You left out night stick.
Enraged? I see a scared dog. And “turning toward you” is not much of a threat if you have a catch pole in place…that’s why they are used.
I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. No one trains dogs to “attack when tasered,” but more to the point, the article says the dog retreated / tried to flee when tasered. If you’re going to claim something else happened when the dog was tasered, you’re doing so in contradiction of witnesses.
This is astoundingly untrue – it shows a complete and thorough lack of understanding. “Pits” ARE Staffordshires – not only are the three breeds commonly called pit bulls the American Pit Bull Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and the American Staffordshire Terrier, but the AmStaff was specifically “created” from renamed APBTs to get around the AKC’s unwillingness to be associated with dogfighting – many dogs even today are dual registered as AmStaffs and APBTs. Even if you want to call them separate breeds, there is NO (zero) mechanical difference in the dogs’ bone structure.
Also bite force is not unique in pit bulls – it appears to depend mostly on dog size / body mass.
http://www.pbrc.net/mediacenter/mediaqa.html
Also, so what if the dog was a fighting dog? Fighting dogs are bred to be docile toward humans; recognized authorities have long said you are in more danger from a guarding breed than a fighting breed. Closer to your point, Michael Vick wasn’t afraid to kill his fighting pit bulls with his bare, 100-million-dollar hands…because he wasn’t especially afraid of the dogs, period. A fighting dog on a catchpole is no different than any other dog on a catchpole, and pit is a darned sight smaller than, say, a Mastiff.
Christ, vets neuter Papillons and miniature poodles and cats – are you in a state of perpetual terror?
There was a time when everyone agreed women shouldn’t vote and black people should be slaves – and “there were reasons” for those ideas, so they must be right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong; please educate yourself!
And thank YOU and the rest of the commenters here and the guy who took the video (all of who I will bet have NEVER held a job in animal control) for thinking you all know better than the people who actually had to deal with the situation and somehow just know there should be a better way. I invite you all to volunteer to take care of all such situations and assume full responsibility, including your own medical bills and those of everyone bitten after you intervene.
Rodney King. “Might”, indeed.
And from that one piece of footage you know with absolute certainty that a tased dog will ALWAYS run away and will NEVER bite the next person it runs into.
The owner is responsible for keeping the dog under control. If he doesn’t that, those on the scene have the final call. This is an unfortunate incident, but I will NOT second-guess those who actually had to handle it.
and it shows
equating the suppression of a breed bred to kill with slavery takes “having the faintest” to an entirely new level.
You go handle the nest vicious pit that the animal control officer can’t control - maybe rub its tummy or give it a nice treat.
It is not very difficult to predict what will likely happen if you taser an animal and then corner it. The animal is going to be in a high state of panic. Do you dispute this?
Your right, this is the more responsible thing to do. Never question the police.
Oh my god, can we just STOP the perpetuation of this completely wrong statement.
Pitbulls are not bred to kill, they were for decades a breed that was often referred to as Nanny dogs because they were so gentle with children and yet protective of anything that came near then.
Even if we look at modern day training by morons, the dogs are trained to fight other dogs, they’re not trained to kill humans. Your statements would be more applicable although still untrue and unfair to the dogs if applied to German Shepards, the favorite dog for police service and guard dogs. They are trained to attack and restrain humans.
Breed bans are one of the more moronic attempts by governments to find a way to penalize those who aren’t idiots to avoid actually having to deal with those who are. Seriously, actually deal with people who don’t control their dogs, or train them to attack, don’t just say “Well since the evil doers like pitbulls due to their jaw strength lets just ban pitbulls. That will fix the problem, I’m sure they won’t just move on to another breed”
You missed the point. You only tase a dog if you WANT it to panic or run away. Is that what the cops were trying to do? Is that what they wanted to happen?
I doubt that. They were stupid to tase the animal. It only made things worse and made it more likely it would get out of control or run away.
What they probably did was use their “this is how we deal with unruley or dangerous human suspects” training and applied it directly and wrongly to a dog.
As for the gun shot. That might be more of a you had to be there (and know all the facts that the video and story probably don’t tell). But at first glance the dog did not appear to be running the neighborhood attacking people. Or acting particulary aggressive. IMO, statistically speaking, the officers placed other humans at greater danger due to being shot (very much the animal control officer and to some extent little Johnny who gets hit by a stray bullet) that humans in the area faced from getting attacked by the dog.
I am a serious dog lover. And very rarely am I actually afraid of them. However, I know that sometimes dogs need macing, shooting, or euthanizing. So, in this case the fact that a perhaps an innocent dog got shot and killed really isn’t what bothers me. It’s the counterproductive tasing and the rather dangerous gunfire.
According to the Pit thread on this subject, the officers’ actions have been ruled justified in three different reviews, though a lawsuit is pending.
Oops, sorry, it was pointed out in the Pit thread that it was talking about a different incident.
Okay, a different dog was tased and shot in Washington state. There’s a Pit thread on the subject. Comparisons and contrasts might be interesting.
I have a pit, and love him to death, but I think this is a bit of urban legendry. I can’t find any evidence that they were historically called nanny dogs, except from pitbull advocacy sites. Like I said, I love the breed, but I don’t think spreading what appears to be misinformation to be useful.
Noone on the scene, including the neighbor who called the cops and was filming the thing, knew that the dog belonged there. The homeowner was petsitting for a relative and the dog got out when she left.
Close the door and then contact the owner of the house.
I don’t know what’s wrong with you – your attitude here is the classic fear of something you don’t understand.
You do realize, don’t you, from your own extensive knowledge of the subject, that prejudice against pit bulls is often compared to other kinds of prejudice by recognized dog experts because the analogy works so precisely. It IS prejudice, plain and simple, and it’s perpetuated in very similar ways.
You also seem entirely unaware that most breeds of dogs were “bred to kill.” Entire categories of dogs (with the notable exception of lapdogs) were bred to chase, attack, and/or kill some kind of animal. “Bred to kill” sounds cool and scary, but it’s mostly meaningless. No pit bull has been bred to kill humans, and it’s notoriously hard to train them to attack humans.
I notice you have no response to being called out on your “Staffordshire” claim.
Let’s do some more exegesis.
Uh…OK, I’ll start. You do understand, don’t you, that the person reporting the dog says the dog was not threatening anyone? So, we’re starting from a situation where the dog is no threat. Now, the police tasered the dog twice and the dog tried to run…is running away from an attacker a threat? I hope you’re not in charge of any decisions that affect anyone else.
Uh, the dog was pulling away and the animal control officer did move with the dog, yes. But that’s part of how you get a panicked animal under control. I watched the video, I’ve seen video of many catchpole operations, and I wouldn’t characterize the dog as acting “at will.” Chloe was losing the contest for control and would be secured within a few more seconds.
Well, the fear and the taser (also the fusillade of bullets) were the contributions of your friendly neighborhood public safety officers. The pit bull, remember, was described as “not threatening” before that.
Okay, I don’t see what you’re getting at here. Pit bulls are NOT “large breed dogs,” all three breeds commonly called pit bulls are considered “medium.” So I don’t know why the term was used in the article, and I agree it’s weird to see it there. I do note that the police are quoted as calling the dog a “large pit bull,” which might just mean large for a pit bull. Incidentally, the two competing breed standards for female American Pt Bull Terriers put the weight range at 25-50 pounds.
Well, it’s well-known that people, including police officers, have a poor record of accurately identifying pit bulls, in part because a lot of breeds do look like them. So there is difficulty in differentiating them, pretty often.
The precedent for lawsuits are not in favor of the dog owner. Maybe the laws are different there but here it is property and you can only recover the amount of the replacement cost even if you were to win a lawsuit.
I’ve killed dogs for less. But 5 shots? That officer needs to put in more time at the range.
He shouldn’t have been shooting live fire at all. At one point the animal control officer was directly behind the dog and in the line of fire, and the cop is still shooting. It’s pure luck that there was no stray or pass-through bullet that hit her.
And you do realize, don’t you, when you compare “prejudice” against certain dogs to fucking slavery, you offend and turn off a large number of people who might otherwise be willing to listen to you? They’re dogs. They’re not people. There’s nothing wrong with not treating them like people. I swear, every time you post crap like this, I get an irresistible urge to go kick a puppy.
Horse crap. The problem is in you.
I don’t doubt you get the urge to hurt a puppy; you appear to be so threatened by the idea that an animal might suffer injustice that it makes you react angrily.
Let’s get a few things out of the way. You don’t need to put “prejudice” in quotes; if the word has any meaning, it applies here. People are making judgments out of fear about something they do not know much about.
I’m not sure why your ego is too tender to share the slavery comparison with anyone else, but let’s be clear: the term slavery has already been applied to nonhumans. In fact, the main defense offered by slaveholders in the American South was that the slaves are not human and do not deserve equal consideration – the exact, precise argument YOU make. Saying “it’s not as bad when done to nonhumans” is perilously close to adopting the slaveholders’ argument as your own.
Remember, you can’t come back and say “but the slaves were human,” because of course, they were NOT, in the legal sense, in the rights sense, in Justice Taney’s judicial sense, and in the view of many at the time, maybe not even in the biological sense.
Anyway, I didn’t say “pit bulls are enslaved;” I said:
in response to someone who asserted that he’d heard [what I know to be hateful and wrong] things so they must be true.
And there I’m on indisputably solid ground. It is true that slavery and suppression of women were defended by vile, wrong-headed assertions, lies, and myths. And we now know (or admit) these things were wrong, even though “respectable” people asserted them. My claim that just because you’ve heard bad things about <anything> does not mean they’re true" is 100% supportable, and frankly, not that unusual.
I’m not sure why you conflated that with the claim that abuse of helpless nonhumans is vaguely equivalent to abuse of helpless humans we consider to be nonmhumans; but I could comfortably defend that position just as easily, had I actually taken it.
I assume you’re not changing your position, though, because you consider it acceptable to threaten to hurt innocents to try and silence me, so you’re a certain kind of person. Ah well.
For the general readership:
[ul]
[li]Dog breeds are at least somewhat analogous to human races: they look different, but they all interbreed[/li]
[li]Hatred of particular breeds has a long history: Bloodhounds were once feared manhunters; Dobermans, German Shepherds, and Rottweilers have all spent time in the press’s and public’s doghouse as Dangerous Dogs[/li]
[li]Dog experts agree there’s no rationale to fear pit bulls more than other large active dogs[/li]
[li]Many myths and exaggerations circulate about those breeds we fear[/li]
[li]News stories once ran headlines like “A black man is sought in connection with the assault;” now they seem to realize that feeds prejudice without being very helpful in crimestopping. But they still run headlines like “a pit bull attacked,” often even when the case is demonstrably NOT pit-bull-related (example: the dogs in this case were American Bulldogs, but persistently referred to as “pit bulls” by the press, even after one paper acknowledged the “error”)[/li][/ul]
Nothing in those bullet points is the least bit controversial.
Ok, so, to recap: dog breeds are a bit like races; there’s definitely a history of hatred, fear, and mythmaking against some breeds; fear, and mythmaking are hallmarks of prejudice…but saying prejudice exists against some breeds is so evil you want to harm puppies?
One of us is indeed going to turn off readers, I’ll give you that.
Yes, in every pet thread you have to come in and say something hostile to animals. Well, congrats, check off another one.