It’s also not hard for even a dumb breeder to figure out “hey, if I breed my meanest dog to my meanest bitch, then breed the meanest puppies from those litters…” and so on and so forth.
I think we are missing the point here. All of these “pit bull” problems can be handled with the existing laws.
Dogs running loose off leash? Scoop them up and take them to the pound. Owner want’s to get his dog back, issue a citation and a fine.
Dog has wounds like it is being abused or used in fights, confiscate it and launch an investigation.
The police and officials aren’t using the tools they already have in their toolbox. What make you think they’ll use another one?
What pisses me off to no end is this wave of “band-aid solutions” to society’s problems. It sounds good, gets a lot of press, but it doesn’t actually do anything.
National Pitbull Association is actually a very apt analogy. I am sure those drug dealers who have pit-bulls for intimidation, and the dog fighting community will turn over their dogs once a ban is enacted. Because they have such a great history of abidding by the law. Or wait, is it more likely that law-abidding, good dog owners will be hassled.
Actually I’m afraid you missed the point. The use of a ban would be a preventitive measure. All your examples are of after the fact fixes of problem dogs. I know it’s a breedist idea that robs mostly innocent dog’s of their human right to be sold as property but I can live with it.
If they could stop and ask anyone with a dog for it’s license it’d be pretty easy to use.
The cop was using his tool that he had in his holster nine times – bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, but it still did not stop the pit bull attack in time. Another six shots were fired at the pit bull by other officers, which also did not stop the pit bull attack in time. The municipality was using it’s bylaw, for the dog was on a leash until the owner let it off the leash to go after the cop. (Check out my link above to the submissions by Kitcherer-Waterloo to the Province of Ontario published in the Hansard.)
And the four year old girl who was being mauled by the pit bull while her father took a baseball bat to it to get it off her? A few days after that pit bull was put down, the owner went out an purchased another one, forcing the young child and her family to move to another neighbourhood. Again, the municipality could do nothing, for there was no law prohibiting the owning of pit bulls.
What it comes down to is that the existing by-laws do nothing concerning persons who keep but do not abuse dangerous breeds such as pit bulls, and who walk the streets with dangerous breed such as pit bulls.
No, I got the point. I am just weird in that I am uncomfortable with preventive law enforcement. If you have a problem with laws only addressing a crime after the fact, then you must have a problem with a lot of laws. In my country, we have laws the punish what happens, not what might happen.
We have strict laws on crimes that society considers more serious than dangerous dogs such as: drugs, prostitution. Yet in every major city there are drug dealers and prostitutes that openly walk the streets plying their trade. Do you really believe that they will be confiscating dogs, when they can’t even handle bigger problems? Do you really want the police to devote scarce resources confiscating dogs? Are you safer because cops are putting down pit bulls than arresting gangbangers? :dubious:
Or is it more likely that this is a law that the politicians can pass so that they can pat themselves on the back. The cops can make a few seizures and pat themselves on the back. The media will cover for a month, then pat themselves on the back for making a difference.
Do you have a problem with driver’s licenses and vehicle safety standards?
Yes, by a wide measure. There’s plenty of pitbulls in my meighborhood, not so many “gangbagers”
Prevention is not necessarily punishment. There are many laws that are designed to prevent accidents. I’m not allowed to store high explosives in my home. There are fire and building codes that are designed to protect me and my neighbors. I have to take a test and demonstrate a minimum level of competency before I’m allowed to drive a car or fly an airplane. I can’t open a restaurant without it being inspected and approved by the health department.
Hey how do you expect us to inspect restaurants when we can’t even achieve world peace?
If you’re going to be snide, at least keep the analogy relevent. I don’t know where you came to the conclusion that I would be against driver’s licenses. I am for driver’s licenses. There have been a lot of news stories on Fark about old people mistaking the gas pedal for the brakes. Some people have gone so far as to suggest that people over xx years should have their licenses yanked. I am against it because it punishes good older drivers as well as bad. I believe that current laws along with proper testing will allow us to take each instance on a case by case basis, instead of taking the lazy way out and using a blanket policy.
Current leash laws were enacted to prevent dog attacks. Enforcing a leash law would punish scofflaws as well as help prevent dog attacks. A pit bull ban would punish both scofflaws and the law-abidding, good dog owner. Assuming the scofflaw gives up his banned dog.
Instead of getting bogged down in arguing the accuracy of analogies, please answer the following question.
The current dogs laws don’t seem to be enforced, for whatever reason: apathy, low priority, lack of human and material resources. Why would the public believe this new law would be enforced?
Hypothetically, if this law solved the pit bull problem, would you be okay with going down the list and banning Rottweillers after that, then Chow Chows after that?
I mispoke. I don’t have a problem with preventive laws, but with pre-emptive laws where people are punish for what might happen
Who is aking for pre-emptive punishment in this thread? Just talking about regulating how and what type of dog you can own. Seems like driving is a pretty apt analogy.
So they should ban Corvettes because they are more likely to be driven over the speed limit, right? I mean, that’s what they were made (bred?) for.
Why aren’t snowmobiles allowed on the highways? Just because they were “bred” for the backtrails doesn’t mean many snowmobiles wouldn’t be perfectly safe on the highway.
Yay, fun with analogies!
Glad to see that you admit that driving is a pretty dumb analogy.
I see this thread is being hijacked somewhat.
But I wanted to say, what is the big deal of banning dogs over a certain weight? People come in here and say,we’ll enact fines, we’ll punish the owner, don’t worry, we’ll take the dog away…
but none of this stops the guy who goes out and buys another dog. Do you think the guy who deliberately makes his dog mean is going to care whether or not the “gov’t” wants him to train his dog up to so many obedience classes, or spend more money on him, or muzzle him?
We’ve had a few attacks in and around Albany in the last year or so. Most of them were kids. In most cases, there was no provocation. You drag the owner in front of the courts and they say “My dog was a big old softie, and would never hurt anyone”, meanwhile some kid’s face is torn off or maybe the kid’s dead.
Dogs are big, hulking brutes in many cases. I would only recommend such an extreme measure in certain crowded places. I don’t know where, I’d have to think about it. But not too long ago I was walking in my neighborhood, suburbia, and somebody’s dog came tearing up his driveway at FULL TILT, barking and yelling and frothing in his fury that I should walk on the sidewalk in front of his house. There was no chain, no fence. I didn’t dare run, and it wasn’t until he reached the end of the grass - and apparently, the invisible fence - that he skidded to a halt.
I at least see that current methods of control are not working very well. Perhaps we do need to try something else? It seems like a big knee-jerk reaction, “Oh, banning them will NEVER work!” without even thinking through all the different layers.
I think the answer has already been posted – take it out on the owners, not the dogs. If the dog attacks someone, make the owner liable, not just for damages, but criminal charges. Even those owners that say, “But my dog’s always been so gentle!” Any dog can attack someone, and dog owners should watch their dog like they would a loaded gun. Children, especially, can irritate and annoy dogs, especially older dogs that get to the point (due to arthritis or whatever reason) that they don’t want to take any crap with someone messing with them. Make the charges proportional to the damages. Enforce the current laws against dog fighting. If you get Animal Planet, there’s a show on called something like “Animal Police”. They show how it can be done. They aggresively go after reports of dogfighting, as well as animals that turn up dead or injured from fighting. They listen to neighbors who report suspicious animal-related behavior. So it can be done, it’s a matter of the police taking the time and effort.
As far as pit bulls are concerned, as others have mentioned, pit bulls were not bred to be human aggressive, but animal aggressive. Not just for dog fights but also bull baiting and other atrocities. Anyone who wants to own a pit bull should be aware of the fact that pit bull have tendencies to attack other animals and should work on socializing them around other animals.
When I was married, my wife and I owned two of the nicest pit bulls you could imagine. When we noticed that the one dog was acting more aggressively than the other. (Nothing to do with being alpha dog, our other dog, a Labrador, was alpha dog.) We worked on her for a while, but when she didn’t improve her behavior, we ended up putting her to sleep. No matter how much we loved her and admired her behavior in other areas, we couldn’t have a dog around that might be a danger to humans or other animals. I believe that people who say “Oh, but my dog’s never hurt anyone!” is most likely just plain unobservant, and don’t take the necessary time and responsibility for dog ownership.
The other pit bull? She’s still around. She thinks she’s the mother of my ex’s cats, and will allow them to clean/nibble on her ears. Remember Petie, the pit bull from the Little Rascals? That’s the kind of dog that pits can be, and used to be considered in that time period before they got the reputation that they have today.
I apologize for going a bit off-topic earlier, I was annoyed by CarnalK’s argument by analogy. CarnalK, I apologize for my technique, but if you seriously want to help the situation in your area, then you should get the neighbors who share your concerns to get together to put pressure on the politicians in your area to create an Animal Laws enforcement department with “teeth”!
Part of responsible ownership needs to be the situations and people the dog will be required to deal with. I assume that there are attacks which are unexplainable other than the dog acting in a highly irrational matter. But I would also assume that in a lot of attacks which look random, the dog probably did give off clear warning signs that went unnoticed.
Ever seen pictures of chimps smiling? Well, if you ever see a chimp do that in real life, you would be wise to back away from that chimp, as that friendly smile is pretty much a challenge to dominance between the two of you.
If your dog is high strung to the degree that it requires special handling, it shouldn’t be free in the general public. And even if the dog is usually level-headed, pit bulls have enough of a rep that it wouldn’t be odd for people who don’t know the dog to act nervous or apprehensive around the beast, which can easily result in the animal becoming more nervous.
I don’t think that pits should be banned, but I’m not comfortable to see one roaming around in a yard with a four-foot picket fence as it’s only seperator from the world outside. I don’t think requiring a fully enclosed dog-run is unreasonable when it comes to pit bulls, rottweilers, german shepards in an environment where they can be reasonably expected to have close contact or the potential of close contact with people other than the owner.
Another thing to consider about pits is the strength of their bite. They tend to have incredible jaw and upper body strength which makes them difficult to dissuade once they do attack.
And a ban is going to deal with this person how? If he really wants a vicious animal for protection or for dog-fighting, he’ll find one.
The big deal about banning dogs over a certain weight is that it is an arbitrary criteria that is only partially related to propensity to be harmful. Pits, as a rule, are not thought of as a “large” or “giant” breed, certainly not on the level of a Great Dane or St. Bernard. The most vicious dogs in our local dog park are the 60 lb. boxer. The 130 lb. Great Dane is the gentlest giant I’ve ever met. And there is a pit mix that comes in regularly. She’s also a sweetie, plays well with others, and is a great “big sister” to her owners’ infant daughter.
Second, dogs, particularly young dogs, grow. It’s what they do. They start out as little puppies and grow up to be full adults. And if they’re mixed breeds, their final adult weight may be harder to predict. If anything, a weight restriction would punish a substantial number of those who responsibly raise dogs from puppyhood by requiring the dog to be surrendered on reaching a certain weight. It’s moronic.
The big problem with breed bans more generally is that they are completely unable to handle the mutt problem. I have two mutts. Love them to death. I can’t verify that there’s no pit in them somewhere. Are they prohibited under a pit/ rott ban? Many dogs in shelters are mutts, whose exact parentage may be impossible to determine. You can make guesses sometimes, but it’s not exact. A breed ban simply means that more mixed breeds are going to go unadopted because they look like a pit bull. There’s enough problems in placing adoptable animals without the legislature or city council stepping in and saying that all dogs that look a certain way are contraband and must be destroyed.
A breed ban is the canine equivalent of racial profiling, i.e. assuming that something that looks a certain way must exhibit certain undesirable behaviors.
Again, whose fault, the dog or the owner’s? The dog doesn’t know better - it’s a dog, and it’s protecting its territory. This protective instinct is not a sign of viciousness- it’s one of the reasons we domesticated dogs in the first place. I would also lay part of the blame on suburban development covenants that prohibit putting up visible fences.
No, it’s the people advocating banning that are reacting in a knee-jerk fashion. The instinct to “ban ban ban” is the most mindless response to a perceived crisis.
We have good dog control laws, the thing is, the city council contracted out the dog controlling to a private company this year. The owners in low socio-economic areas where dogs are roaming free with no licences and usually staffie or pit bull crosses, don’t get fined because the company knows they are less likely to be able to afford it. Those living in middle class areas are being fined for walking from their cars to their houses without leashes on their dogs.
Saying that the solution is to make dog training mandatory etc, obviously comes from people who don’t understand life in a poor suburbs.
You get the dog, if it roams (and it probably will), so what, if it gets caught by dog catchers, you get another one. If it is traced back to you, you can’t pay the fine ($500). You don’t licence it, you don’t train it, you don’t neuter it, you don’t muzzle it and you choose a bred that gives you kudos (ie usually a pit bull, rottie, staffie).
Back when the city council ran dog control, there was a certain street where they picked up about 6 dogs every week, all destroyed, mostly replaced regularly. But at least someone was picking them up and taking them out of circulation, so to speak. (not that all poor people are this way with dogs).
Muffin obviously knows what I’m talking about.
We have new laws requiring muzzles on pit bulls and one other breed, but I’m not sure which. Also, pit bulls and a Japanese fighting dog are now banned from being imported - at least this may force unsavoury “breeders” to mix breeds.
You have put forth a pretty fair description of what goes on in poor neighbourhoods. I have come across this regularly in the cores of cities in Ontario, and in First Nation Reserves in Ontario.
I just finished putting together an Animal Control By-law for a northern Ontario community that is being overrun by packs of dogs, so I have spent a lot of time in the last few months speaking with municipalities throughout the province concerning different approaches to animal control.
What it comes down to is three things: first, communities want to be proactive in preventing attacks; second, communities want laws that can be effetively enforced against the worst offenders; and third, communities do not want to tie up resources in enforcement and judicial proceedings.
(And no, I did not recommend banning pit-bulls in the By-law I put together, for that community’s problem was with packs rather than pit-bulls. But what was of interest is the long list of a great many types of animals that are prohibited by By-law in many municipalities in Ontario. Given that it is prohibited to keep most types of animals, then why should it be permitted to keep pit-bulls?)