Pennsylvania's new Dangerous Dog Law went into effect at the end of January this year after the passage of omnibus amendments. See 3 P.S. Section 459-100 et seq. The amendments addressed several issues, including funding requirements for the Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement, purchases of dog licenses online, and providing stiffer penalties to those accused of harboring a dangerous dog.

The Dangerous Dog Law assigns criminal liability for owning or keeping a dog that has done several things:

• Inflicted severe injury without provocation on a human on public or private property.
• Killed or inflicted severe injury without provocation on a domestic animal, dog or cat while off its owner's property.
• Attacked a human being without provocation.
• Been used in the commission of a crime.
• Has a history of attacking, without provocation, a human being, domestic animal, dog or cat.

Any of those would be grounds for a conviction, assuming the prosecution's burden had been met. See Section 459-502A(2)(i)-(v). While the majority of this language can be found in the previous iteration of the law, these new grounds remove the necessity that the prosecution prove that the dog has a "propensity" to attack.