This is the most incredible statement I have read since posting on this board. Mr. justwannano, a 5 year old child can not be held responsible for any injury she suffers. You sir, maybe your wife, your neighbour, and if it had happened recently and the dog was a pit bull, all the rest of us adults can share the blame but not your child nor the dog itself.
In some earlier posts I proposed euthanasia for Pit Bulls, but I would be quite happy to get on side with those who advocate sterilization into oblivion of the breed. It was a genetic modification gone bad.
I don’t see anyone contradicting a premise that I outlined which quite frankly I wasn’t aware of when this thread first opened. The Pit Bull is an extremely friendly dog and behaves wonderfully with children. Part of the reason is the PB’s ability to ignore pain and physical harrassment so common among little children. However they have been bred to not provide warning of attack and what ever stimulates an attack is usually incomprehensible to us.** the fact is that it is the friendly PB which lulls us into complacency providing access, that is a major reason for PB attacks that will be executed with a fury unknown to most other breeds.** Pit Bull lovers want to deflect the reason for PB attacks to bad owners which is valid as well, however owners of aggressive dogs are more likely to secure them. I don’t think people have changed over the last several decades, but the incidence of attacks sure has exploded.
I once viewed a film where the ethical questions regarding this dichotomy are subtly explored. The name of the film is Babe and I highly recommend it to snobish Border Collie owners and consumers of bacon and eggs.
http://www.cnnsf.com/newsvault/output/pitbull.html
Child killed by neighbor’s pit bull.
About once a month in the U.S. someone is killed by a dog attack. Forty percent of the time that dog is a pit bull.
Mrvisible, the fact is pit bulls kill and maul innocent people more than any other dog breed. It is impossible to tell a ‘good’ pit bull from a ‘bad’ pit bull that will someday attack a person. Ones their owners thought were sweet and loveable have been known to attack and kill people. Ones chained up or fenced in have attacked and killed people:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/99/02/st020404.html
Boy dies from dog-bite injuries 2/4/99
Jesus Gasca, 8, of Gervais, Oregon was riding his bicycle at his baby sitter’s house when he was attacked by a chained pit bull-chow mix.
Do you have legislation in mind that would make pit bulls as harmless as normal dogs? I haven’t heard of any.
When my 2 yr old nephew visits me, I don’t let him outside because my neighbor has a pit bull. I am sometimes afraid to go out there myself. I should be able to enjoy my own yard with kids without fear of my neighbor’s dog. Something needs to be done about them. Their attack statistics have given people every reason to fear and hate them.
We aren’t slaughtering cows because we’re scared that they could possibly trample us, we slaughter them to eat them.
You do see the difference between killing something because it frightens you and killing something because you need to eat, right? Maybe you don’t. If not, I pity you.
I don’t like dogs. I don’t hate them either.
What I do hate is the knee-jerk fear reaction that makes people scream “destroy it!” or “outlaw it!” with no thoughts for what the actual problem is.
If a specific dog attacked my family, my friends, or me and was still a threat, I would kill it. If it were not a threat any longer, I would take legal action to have it euthanized. Regardless of how the dog was removed, I would make sure that the owner faced the consequences of their failure to keep their dog secured. Ideally this would be in the form of a criminal punishment, with restitution paid to the victim.
Wow, so you’re willing to be attacked, possibly maimed or killed by a dog that is known to be an aggressive breed before you are willing to acknowledge that they’re a public risk? Sheesh, you must be really into Canine Rights. Are you sure your rose-colored glasses aren’t just covered in blood?
If there were a car that ran pretty well most of the time, but something in the engine caused it to swerve out of control every once in a while, then you’d better believe that it would be recalled and production on that model would be ceased.
If a new model of gun were produced that had a handful of freak occurences of going off for no reason when people least expected it, yer darn tootin’ that it would be recalled and production of that gun would cease.
If a hair dryer were produced that would only sometimes burst into flames . . . do you see where I’m going with this?
The only knee-jerking I’m seeing is from people who won’t allow their freedom of dog-choice be inhibited by a little thing like public safety.
Step out of your tiny universe for a second and try thinking about what it would be like to lose a child in such a horrific way. A DOG ripping it to pieces. It’s a needless tragedy that could have been prevented, but you’d rather let that dog hurt someone first, then give the owners hell. Well guess what, that kid is still a bloody mess, no matter how much jail time or fines the owner dishes out. Does that make sense to you at all?
Tell me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we killed tens of thousands of cattle recently and destroyed the carcasses simply due to a small probability of possessing prions that could be harmful to us. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m talking of Mad Cow disease.
Thanks for the pity, Mr. T. I see the difference. I just don’t think it’s a meaningful distinction, especially to the animal you’re about to kill.
Explain to me why it is OK to kill animals for food, but it is not OK to kill them because they bite people. Assume I’m stupid, and tell me exactly what the difference is.
grienspace, I owe you an apology. I didn’t read your thread because I left work to go to school, told myself I needed to read it when I got home before I posted a reply, and then forgot.
Mea Culpa. :o
Other than that, I’m out of this thread, though I will point out to hazel-ra that 90-99% of the time a biting dog is killed. After it has bitten someone.
Bad breeders can do bad things to dogs, as can molestation, neglect, and a handful of other things that don’t have really positive effects on anything except houseplants.
I have a rottweiler, a doberman, and a german shepherd. I have never seen any attack another person, nor have I heard reports of such from my family (who would have told me).
Here is a site that gives lots of information on American Pit Bull Terriers and some info on American Staffordshire Terriers, including information debunking the so-called “locking jaws.”
If one breed of dog is outlawed, such as pit bulls, people who want aggresive dogs will just move on to another breed. Should we ban APBTs, AmStaffs, Rotties, GSDs, Dobies, Belgian Shepherd, Ridgies…
But the justification isn’t simply because someone is scared it is because they view them as a threat to human life. The same reason we try to erradicate bowevils (sp?). We’re “afraid” that they’re going to eat all of our cotton.
I don’t agree with destroying all pit bulls simply because poor or unethical breeding is the problem. If I recall correctly a properly bred Pit Bill can be a very friendly dog. The same thing could happen to many other breeds of dog.
**
Me to. Which is why I hated the immediate cries to end the bonfires at A&M after the accident that claimed nearly a dozen lives. My reaction was “What happened and let’s make sure we prevent it from happening in the future.”
**
And if time after time you saw that the same breed was involved in something like 40% of all attacks? I don’t know if that’s true but if it was would that change your mind at all?
Marc
Yeah, that’s a pretty general statement, huh? I guess I was thinking of a lot of the physical traits and genetic defects in some pure breeds. Like breathing problems in animals that have had their snouts bred shorter, or hairless cats that need lotion rubbed on them, or hip and spine problems and stuff like that. I’m not really sure where I was going with that. I just can’t help but think of the familiy in “Deliverance” when I think about breeding issues. It just seems to me that if there are physical abnormalities, perhaps there are behavioral ones. I searched around on the net and most sites are on the fence and go with “they’re both good, it just depend on what you’re looking for.” So I can’t base my argument on that point, my bad. But that wasn’t really my point anyway, it was one of those stray thoughts that makes it’s way into otherwise flawless reasoning.
grienspace
I don’t know where you grew up,maybe in a bubble,but around here we give credit where it is due,also we aren’t afraid to put the blame where it belongs.
The child was trying to pick up another dog and bent over to do so. The dog saw it as a threat and bit her.
She also screamed which she had been told not to do.
She had been told numerous times not to try to play with strange dogs. She just didn’t listen.
I was able to see through my anger, Something I have learned to do since I have gotten older and did not ask for the dog to be put down.
This may (or may not) be true. But we certainly don’t hold the cause of the injury responsible either. If a 5 year old child steps on a nail–ban all nails! If she gets a splinter–ban all wood! If she sticks her finger in a light socket and gets electrocuted–ban electricity!!
What gets the blame? The parent who wasn’t watching the kid OR the person who left the object available to the child. This is the entire point here. The blame in a dog attack lies with the person who either made the dog the vicious creature it is or the one who left a knowingly dangerous dog (if it was trained before they got it, for example) within reach of a small child. We cannot go around destroying things we think might be dangerous just because it is too much trouble for us to make these dangerous objects safer.
When children break arms and legs on playground equipment, we don’t ban playgrounds–we make playground equipment safer. When kids are injured riding bikes, we don’t ban bikes–we implement helmet laws. And these are considerations we give to non-living items that have injured children.
Hell, for the most part, we don’t even kill other humans when they molest, beat, torture and kill our children. And those people do it knowingly. In those cases, we often blame the society that made them that way and go to the ends of the earth to implement programs to fix and remedy the society that created these vicious beasts. But it’s too much damn trouble to remedy the individuals who are turning these dogs into vicious creatures? Nah, let’s just kill 'em all and start over.
This entire debate is ludicrous and you people advocating the elimination of dog breeds frighten me.
I think comparing it to racism is a valid point. From the bite statistics posted here, it seems like it would be a lot easier to designate blacks as a dangerous group, one more likely to commit crimes, because of crime statistics. Does it mean that blacks are inherently more likely to commit criminal acts than whites? No, it means that a disproportional number of American blacks are living in conditions that can lead to a criminal life, for a number of social and cultural reasons. Should we exterminate blacks because a black man in his 20s is more likely to kill someone than a white man in his 20s? No, we separate the dangerous ones from society, and try to do something about the conditions that lead to this kind of behavior. The same thing should be done about dogs.
Everybody I’ve known who has had a pit bull WANTED the dog to be mean. They chose that dog because of it’s reputation as being dangerous, just like people chose german shepherds and doberman pinschers and various bulldogs in previous decades. They either deliberately raise the dog to be mean, or they neglect it because they bought it for the wrong reasons, either way you end up with a dog more likely to bite than others.
doesn’t work and wouldn’t help the problem even if it could be enforced. I have heard that Bulldogs are bad, Rottweilers are bad, Pit-bulls are bad, etc etc. No one seems to be able to determine exactly WHICH breed is “bad” and agree on it for any length of time. I guess we could say that “Any large dog is bad because if he bites someone it’s serious.” That is a true statement but what good does it do? Besides, as several people have noted, a certain type of jackass WANTS a mean dog. I know personally a man that feeds Rottweilers anabolic steroids. He says it makes them big and aggressive which, having seen the results, I can certainly attest to. Personally, I’d rather have a live grenade around the house.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the legal system holds the owner liable for the actions of any animal he owns. This SHOULD (I know, “should” S) be sufficient to make people think twice about either buying one of the animals or allowing him to run free. Agreed, collars and leads break, fences get torn down, electronic fences get ignored by a sufficiently focused animal but, having gone through the options, what (REALISTIC/WORKABLE) choices do we have? I love my large mutt dearly but would personally kill him if I even THOUGHT he was going to attack someone without provocation. In the US it would be fear of the legal liability, where I live it’s just common sense to do this.
People defending pit bulls have stated again and again that it’s the owner’s fault for training the dogs to be vicious or otherwise mistreating them. This isn’t always the case.
Our next door neighbor had a pit since it was a puppy. He took excellent care of that animal and in no way encouraged it to be mean. He never hit the dog or otherwise abused it. He lavished affection and attention on that dog, made sure it was always healthy, exercised it, etc. In short, the dog was a companion animal, not a guard dog. The dog was as friendly and sweet as an animal can be, well-behaved, and had never harmed anyone.
When the dog was about 6 years old and my son was 2, our neighbor invited us over to sit around and chat for a while. My son played with the dog as he had done on several occasions. We were only a few feet away, so I can verify that my son in no way hurt or antagonized the dog.
It did not growl or give any other sign that dogs normally do when they feel threatened. For no apparent reason, it simply lurched at my son and attacked with a ferocity that was simply horrifying. Our neighbor immediately pulled the dog off of my son- it took all of his strength to do so- and if he hadn’t been so quick about it, I’m sure my son would have been killed. The attack lasted maybe 2 seconds.
The dog had punctured the artery in Jeremy’s forehead, so blood was spraying everywhere and we couldn’t even tell how badly he was hurt. He had several lacerations all over his face, including one very close to his eyeball. His right ear was shredded. The dog had bitten with such force that Jeremy required x-rays to be sure his skull hadn’t been fractured or punctured. It required forty stitches to put him back together and months for the bruises to fade. He has permanent scars, most of them not too noticeable, but he lost much of the vision in his right eye due to the shredding of the muscles there.
As far as I know, the dog never bit again; he died of old age a couple of years ago. Is it just a coincidence that the dog was a pit bull, or could any sort of dog cause that much damage in two seconds without warning?
Holly, your case is exactly what I am ranting on and on and on about. In one brief moment, all hell breaks loose for no reason at all, and completely unpreventable or forseeable. Lucky the owner was right there, but I am very surprised he didn’t put the dog down. Only pit bulls have this problem. It is a genetic nightmare. You have my sympathy for what you and your son suffered.
I’m sorry everyone, but I rarely get passionate about anything except making love, and to read and hear some of you making excuses for the breed and ignoring the statistics and the anecdotal evidence for the dormancy of terror that can exist within every Pit Bull makes me want to scream.
