After the mauling

During his years as an RCMP officer in the northern communities, Clare Kines recognized the important role of the sled dog in local history and culture. "But because of the ubiquitousness of dogs in the north there have been attacks," he writes. "Too often I've seen the results of children and adults severely hurt or even killed by a group of dogs."

An attack earlier this month involved a dog he knew.

I played with that dog a lot, it bounded with energy and I never saw a hint of aggression from it. It was engaging, and although untrained would easily be led by the collar. Hell, my children played with it. A couple of weeks ago it was off its lead, bounding amongst kids never touching them. It came quickly to my whistle and walked back with me to its spot on the ice. It was playful and gentle, and yet it participated in a savage attack on a little child. Of that there is no doubt.

And that is why this won't escape from my mind. If this is a dog that can do this terrible thing, then any dog can. That the wild in their ancestory must lie in them underneath. Since the attack I look at my children playing with our big gentle puppy, Bolt, and wonder, if the circumstances were just right, what might happen?

Read the whole post at Clare's blog. [Clare is a favorite blogger/photographer of mine — in addition to The House & other Arctic musings, he contributes to 10,000 Birds, covering, natch, the Arctic beat.]

In Clare Kines's photo, above, his children Travis and Hilary play with their dog Bolt. See more photos in the post Sledding. The beautiful, unnamed sled dog at the top of this post was also photographed by Clare. As always, click photos to embiggen.

Oh, Canada: the good, the bad and the ugly

First, the ugly. Canada's Supreme Court will not hear a bid to overturn the province of Ontario's ban on "pit bulls."

TheStar.com reports — badly:

Louise Ellis will never forget the horror and helplessness she felt when she saw her 5-year-old daughter being attacked by a pit bull.

But now she's breathing a sigh of relief after the Supreme Court yesterday said it will not hear a bid to overturn Ontario's ban on pit bulls.

"I'm so pleased with the ban," said Ellis, who still remembers the 1994 attack vividly. "The pit bull took the flesh off from underneath the eye, across her cheek and just down the nose, the bottom of the nose."

Ellis said her now 20-year-old daughter shows few signs today of the 300 stitches that repaired her face.

This just in: the number of pit bulls in Toronto has risen since the ban was implemented. Dog bans are quirky that way, which is one reason places like the Netherlands have repealed BSL.

And dog attacks still happen in Ontario. BSL doesn't stop serious dog attacks — it never has. In fact, let me tweak that news article: Korie-Lyn Edwards' grandmother will never forget the horror and helplessness she felt when she saw her 17-month old grandchild mauled to death by the family's own 10-year-old Rottweiler-German shepherd mix.

And now the Ottawa resident is furious that breed bans and the false sense of security they provide will leave other children at risk.

This just in, too: there have never been any pit bull-related fatalities in the province of Ontario.

Canadian-Californian dog expert Jean Donaldson explains that breed bans are over-inclusive and under-inclusive: they target great numbers of good dogs that will never harm anyone, and they utterly fail to deal with dangerous dogs of other breeds and types. Breed bans are irrational, in other words. Unjust. Profoundly stupid. Worthless.

Dr. Karen Overall nails it: "[Laws] banning breeds will not make you safer, and the illusion that they will do so is dangerous to humans and unfair to dogs."

Oh, Canada [sigh]. You know better than this. Your citizens deserve so much better than laws demonizing and banning their good dogs.

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"Enough with the bad and the ugly, already — where's the good?" you ask. "Where's the good?"

I'm happy to report that the good — City of Calgary Animal & Bylaw Services — is so good it deserves an entire post to itself. Calgary's Animal Services director Bill Bruce gave a series of seminars in California last week, and I went to the nearest one here in SoCal and was impressed to pieces. Stay tuned for more.

Actual dog experts[!] speak out against BSL

Hat tip to John Sibley for showcasing this terrific video on breed specific legislation. It should totally go viral, if you ask me.

Featured in the vid are Dr. Ian Dunbar, Jean Donaldson and Dr. Nicholas Dodman: experts on dog behavior and dog training, which is to say you will never hear them speak of "unpredictable" dogs that "turn on people" and must be banned. In a world where Google pundits* bring of the stupid, Dunbar, Donaldson and Dodman actually know what they're talking about.

"The biggest variable in a dog's demeanor is: how well was it socialized? How well was it trained?" [Ian Dunbar]

The video is the work of Drayton Michaels, "a 2007 graduate of the SFSPCA Academy for Dog Trainers. He has worked professionally with dogs since 2000. He owns and runs Urban Dawgs and Pit Bull Guru with his wife Vyolet, also a graduate of the Academy [source]."









*[What follows has much to do with dogs in general and BSL in particular. Seriously.] Writer and blogger Julian Sanchez took a recent look at pop philosophy and "the unhealthy illusion of knowing something":

On the one hand [...] a democracy can’t make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: “Discourse at this level can’t possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.” This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy. And I think it may contribute to the fragmentation and political polarization we see online, which are generally explained in sociological terms as an “echo chamber” effect or “groupthink.”

[T]here’s also the problem that the general glut of information and opinion makes it disconcertingly easy to kid yourself about how well you understand a particular topic. (My friend Michael Moynihan refers sarcastically to “Google pundits” who affect deep understanding after plucking a few talking points from a search—a sin I’m sure I’ve committed myself on occasion.) It’s something of a cliché, but the older I get, the more I find that learning more about an area where I once held a strong opinion will often mean realizing just how limited my own understanding is.

I like to imagine that the typical online breed-basher will wake up one morning, slap his forehead and exclaim, "What am I, nuts?! My entire experience with dogs consists of failing to housebreak that Labrador you hear barking nonstop in the backyard — and I'm telling Jean Donaldson and Ian frikkin' Dunbar they don't know what they're talking about...??!! Sheesh, I'm an idiot. I shall do penance by volunteering at the local animal shelter for the rest of my life."

If only ;~)

A quilt, and some links

A dog quilt - let me show you it. [Click for bigger.] Detail from a little display-type quilt I made a few years back, with crate-label copies on muslin. Cotton muslin, not the presidential kind. [He was brilliant at Notre Dame, wasn't he? Our Prez (mostly) rocks.]

If only I had a bit more time/more money, I'd build up an awesome collection of citrus crate labels with dogs on them. And I'd make more quilts.

Meanwhile, back on the intertubes:

Via Twitter, Maddie's Fund offers a link to a terrific pdf of a Powerpoint called Providing Care for Treatable Dogs and Cats. Sensible, helpful, inspiring guidelines covering everything from breed ID to... well, here's slide #2:

Our Ultimate Goal

*Increase number of adoptions, lives saved, and minimize length of stay
*Includes:

• Intake procedures/plans
• Provision of basic physical and mental health requirements
• Re-assessment of medical/behavioral health
• Treatment of existing medical and behavior problems

86 slides well worth reading, and the whole time I was saying to myself, thank God for our great local pound... I'm so spoiled by the local folks that news reports of shelter horrors elsewhere just baffle me.

As if shelter cruelties weren't bad enough in and of themselves, they're additional fodder for proponents of the "new vegan freedom narrative." Spotted Dog Farm over at Pit Bull Patriarchy is familiar with the ideology, and she's horrified:

It bothers me to think that the eventual goal of these abolitionists is that domestic animal populations and breeds would die out. Only animals that could survive in the wild would continue. And I don't know what would become of self-domesticating animals like dogs under this scenario. To think of dogs being cast out of human society is approaching the realm of the bad sci-fi novel. But stranger things have happened, are happening. Not that history is ever a justification, but we've evolved together for a long, long time. Who would we be without each other?

*************

OMG, it's Smoky on the cover of Bay Woof! OK, not really, but a cute little doppelganger. Donna at the Bad Rap blog sez:

This is the 'Ejicate the Landlord' article I've been meaning to write but haven't gotten around to. Authored by attorney Elaine Lee, who specializes in landlord-tenant law among other things. In Bay Woof this month. Thank you Bay Woof!

While the Net is filled with great info for scoring pet friendly rentals, we really should be working just as hard to show landlords why responsible pet owners make some of the most mature, committed and long term residents.

Visit the Bad Rap blog for more about finding and managing dog-friendly rentals.

*************

Last but not least, Dr. Sophia Yin reminds us that 1) it's Dog Bite Prevention Week, and 2) Experts Say Dominance-Based Dog Training Techniques Made Popular by Television Can Contribute to Dog Bites. She quotes Meghan Herron, DVM:

“Studies on canine aggression in the last decade have shown that canine aggression and other behavior problems are more frequently a result of fear (self-defense) or underlying anxiety problems. Aversive techniques can elicit an aggressive response in dogs because they can increase the fear and arousal in the dog, especially in those that are already defensive.”

The whole post - and much more - over at AskDrYin.com.

Merritt Clifton list: updated, still with chox-mix goodness

The latest version [as far as I know] of Merritt Clifton's list of selected dog attacks has been posted here, at Scribd, by someone who sucks at Photoshop.

The chox mix is still listed, along with the buff mastiff, the Dauschund, the East Highland Terrier and the Weimaeaner. The Australian cattle dog, the Australian blue heeler, the Blue heeler and the Queensland heeler are still listed as separate breeds.

One big change: the Analysis section of the report has been removed. And in his brief introduction, Clifton adds a paragraph defending his numbers. Click for big:


Seriously, I could beat my head on rocks. Merritt Clifton has no idea how many dog attacks there are each year by any given breed. No one does. The last time I checked, not one state kept track of dog attacks by breed. We do know that over 6,000 people were hospitalized as a result of dog attacks in the US in one year:

From the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: “Of an estimated 333,700 patients treated for dog bites in emergency departments (EDs) in 1994, approximately 6,000 were hospitalized.”

For the record, Clifton's latest report states that "Pit bulls, Rottweilers, Presa Canarios, and their mixes" were responsible for a total of 1894 attacks "doing bodily harm" in the US and Canada from 1982 to 2008. Clifton still lumps every sort of mixed breed with "purebreds" [while stating that "only attacks by dogs of clearly identified breed type or ancestry are included"]. This approach has no basis in science or anything else.

Related — I think:

Law enforcement officials classified the dog in the Jan. 3 attack as a pit bull, boxer and black lab mix.

One magazine editor simplified this classification of dog.

“It’s a mongrel basically,” Wash.-based Animal People editor Merritt Clifton said.

He also said insurance representatives and dog wardens will often classify the dog by what type of dog it looks like. This classification has little to do with genetics, he said, because often shelter operators are simply attempting to determine the risk the dog will fight with other dogs.

Though some might label pit bulls as aggressive, Clifton said pit bulls are often reactive because of the fact they were originally trained to hunt rats on ships. However, because of their size and their inability to pull large amounts of cargo from ships, they were not considered apt for either job and instead began being bred for dogfighting on the docks.

This rat-killing, he said, has made them more reactive.

He also talked about the head-shaking mechanism pit bulls would use to kill the rat, which in bites causes the tearing of skin, causing more damage than other dog bites. However, he said this can be combated by pushing the arm or other appendage further into the dog’s mouth, which will force a release. [Source]

Inconceivable. Really. Big hat tip to the most excellent Caveat for the link to that, er... fascinating article.

The awful truth: our secret hidden agenda revealed

Mind like a steel trap, that Kory from Denver. He's outed us all:

Veterinarians, animal welfare organizations and the "animal control officers" trained and connected to such groups are biased and will never admit the truth (see "The Emperor's Clothes" by Hans Christian Anderson) because they are all chasing a reducing pool of financial donors who easily succomb to the hidden agendas and propaganda offered up by pit bull breeders, owners and their financial supporters. As these groups often accept donations for their lobbying efforts from unknown entities, they are deliberately indifferent to the real and present danger that dog fighters are using them as "strawmen" for their own illicit agenda. Can they really guarantee anyone that not one $ was donated by Michael Vick or his associates?

Same stuff, toned down a bit here:

Kori [sic — how fitting is that, I ask you?] Nelson, a Denver assistant city attorney who led the city’s fight to re-enact its ban on pit bulls in 2004, called pit bulls a unique breed with inherently dangerous characteristics.

He said the ban is working as evidenced by the fact that there has not been a serious attack since the ban was enacted.

“I don’t know anyone who argues that pit bull bans or restrictions are designed to prevent all dog bites,” he said. “It’s designed to prevent maulings and death attacks by pit bulls.”

Comparing pit bulls to grenades, Nelson said the purpose of banning the breed is to prevent unprovoked attacks.

“Once a grenade goes off, the damage is already done,” he said.

The assistant city attorney also suggested a “secret hidden agenda” behind anti-BSL groups like the Coalition for Living Safely with Dogs and the Humane Society of the United States. Nelson pointed out that such groups rely on donations for their efforts, especially when the economy is down.

“It’s politically incorrect for them to admit the truth of this, which is that pit bulls are more dangerous,” said Nelson, who added that donations could come from anywhere, even including leaders of dog-fighting rings.

The ban is working in my home town, too! No "pit bull" maulings since forever! Oh, wait [slaps forehead] — we don't have a ban! Silly me.

I know I should be ashamed that dogfighters have been using my blog as a "'straw man' for their own illicit agenda," but damn, pit bull lobbyists make good money. I guess I'll have to take the dogfight promos down, now, and stop selling puppies. I knew I should have kept my day job.

Dammit, dammit, dammit

Wrong and wronger.

I could beat my head on rocks. Two dogs killed a man this afternoon in a dusty, unincorporated little 'burb off the 60 Freeway west of Riverside. A family lost their grandfather the week before Christmas. And the torch-and-pitchfork crowd of breed-banners will bring of the stupid, as they always do, and make me fear for my good dogs.

Like most fatal dog attacks, today's was "a perfect storm of bad human-canine interactions — the wrong dog, the wrong background, the wrong history in the hands of the wrong person in the wrong environmental situation." [That's Randall Lockwood's concise definition, from this article.]

The first hundred or so Google News results were all "SoCal grandfather mauled to death by pit bulls," and the story, with that headline, ran on news websites from Los Angeles to Houston, Jerusalem and Australia. Thanks so much, AP. Just before midnight the dependable Riverside Press-Enterprise ran their [vastly superior] report:

Rubidoux man mauled to death by own dogs

Two dogs mauled their 60-year-old owner to death Friday afternoon when he stepped into the backyard of his Rubidoux home to smoke, officials said.

Gerald Adelmund was declared dead at the cream-colored house in the 5700 block of Kenwood Place after deputies pulled him inside, said Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez.

"This is an unfortunate, very tragic accident," Gutierrez said.

He said he did not know why the dogs attacked Adelmund or who dragged him into the house.

The dogs were described as a 4-year-old, 107-pound male, part pit bull and part mastiff, and a 52-pound female pit bull, about 6.

The dogs were euthanized Friday by the Riverside County Department of Animal Services, with the permission of Adelmund's relatives, and are being tested for rabies, said Animal Services spokesman John Welsh.

The family also authorized euthanizing the female's nine puppies, but it wasn't clear Friday if the puppies had been killed, Welsh said.
[...]
Other neighbors said they have been afraid of the dogs for months and described them as vicious.

Josie Peña, who lives in the house behind Adelmund's on 29th Street, said that two small pit bulls the family bought a few months ago fought each other, and would growl and snap at her family through the chain-link fence that divides their property.

She said Adelmund's large male, which he owned for years, was always playful but became more aggressive when the other dogs arrived.

"I haven't gone out in my backyard for three months because I can't stand the way they are," Peña said.

So we have a backyard breeder, several backyard dogs [unsocialized, untrained, iffy temperaments], nine puppies: the wrong dogs, "the wrong background, the wrong history in the hands of the wrong person in the wrong environmental situation." What a needless tragedy. And while there is never a "better" time for such misery — the week before Christmas. Damn.

Indifference to the truth is worse than lying: BSL and the curse of false equivalencies

The truth is not "somewhere in the middle."

Here is the truth about breed-specific legislation, from veterinary animal behaviorist Dr. Karen Overall: "Breed specific laws are not based in science. [Laws] banning breeds will not make you safer, and the illusion that they will do so is dangerous to humans and unfair to dogs."

The facts back her up. So why are various city councils so determined to ignore the science? Because it's easier to imagine that the truth is somewhere in the middle. It requires less courage and a lot less work. Russell Baker — quoted by the late, great Molly Ivins back in 1987, so help me, and things haven't gotten better — explains how "balance" works. Boldface is mine:

In the classic example, a refugee from Nazi Germany who appears on television saying monstrous things are happening in his homeland must be followed by a Nazi spokesman saying Adolf Hitler is the greatest boon to humanity since pasteurized milk. Real objectivity would require not only hard work by news people to determine which report was accurate, but also a willingness to put up with the abuse certain to follow publication of an objectively formed judgment. To escape the hard work or the abuse, if one man says Hitler is an ogre, we instantly give you another to say Hitler is a prince. A man says the rockets won't work? We give you another who says they will.

The public may not learn much about these fairly sensitive matters, but neither does it get another excuse to denounce the media for unfairness and lack of objectivity. In brief, society is teeming with people who become furious if told what the score is.

And here is Ivins herself [both quotes from her book Who Let the Dogs In?]:

The American press has always had a tendency to assume that the truth must lie exactly halfway between any two opposing points of view. Thus, if the press presents the man who says Hitler is an ogre and the man who says Hitler is a prince, it believes it has done the full measure of its journalistic duty.

This tendency has been aggravated in recent years by a noticeable trend to substitute people who speak from a right-wing ideological perspective for those who know something about a given subject. Thus, we see, night after night, on MacNeil/Lehrer or Nightline, people who don't know jack about Iran or Nicaragua or arms control, but who are ready to tear up the pea patch in defense of the proposition that Ronald Reagan is a Great Leader beset by comsymps. They have nothing to offer in the way of facts or insight; they are presented as a way of keeping the networks from being charged with bias by people who are replete with bias and resistant to fact. The justification for putting them on the air is that "they represent a point of view."

The odd thing about these television discussions designed to "get all sides of the issue" is that they do not feature a spectrum of people with different views on reality: Rather, they frequently give us a face-off between those who see reality and those who have missed it entirely. In the name of objectivity, we are getting fantasyland.

Now imagine a city council meeting, which shouldn't be too much of a leap. Members of the city council are 1) debating whether to ban certain dogs based not on their behavior or temperament but on their physical appearance, and 2) turning their backs on the concerns of law-abiding citizens whose good dogs have never harmed or threatened to harm anyone.

There are two opposing points of view.

• Strongly opposed to breed bans are the real experts at the CDC; the AVMA; the authors of A Community Approach to Dog Bite Prevention; and virtually every competent dog-trainer, veterinary animal behaviorist and humane organization in North America.


• In favor of breed banning: someone who quotes an odd "study" lacking citations and footnotes and filled with misspellings, misstatements and some of the nuttiest dog behavior analysis since Thurber's mother.

And the city council, if it is sufficiently replete with bias and resistant to fact [not all of them are, thank God], will pat itself on the back for its "balance" and cast its deciding vote in favor of those who have missed reality entirely.

"We create our own reality," as the man said. The truth is somewhere in the middle! So we ignore science, we fill law-abiding citizens with anguish, and when we feel like it, we confiscate and kill their good dogs.

*************

Those who like to keep their bullshit detectors honed might want to check out the links in the Vagabond Scholar's posts on Faulty Argument Patterns and False Equivalencies. H/T to Batocchio for the Molly Ivins lead.

[Universal B.S. Detector Watch from Gizmodo.]

Blog love: Worms & Germs

How can you not love a blog with posts like Stupid things done with bats and Woman pecked by magpie loses leg and Cleaning up raccoon latrines? Worms & Germs is one creepy fascinating website. Smart, too: it's brought to us by the Ontario Veterinary College's Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses and the City of Hamilton Public Health Department, and the focus of the blog is zoonotic diseases. [Check out their Resources page.]

Today the W&G post is about dog bites. Excerpt:

A study was recently published in the Veterinary Record (O'Sullivan et al, 2008, volume 163) describing 234 dog bites in people in Ireland. Dog owners and victims of dog bites were interviewed to characterize the incidents. Bites were divided into 2 categories: bites to the dogs' owner(s) and bites to someone who didn't own the dog. Here are some parts of the study that I found interesting:

*A large number of dog breeds were involved. The breeds most commonly involved in bites were also the most common breeds in the country, indicating that higher bite numbers for certain breeds were a reflection of the breed popularity, not a breed-associated propensity to bite.

Read the rest of the post here. Weird trivia: "24% of owners and 22% of non-owners were bitten on a Wednesday." Unreal. Forget BSL -- Ireland needs to ban Hump Day.

W&G now has a sibling-blog devoted to horses: EquID Blog. Thanks to Drs. Scott Weese and Maureen Anderson for coordinating these often cringe-inducing and always informative websites.

Parental supervision. Parental supervision. Parental supervision.

Imagine a world where newspapers, magazines, TV and radio preach it over and over: "ALWAYS SUPERVISE YOUNG CHILDREN WITH THE FAMILY DOG."

Dog Kills 2-Month-Old Infant In Tulsa

Police say the infant was left unattended in a swing with two dogs in the room.

Link to story and video.


Eight weeks old.

Those poor kids! And dammit, those poor dogs

Two attacks in the news, and two videos. First, a tragedy in Pennsylvania: a dog [an Old English Sheepdog mix, according to police] attacked a 14 month old girl and injured the girl's mother as she tried to protect her child. The attack took place in the family's living room. The girl, Addison Sonney, died Thursday afternoon at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh; her mother was treated at a local medical center.

Reporters were on the scene in minutes, and the coverage at GoErie.com — photos, a map, videos — is dramatic and extensive. The big mystery: why did the dog attack?

The dog escaped the home after the attack. Millcreek police hunted it, tracking it through nearby woods with guns drawn.

At one point, officers surrounded the dog in a dense thicket at the northeast corner of Love and Zimmerly roads, shooting at it five times through heavy brush. But the dog continued to run, eventually making its way into the quiet Love Farm subdivision, where homes sell in the $200,000 range. [Reporter must be a Californian.]

Officers patrolling the neighborhood urged children riding bikes and people walking dogs on the sunny morning to go inside their homes.

"He told me there'd been a vicious dog attack, and I should take my dog and go home," said Carol Edmundson, who lives in the subdivision. She ran toward her house, but before she could get there, she saw a dog covered in blood running toward her.

Neighbors, many of whom did not know the dog had attacked a child and her mother, watched the scene unfold. One teen was in tears. Other people held their hands to their mouths.

A police spokesman tells how the dog was killed... er, "terminated," after it "became combative." Which is GI Joe-speak for "went apeshit from pain and fear." [/humanization] Heed the "graphic content" warnings.



The second video is from Brazil, and it's in Portuguese. Boy bites "pit bull"! [English article here.] And loses a tooth — a canine tooth. Eleven year old Gilbert da Silva [a cutie, and thank heavens he's going to be all right] needed four stitches and a rabies shot. What struck me about this video were the features so common to dog attack stories in the North American press: poor families, poor neighborhoods, and a scatter-bred, untrained resident dog, kept in the yard for security.



The links on this site are interesting [and if you need Google Translator, here's the link]. According to this article, after the state of Minas Gerais began regulating 17 "vicious breeds," the number of recorded bites fell dramatically -- except in the city of Divinópolis, where the number of recorded bites tripled "and attacks aren't always by breeds considered 'aggressive.'" [The breed referred to in one article as a Queue and in another as a Row is the Fila.]

"Friendly, feisty breeds identified"

I've said it a million times: if editors and columnists and politicians really cared about keeping children and others safe around dogs, they'd lose the "good breed, bad breed" mindset and listen to the real experts. Easier said than done, though, when news like this turns up:

This week at Discovery News you can learn about the world's most and least aggressive dogs [...]

Little dogs -- think Chihuahuas and Dachshunds -- tend to be feisty, while certain breeds, like Golden and Labrador Retrievers, are as mellow as their reputations suggest, found a new study that identified the most and least aggressive common dog breeds.

A study! How totally conclusive and, well, scientific! Breed A is "mellow" and breed B is "aggressive," so a parent's responsibility is clearly defined: get one of the "least aggressive" breeds to keep the kids safe. Look — there's even a list.

On the "least aggressive" end of the spectrum were Basset Hounds, Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers, Siberian Huskies, Bernese Mountain Dogs, Brittany Spaniels, Greyhounds and Whippets. Interestingly enough, several of these dogs also rated low for "watchdog behavior" and "territorial defense" behaviors, suggesting that they tend to be lovable family pets, but are less vigilant watchdogs than Chihuahuas and Dachshunds.

"They tend to be lovable family pets." Forget socialization, training, parental supervision — it's not as if dogs are individuals, for heaven's sake! The important thing, the big, neon, take-home message, is that aggressive breeds have been identified. Whew! Glad that's done.

Buried at the end of the article:

Duffy countered that "just because there is a genetic component to behavior does not necessarily mean that it is predestined."

"Anyone looking to bring a dog into their home should find out as much as possible about the individual dog's history and temperament," she advised. "Certainly some breeds are better with children than others on average. However, it wouldn't make sense to pass up a well-socialized, well-trained, non-aggressive Rottweiler for an atypically aggressive Labrador Retriever."

I know some ACOs that would collapse in hysterical laughter at that "atypical," but whatever. The most important quote of the whole article is the one getting the least attention, and children will continue to pay the price.

[One more thing. I'm inclined to think that the distinction between "good" and "bad" companion dogs has less to do with breed and more to do with how close certain dogs are to working or purpose-bred lines. The best dog for a typical family should probably be as far from working lines as possible.

This is one reason I'm not at all opposed to John Q Public's breeding his friendly, healthy Golden to the friendly, healthy collie next door. Throw the pedigrees away and breed for healthy, friendly and laid-back, if good pets are what you're after. Don't depend on working-dog people or show-dog people to provide the best companion dogs. Don't let politicians limit dog breeding to the folks whose dogs can run a hundred miles a day for days on end and the folks whose dogs can't walk around the block on a sunny day without collapsing. Those dogs aren't for everybody — and John Q Public knows it.]

Comedy Gold

Stop, KIROTV News, you're killin' me!

Such... amazing reportage deserves some sort of award — but before you read the KIROTV writeup, check out the police report:

Police released their incident report Wednesday about a pit bull bite at Lafayette Elementary School in West Seattle.

A 9-year-old girl was playing on the school's playground the morning of June 17 when the brown-and-white pit bull puppy "was playing with her shoelace and accidentally bit her left ankle," according to the report.

A man in a nearby work truck told the girl she probably shouldn't be playing with the pit bull, which scared the girl as it chased her towards the truck. The man kept the girl away from the dog until police arrived.

[...]

The pit bull puppy, which was not aggressive and [was] sitting on the playground when police arrived, was taken by a Seattle Animal Shelter officer, according to the report.

A Seattle fire engine responded to the playground to treat the girl, who had small mark and a couple scratches.

And now click on over to the KIROTV report on the same incident. Does that photo of the two heroes rock or what? It ROCKS, I'm telling you. The Onion would be proud.

Hat tip and a big ol' fist-bump to the Bad Rap Blog. Keep on keepin' it real, my homies!

They'll turn on you

Tragic story from Florida, where 74-year-old Lorraine May was killed by two dogs she'd raised from pups. Reporter Susan Jacobson of the Orlando Sentinel writes:

The animals, which May had owned since they were puppies, had a history of fighting with each other, Hutchinson said.

The relative said the 11-year-old female golden-retriever mix is named Sammy, and the 6-year-old male Australian-shepherd mix is called Seth.

They are being held in separate cages at Brevard County Animal Services and Enforcement in Melbourne while workers there conduct an investigation, said the services' Capt. Bob Brown. They could be euthanized as early as next week.

"This sounds extremely suspicious. A golden lab mix and an Australian shepherd mix? These are extremely gentile and loving dog breeds. I sure hope further investigation is done. This sounds like a murder and cover-up to me."

Several readers were flummoxed by the non-involvement of pit bulls "dangerous breeds," and commented to that effect: "Golder retrivers and labs are not aggressive animals. I don't get this." Snapped another, better-informed reader:

Lorraine was a wonderful person with family that cared deeply for her, and will be missed greatly. The cockerspanial was an old family pet and good dog who cowers at her own shadow. Her 47 year old troubled son who lived with her was the owner of the offending two mongrels. Breed be damned those dogs had a known history of aggression and the evidence is overwhelming. There is no conspiracy here so go back your grassy knolls, fake moon landings, and get over yourselves.

Over at KC Dog Blog, Brent makes a number of important points, and I'd like to quote one of them here:

Until we start talking about dog attacks as DOG issues, instead of breed specific issues, people will continue to ignore issues that put people's lives in danger. We MUST start talking about aggressive canine behavior as a canine issue, because it is.

Breed be damned.

"German shepherd Congo euthanized after another attack"

Yeah, that Congo.


Here's the story from the Star-Ledger:

Congo the German shepherd attacked again -- this time a member of his owners' family in Princeton Township, according to a report in the Times of Trenton.

As a result, the local couple who fought a successful high-profile campaign to spare their beloved Congo from a death sentence after he mauled a landscaper on their property last year had Congo and three of their other dogs euthanized this morning after the dogs attacked a relative visiting their home Tuesday, authorities said.

The four dogs attacked 75-year-old Constance Ladd, the mother of one of the dogs' owners, Elizabeth James, police Detective Sgt. Ernie Silagyi said today.

Congo gained national attention last year as he faced a death sentence after mauling a landscaper on his owners' property.

From the Times of Trenton report:

Although police said it wasn't immediately clear what sparked the attack or which of the dogs owned by Guy James and his wife Elizabeth actually bit Ladd, the Princetons' Regional Health Officer David Henry said all four apparently inflicted bite wounds.

Despite the severity of the incident and the family's decision to euthanize the dogs, the victim's son-in-law, Guy James, strongly objected to its characterization by police as an attack by his dogs.

"I don't want people who were supportive of Congo (after last year's landscaper mauling) to think they were supporting a bad dog," Guy James said in an interview. He said Tuesday's unfortunate encounter between the dogs and his mother-in-law "wasn't an attack at all. It was dogs jumping."

The 75-year-old victim remains hospitalized. In-depth coverage here, in the Times.

Petition to ban Standard Poodles from dog park after puppy is killed

Hasn't killed anything — yet.

After her Maltese mix was knocked from her arms and mauled to death by a Standard Poodle at a popular Ohio dog park, owner Jane Gsellman is leading a drive to ban the large, athletic breed from the city of Stowe. "Those dogs should be muzzled in public," she said, "and poodle owners should be required to carry extra insurance and pay more for dog licenses. As terrible as it was to lose my puppy, what if the victim had been a child?"


I made that last part up. After her puppy's death, Jane Gsellman actually demanded a separate entrance to the small-dog side of the dog park. [As she points out, it's insane that a small dog had to be killed in order to get plans for the separate entrance in motion.] No word on what happened to the Standard Poodle or his owner. No breed-bashing at all.

Stow Parks and Recreation Director Nick Wren told the press:

"As seen on a daily basis at the dog park, many pet owners consider their dogs as integral members of the family. We understand that the loss of a pet is very devastating and we are very sorry for the owner's loss."

Not that you subhuman thugs with pit bulls have such feelings, which is why it's OK for us to take your dogs away and kill them. Good old Ohio.

Did I say something about a petition...? Yeah. [Good old California.]

Mom(s) of the Year

Good frikkin' grief, people — put the puppy in an x-pen with a chew toy. Or put him in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the laundry room, or, gosh, I don't know, maybe in a dog crate. Oh, and there's this new invention called a 'crib'... you might want to check it out.

Mom A:

A 1-month-old [!!!!!!!] was attacked and seriously injured by a puppy while he slept with his mother Saturday.

The baby suffered “substantial damage” to his genitals while he lay in bed with his mother from an attack by the family’s 6-month-old Cairn terrier and poodle mix, police said.

The mother told police she went to bed with the child after returning from work about 6 a.m. and was awoken about 1 p.m. by her 5-year-old. When she awoke, she noticed the baby had been moved and his diaper was missing. She then saw he had blood on him and rushed him to St. Joseph Hospital, the report said.

Mom B:

A child is healing from severe dog bites Monday morning and family members are under investigation for how they responded to the attack.

Spokane Valley Police came to a home in the 2000 block of North Ely Sunday afternoon when neighbors informed SVPD that a one-year-old had been mauled by a young pit bull mix, but the child was not taken to the hospital for treatment.

According to an SVPD release, "Thinking she might be in trouble, the mother and a neighbor cleaned the estimated 100 puncture wounds at the home rather than seeking treatment from doctors."

The child had been sleeping with the eight-to-twelve week old puppy when he was attacked in the middle of the night Saturday and the mother found countless bites and blood staining her son's sheets.

The responding officer looked over the attack victim and found "numerous injuries to his ears, face and hands," according to the police department, with the worst of those injuries affecting his now swollen ears.

Honestly, I could beat my head on rocks. Never leave a child unattended with a dog. If the nation's news editors and politicians spent half as much time pounding this message home as they spend demonizing breeds and promoting BSL, a whole lot of kids would be spared a hell of a lot of trauma.

Our bad! It was a shepherd mix, not a pit bull

Poor kid — I suspect his parents should be hit over the head with a board. This is from the innermost pages of the Los Angeles Times:

Dog attack: An article in Thursday's California section about a 2-year-old boy attacked by his family's dog quoted authorities as saying that the dog was a pit bull. The Los Angeles Department of Animal Services said Friday that the animal that bit the toddler was a shepherd mix.

At least the Times bothered to print a correction.

Dog bite prevention: "The disease is us."

Here are some easy-to-follow directions for creating a dog that will bite somebody.

1. Don't read up on dog breeds, dog behavior or dog training before you get your dog.

2. Don't get a pit bull or a Rottweiler. Buy a "safe breed."

3. Get your dog from a pet shop, or from a neighbor who bred his untrained, outside dog to make some extra cash.

4. Don't socialize your puppy. The socialization window slams shut at four months, but who has the time to introduce a pup to 100 new people [of every age and aspect] by the time he's twelve weeks or so? Besides, you don't want Scout to be friendly with strangers. You want him to be protective.

5. Don't train your pup. If Scout chews on the furniture or is too stubborn or too damn dumb to be house-trained, you can always just leave him in the yard.

6. Don't worry if Scout runs off and roams the neighborhood. If he gets enough exercise, maybe he won't bark outside your bedroom window all night. It's not like there's a leash law or anything.

7. Find another dog to mate with your first one. Your cousin's next-door-neighbor wants to breed the family pet, and this kind of dog is so popular, you'll have all the pups sold in no time. They're selling for $1200 apiece at the pet shop in the mall, did you see that?

8. Or, you know, you could just give them away in front of the local market. To anybody.


*************

Extensive research and investigation using 40 years of data has conclusively identified the reckless and criminal ownership practices that can cause a dog to become dangerous:

OWNER MANAGEMENT & CONTROL OF DOGS

Owners failing to humanely contain, control and maintain their dogs (chained dogs, loose roaming dogs, cases of abuse/neglect), and owners failing to properly supervise interaction between children and dogs.

FUNCTION OF DOG

Owners maintaining dogs for guarding/protection, fighting, intimidation/status, or as yard dogs. Such dogs are resident dogs, not family pets.

REPRODUCTION STATUS OF DOG

Owners failing to spay or neuter animals not used for competition, show, or in a responsible breeding program.

From 2005-2007, increased focus on the negligent and criminal human behaviors has resulted in 31% of owners and/or parents of young victims being criminally charged.

HOLDING OWNERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE HUMANE TREATMENT, CONTAINMENT, AND CONTROL OF THEIR DOGS IS THE ONLY WAY TO MINIMIZE INCIDENCE OF CANINE AGGRESSION.

The quotes above, as well as the quote in this post's title, are from Karen Delise, a nationally known authority on dog bites. Her website on dog attacks is remarkably thorough, and thoroughly fascinating. [Mine ain't bad, either ;~) ] The "dog bites" tag on this blog will bring up more information.

*************

A few more facts: most dog-bite victims are young children. Most bites occur at home. In most cases, the dog involved belongs to the family or to friends. The single, most valuable dog-bite prevention measure? Parental supervision of children with the family dog. Over 6,000 Americans are hospitalized each year because of dog bites. The vast majority of those hospitalizations involve "safe breeds."

*************

Tragedy in Texas: loose, untrained, unsocialized dogs kill a seven-year-old. Here's the link. "Four pit bulls," said the Associated Press reporter. Here are screen grabs of one of them:







Looks like a sheepdog mix to me... But it must be a pit bull, because safe breeds never bite — do they?


Dog attacks are a symptom. The disease is us.

Bryant's legacy

From the "Mark my words, Ontario will be safer" Dept:

Family angry after dog mauls infant

KITCHENER-"Hello doggie." Those are the last coherent words Ginger Visneskie remembers before her 2-year-old daughter was attacked by a German shepherd last week[...]

Neighbours who saw the incident say the dog pounced on the child, threw her on the ground and sunk his teeth into her face. While they looked on in horror, Visneskie pulled on the leash and freed Lilly.

In barely five seconds, the child had been bloodied and appeared to be in shock. Visneskie didn't bother calling an ambulance. She and another neighbour put Lilly in the car and raced to the Grand River Hospital.

For the first few hours, Visneskie feared for Lilly's life and her eyesight.

"He'd bitten so close to the eyes, I thought he'd gouged them out," the 29-year-old single mother said.

When doctors finished sewing up the dozen bite marks on Lilly's nose, near her eyes and just below her chin, she had 35 stitches. She will need extensive dental work, doctors told Visneskie, since her lower jaw had been pushed into the roof of the mouth.

She has started a series of rabies shots — five in total — and may need speech therapy. Four of her front teeth were dislocated.

The dog was trying to pull her from danger, no doubt. Read the whole story here, in the Toronto Star.