Three Cases, One Message: Pet Owners Need to Organize Before Something Goes Wrong
- Jeremy Cohen
- Apr 22
- 6 min read
This year marks my eleventh time speaking at Massachusetts School of Law’s Animal Rights Day. Every year I talk about changes in the law. This year, I spoke about what we still need to change — and why pet owners themselves are the ones who have to push for it.
The theme connecting everything I see in my practice right now is accountability. Or more specifically, the lack of it. The people and institutions that harm our animals — or make unjust decisions about them — are rarely made to answer for it. And until that changes, we'll keep seeing the same preventable tragedies.
I spoke about three cases to demonstrate what that looks like in real life.
Bentley: Over 1,000 Days on Death Row in Millis
Bentley is a five-year-old Cane Corso. More than three years ago — over a thousand days ago — Bentley bit someone's hand during a dog altercation. When that happens, cities and towns in Massachusetts can hold a dangerous dog hearing and decide what happens to your dog.
In Bentley's town, Millis, the Board of Selectmen voted to euthanize him. I'll call it what it is: they voted to kill him. And they did so based on a prediction — not evidence — that his owner wouldn't comply with safety measures like a leash, a fence, and better management.
The person who was actually bitten didn't want anything bad to happen to Bentley.
We took the case. We put the safety measures in place. And for over a thousand days, Bentley has been home with his owner, incident-free.
But Millis is still fighting us. They've appealed this to multiple courts. We had to go all the way to the Appeals Court.
On my birthday in 2023, a judge incorrectly ruled that we'd missed our filing deadline (we were both too early AND too late) and told us Bentley was to be euthanized — we had to go up another level just to prove that ruling was wrong. And now, on April 30th, we have a trial in Wrentham District Court on whether Bentley is a dangerous dog who should be killed.
This is a dog who has done nothing wrong for three years.
I've handled about 200 dangerous dog cases. The vast majority of the time, this is an owner management issue — not an animal issue. Retrain the owner, put the right safety measures in place, and you fix the problem. It's not complicated. But when the people running these hearings don't understand dog behavior and don't know the law, you end up with a dog on death row for three years while the town spends its residents' money fighting to kill a dog that is clearly not a danger to anyone.
Our firm has put 206 hours into saving Bentley's life. That is what it costs when a town decides to dig in rather than do the right thing.
I have no problem calling Millis out by name. I keep saying it: Millis is trying to kill us.
Ember: A Tripod Cat and a Rescue Organization's Power Play
About two months ago, I spent five hours at a home in Fitchburg meeting a cat named Ember. She is a tripod — she lost a limb, likely from being hit by a car — and she is incontinent. She needs a diaper around the clock and care that most households simply couldn't provide.
A rescue organization placed Ember with my clients, Kyle and Alex. One of them is a surgeon. They have built their entire home routine around Ember's care. She has a schedule. She has a room. She runs up the spiral staircase and jumps around the house.
She is, by any reasonable measure, exactly where she should be. But the rescue wants her back.
Not because Kyle and Alex are neglecting her. Not because there's a better placement. The rescue became unhappy when Kyle and Alex made their own decisions about care for Ember — care that was always in her best interest. And because of that, they've been trying to take Ember back ever since. They've now hired their fourth attorney. We've been to court six times. They don't have an alternative placement for Ember. They just don't want to let go of control.
We've put 102 hours into this case so far. This rescue could be using those resources — and their energy — to rescue other cats who need homes. Instead, they're spending it on a legal battle to remove a medically complex cat from the home that knows exactly how to take care of her.
A judge has kept Ember with her family throughout. But we're still fighting.
We sat down with Kyle and Alex and they told the whole story. See their story on video:
Atlas: A French Bulldog with a Permanent Wound and a Vet Who Won't Take Responsibility
And then there’s Atlas. He's a French Bulldog, and he's still alive — but he shouldn't have to be living the way he is.
In October 2024, Atlas underwent airway obstruction surgery. During recovery, a heating pad was left on too long. The result: a permanent burn wound on his chest, roughly three inches by two inches. The tissue is raw. It will not heal.
Atlas cannot play in the snow. He cannot go to the beach. He cannot sit in the sun. Because of how low Frenchies are to the ground, he essentially cannot be outside in most conditions. His owners got the dog they loved and lost the life they planned to share with him — not through any fault of their own, but because a veterinary facility forgot about him.
That facility has not taken accountability. Their insurer has not taken accountability. Their attorneys are making us litigate it. We filed suit a year ago, and we'll see it through — but we should not have to.
Each time I get an updated photo of Atlas and share it, people just want to cry. Me too.
Why Accountability Is the Problem — and Why Pet Owners Are the Solution
Here's what ties all three of these cases together: the law still treats our pets as property.
In Massachusetts and across most of the country, the financial accountability for harming an animal is limited essentially to its replacement value. There are cases where courts have recognized something more — a special category of property with emotional value — but the law has not caught up to how most people actually feel about their animals.
That matters because financial accountability drives behavior. If veterinary facilities, boarding kennels, grooming operations, and trainers knew that negligence would carry real financial consequences, they would invest in better practices. They would have fire safety protocols. They would separate dogs by size. They would check on post-surgical patients. Right now, many of them don't, because they know the stakes are low.
The people who come to us aren't primarily motivated by money. They come because they want to make it better for the next pet owner. The clients we had ten years ago made it better for the ones who came eight years ago. Every case moves the needle. But we need more pet owners to understand what's at stake before something happens to their animal — not after.
The challenge is that pet owners are an enormous group, and we are not organized. The ones who've been through something are starting to come together. But the power to change the law, to change industry practices, to hold bad actors accountable — that power comes from the pet owners who haven't been hurt yet. Because any one of us could be next.
At Boston Dog Lawyers, we're working to change that. We've brought in a grief counselor. We're building resources for pet owners. We've launched an internship program with a dozen law students and young lawyers from around the country, working in teams on cases and issues that extend beyond Massachusetts. We're trying to build infrastructure that can sustain this work and spread it.
And we're trying to be more open about what we're living through in real time — not just sharing the outcomes after the fact, but letting you see the battle as it happens. Because the battle is where the pain is. And you deserve to see it.
What You Can Do
Scroll down to the bottom of this page and sign up for our newsletter where it says "Get Our Updates" so you can follow along as these cases develop.
If something has happened to your pet, call us at 844-364-2889. And if nothing has happened yet — talk to us anyway.
There are things you can do now, before your animal gets hurt, that can make a real difference in what happens if they ever do.
Pet owners are the most powerful group in the country that isn't acting like it yet. We're working to change that — one case, one conversation, one person at a time.
