadly neutral ground aggression. His foundation sire Chinaman bit humans but he was so good at killing dogs he wasn’t culled. Garner sells and ships his “kill or die trying” hard biting gladiator dogs all over the USA and the world.

    “Good” fighting dogs/bully dog types don’t give warning before launching an attack. (Read pit bull books by pit bull lover Richard Stratton) There’s no reason to give warning when the good fighting dogs’ goals are the attack.

    Watch video YouTube “victim fears permanent damage to hand after pitbull attack”. Good fighting dogs attack unprovoked, even far from home, without first trying to avoid conflict.

    No one who has the welfare of all dogs as a priority wants more dog-killer dogs to be born. The dogs cannot help themselves but humans can stop breeding more of them.

    It’s cruelty to support the Tom Garners and their intentional breeding of socially deviant dogs. It’s cruelty to promote game insane fighting dogs as normal pets. This dog died because of his man-made mutations. He couldn’t help himself.

    Dog fighters never say “breed doesn’t matter”. They know breed matters most. They describe their dogs by their bloodlines and fighting weights. (Watch Bull And Terrier channel YouTube)

    The kindest way of preventing attacks and dog deaths such as these that occurred St Wag Hotel is to be honest and educated about these man-made mutations, and to stop supporting the breeding for fighting dog behaviors.

    • Harve Morgan 5 years ago
      Reply

      Well said. Yes, those who select the pit bull as a ‘family’ pet are supporting the dog fighting rings. The more pits out there, the less likely chance the dog fighters will be noticed. You take their unwanted offspring so they have room to breed more. Yes, those who select pit bulls are accessories to dog fighters. You aren’t any different from them either. When you select a pet to take home to the family, you don’t select a canine whose only purpose to exist is to kill other things, no different from a pointer on point, or a hound scenting. It’s call genetics. It is impossible to understand the mind of anyone wanting to take home to their kids such an animal unless they are just as warped as the dog fighters.

  4. William Linington 5 years ago
    Reply

    Ohio State University’s College of Medicine and Wexner Medical Center have just released a study (May 2019) showing that pit bulls are NOT safe animals to be placed in homes or communities. Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of the Ohio State University College of Medicine, says that pit bulls are “a significant public health issue.”

    It is sadly all too common for a pit bull you have loved to turn on you out of the blue for no reason. Pit bulls betray the love and loyalty of so many owners. It’s just their genetics coming out, and while the love you give the animal can mask the genetics in the fog of your mind, it never actually changes the animal in reality. It’s like how people burned sage to ward off the plague: it was just all in their minds and never actually changed reality one d*mn bit.

    1 in 40 pit bulls will grievously injure or kill another animal or human, compared to 1 in 50,000 of all other dog breeds combined.

    Last year, pit bulls killed a person every 9 days in the US and Canada, 30,000 other family pet dogs, 14,000 farm animals, and 17,000 cats.

  5. Irial 5 years ago
    Reply

    Get over yourself. It’s not fear mongering, it’s the truth. The pitbull issue is becoming epidemic. This is not a breed that belongs among human society. Currently pits and thier mixes kill more per years than faulty child seats. It’s high time foe government t intervention.

  6. Melissa 3 years ago
    Reply

    The banpitbulls reddit is full of the most hate filled scared humans on earth. They devote their entire existence on hating a class of dogs because they are scared and ignorant. Those “people” are the real pandemic

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