Marty
07-23-2005, 08:08 AM
Tracy, CA -- The picture of a growling pit bull appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine in August 1987.
According to the sports commentator and writer communities, to be featured on SI’s cover is historically bad mojo for the subject athlete, a phenomenon known as the Sports Illustrated cover curse. The pictured athlete predictably falls into a slump shortly after publication.
Athletes are expected to be seen on the cover of Sports Illustrated. When a non-human athlete graces the cover, we expect to see a Secretariat or Ruffian — or maybe even the Iditarod lead dog. But a photo of an ordinary, everyday domestic dog?
A curse, indeed. The image of the pit bull was transformed from ordinary Canis familaris to Canis godzilla because of a print media feeding frenzy aggravated by the actions of headline-seeking politicians.
The anti-pit bull craze of 1987 was created and fed by media response to a series of pit bull attacks that resulted in severe injuries and even deaths, including deaths of children. During this period, a TV newscast from Los Angeles showed a female siccing her pit bull on an ill-trained animal control officer.
These were horrible events. The horror was aggravated because the assailants were dogs, “man’s best friend”. Pit bulls became Public Canine Enemy No. 1, to the point where a state senator introduced a bill that designated the entire breed as vicious dogs, therefore subject to controls that theoretically would have lead to the extinction of the breed.
It became easy to hate this breed. After all, this was the dog of choice for gangbangers, lowriders and ethnic groups who promote dogfights for money. (A little racial stuff is a necessary ingredient for any hate campaign.)
The major weakness in establishing a defense of the poor pit bull was — and continues to be — people. There was and is no major breed organization in existence for pit bull owners to rally around. There were several fragmented breed groups. However, they don’t pack much political punch. The American Kennel Club doesn’t recognize the pit bull breed. The smaller United Kennel Club does.
The AKC does allow the recognition of the American Staffordshire terrier, a breed that looks a heck of a lot like anybody’s description of a pit bull. And some experts on matters canine contend that the pit bull is not a specific breed, but rather a group of breeds that includes the English bulldog, bull terrier, American bulldog and Staffordshire terrier.
The poor dogs suffer from an identity crisis. No wonder they can act nasty.
It didn’t take long for us dog people — those not of the pit bull persuasion — to deduce that once the gate was opened with a government ban on one breed, it would be so easy to add another breed here and there. California dog breed organizations started thinking like the NRA.
A lobbying group, Responsible Dog Owners of the Golden State, put the hard press on California legislators to change their criteria to use behavior in place of breed as the basis for identification of vicious dogs. The pit bull breed had to be protected in order to save all other breeds.
Last month, state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough — evidently reacting to revived anti-pit bull hysteria and to political pressure from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — resurrected the breed-specific legislation via SB 861.
One columnist commenting on Speier’s SB 861 reminded readers that “dog owners handed former Senator Art Torres, D-San Jose, his lunch when he tried to push through a breed-specific vicious dog law in 1989.” The resulting law established behavior criteria, not breed identity, as the basis for declaring a dog vicious. RDOGS’ effort had nationwide momentum and pulled the pit bull out of the fire. The non-breed specific criteria became part of the Agriculture Code, which has served California well. The Agriculture Code provided the core philosophy for Tracy’s vicious dog ordinance enacted earlier this year.
Since then, pit bull owners have rallied around the mantra that “It isn’t the dog, it’s the people who are the cause of the pit bull problem. It’s those evil gang-bangers, dope culture and dog fighters who are the root of the problem.” They say, “Pit bulls are sweet, friendly dogs who wouldn’t harm anything. They have to be trained to be aggressive.”
These people are so wrong. The mother of that poor lad killed by her pit bulls recently in San Francisco knew what she had. This was made evident by her attempt to lock up her son and not her dogs. She knew she had dangerous dogs in her house.
So it’s not the lowlifes who are entirely at the root of the Pit Bull Problem. The dogfight cultures, despite their despicable behavior, at least recognize what they have. They knowingly propagate and develop tenacious fighting and damage-causing breed characteristics.
On the other hand, those dog owners who deny the existence of these characteristics are the ones who are a larger threat to the existence of the pit bull.
My advice to responsible owners of a pit bull is simple: Know what you have. Learn the characteristics of your breed. Like many other breeds, it requires constant supervision around people or other animals.
Every dog breed, including mixed breeds, has the potential for aggression. This includes Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua, Tinker Bell, who recently attacked a British TV producer.
My own dog breed comes from the German culture. In German, there is no word that translates to “handler.” In Germanic dog-speak, the human on the other end of the leash is called hundefuhrer, or “dog leader.”
This conveys the philosophy that, by nature, the dog looks to its leader for behavior guidance. If the dog leader (read: pack leader) is absent, or fails to intervene, the dog always will fall back on its instincts. And this has sometimes led to disaster.
I offer a quote from a colleague, Jean-Claude Balu, who once trained dogs for the Foreign Legion: “An attack dog puts one man in the hospital and the other in jail.”
To reach Charles Norton about this column, e-mail ourtown@tracypress.com.
According to the sports commentator and writer communities, to be featured on SI’s cover is historically bad mojo for the subject athlete, a phenomenon known as the Sports Illustrated cover curse. The pictured athlete predictably falls into a slump shortly after publication.
Athletes are expected to be seen on the cover of Sports Illustrated. When a non-human athlete graces the cover, we expect to see a Secretariat or Ruffian — or maybe even the Iditarod lead dog. But a photo of an ordinary, everyday domestic dog?
A curse, indeed. The image of the pit bull was transformed from ordinary Canis familaris to Canis godzilla because of a print media feeding frenzy aggravated by the actions of headline-seeking politicians.
The anti-pit bull craze of 1987 was created and fed by media response to a series of pit bull attacks that resulted in severe injuries and even deaths, including deaths of children. During this period, a TV newscast from Los Angeles showed a female siccing her pit bull on an ill-trained animal control officer.
These were horrible events. The horror was aggravated because the assailants were dogs, “man’s best friend”. Pit bulls became Public Canine Enemy No. 1, to the point where a state senator introduced a bill that designated the entire breed as vicious dogs, therefore subject to controls that theoretically would have lead to the extinction of the breed.
It became easy to hate this breed. After all, this was the dog of choice for gangbangers, lowriders and ethnic groups who promote dogfights for money. (A little racial stuff is a necessary ingredient for any hate campaign.)
The major weakness in establishing a defense of the poor pit bull was — and continues to be — people. There was and is no major breed organization in existence for pit bull owners to rally around. There were several fragmented breed groups. However, they don’t pack much political punch. The American Kennel Club doesn’t recognize the pit bull breed. The smaller United Kennel Club does.
The AKC does allow the recognition of the American Staffordshire terrier, a breed that looks a heck of a lot like anybody’s description of a pit bull. And some experts on matters canine contend that the pit bull is not a specific breed, but rather a group of breeds that includes the English bulldog, bull terrier, American bulldog and Staffordshire terrier.
The poor dogs suffer from an identity crisis. No wonder they can act nasty.
It didn’t take long for us dog people — those not of the pit bull persuasion — to deduce that once the gate was opened with a government ban on one breed, it would be so easy to add another breed here and there. California dog breed organizations started thinking like the NRA.
A lobbying group, Responsible Dog Owners of the Golden State, put the hard press on California legislators to change their criteria to use behavior in place of breed as the basis for identification of vicious dogs. The pit bull breed had to be protected in order to save all other breeds.
Last month, state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough — evidently reacting to revived anti-pit bull hysteria and to political pressure from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — resurrected the breed-specific legislation via SB 861.
One columnist commenting on Speier’s SB 861 reminded readers that “dog owners handed former Senator Art Torres, D-San Jose, his lunch when he tried to push through a breed-specific vicious dog law in 1989.” The resulting law established behavior criteria, not breed identity, as the basis for declaring a dog vicious. RDOGS’ effort had nationwide momentum and pulled the pit bull out of the fire. The non-breed specific criteria became part of the Agriculture Code, which has served California well. The Agriculture Code provided the core philosophy for Tracy’s vicious dog ordinance enacted earlier this year.
Since then, pit bull owners have rallied around the mantra that “It isn’t the dog, it’s the people who are the cause of the pit bull problem. It’s those evil gang-bangers, dope culture and dog fighters who are the root of the problem.” They say, “Pit bulls are sweet, friendly dogs who wouldn’t harm anything. They have to be trained to be aggressive.”
These people are so wrong. The mother of that poor lad killed by her pit bulls recently in San Francisco knew what she had. This was made evident by her attempt to lock up her son and not her dogs. She knew she had dangerous dogs in her house.
So it’s not the lowlifes who are entirely at the root of the Pit Bull Problem. The dogfight cultures, despite their despicable behavior, at least recognize what they have. They knowingly propagate and develop tenacious fighting and damage-causing breed characteristics.
On the other hand, those dog owners who deny the existence of these characteristics are the ones who are a larger threat to the existence of the pit bull.
My advice to responsible owners of a pit bull is simple: Know what you have. Learn the characteristics of your breed. Like many other breeds, it requires constant supervision around people or other animals.
Every dog breed, including mixed breeds, has the potential for aggression. This includes Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua, Tinker Bell, who recently attacked a British TV producer.
My own dog breed comes from the German culture. In German, there is no word that translates to “handler.” In Germanic dog-speak, the human on the other end of the leash is called hundefuhrer, or “dog leader.”
This conveys the philosophy that, by nature, the dog looks to its leader for behavior guidance. If the dog leader (read: pack leader) is absent, or fails to intervene, the dog always will fall back on its instincts. And this has sometimes led to disaster.
I offer a quote from a colleague, Jean-Claude Balu, who once trained dogs for the Foreign Legion: “An attack dog puts one man in the hospital and the other in jail.”
To reach Charles Norton about this column, e-mail ourtown@tracypress.com.