Marty
08-23-2005, 11:54 AM
USA -- Fatal maulings by pit bulls including the grisly death of a 12-year-old boy here have raised calls in California for breed-specific legislation to get the muscular, broad-jawed animals off the streets.
On June 3, Nicholas Faibish's mother shut the sixth-grader in the basement to keep him away from the family's two pit bulls while she ran errands. She returned to find her son dead, mauled when he came upstairs.
The female dog was shot and killed by a police officer when she blocked access to the home; the male was led away by animal control officers.
Angry state legislators introduced a bill that would have allowed cities and counties to pass breed-specific legislation allowing an outright ban on the dogs, a distinction that is now illegal under state law.
But dog owners and organizations quickly rallied. The proposed legislation was subsequently amended to impose breeding restrictions but no ban. The bill is still under consideration.
The California debate has been played out in communities across the country reacting to attacks by dogs that are sometimes fatal.
Every year 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 800,000 seek medical attention and 386,000 require treatment in a hospital emergency room. About 12 people are killed each year, a number that has been constant in recent years.
Denver, Miami and Cincinnati all ban pit bulls, the largest number of dogs involved in fatal attacks.
Denver first passed a pit-bull ban in 1989 but went through legal battle beginning last year to keep it in place. Since the ban was reinstated on May 9, the city has impounded 481 pit bulls, returned 111 to owners upon certification that they'd be taken out of the city, and euthanized 341, says Doug Kelley, the city's animal control director Doug Kelley.
According to Janna Goodwin of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, 19 states have dangerous-dog statues that require the owners of dogs that have threatened or injured people to take such steps as: registration, muzzling, posting the home as harboring a dangerous dog, purchasing liability insurance or even having the animal put down if it is deemed a threat to public safety.
From Pete the Pup to bθte noire
Dog fanciers and kennel clubs have not taken these restrictions lying down, often as in California mounting a united opposition. In fact, 11 states currently ban breed-specific legislation, says Goodwin.
Mark Threlfall of the United Kennel Club of Kalamazoo, Mich., says pit bulls are subject to unfair generalizations. "It's racial profiling in the dog world. It's like when everyone says the Muslim people are behind all this terror, but it's not the Muslim people as a whole. You can't make those generalizations about a religions or a race or a dog breed."
Threlfall points to famous pit bulls of the early 20th century as examples of how the breed's image has changed over time. Pete the Pup from the Our Gang movies, Nipper from the RCA logo, and Tige from Buster Brown shoe ads were all pit bull-type dogs, he says.
And the American Kennel Club, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Humane Society of the United States point out that pit bulls weren't the first and won't be the last dangerous dogs.
Pit bulls are just the latest "macho" street dog, says Stephanie Shain of the Humane Society of the United States. In the past 40 years, German shepherds have given way to Dobermans, then Rottweilers and now pit bulls in the progression of aggressive dogs.
"Twenty years ago German shepherds were more aggressive than they are today because that's what they were being bred for. Now they're considered a family dog," she says.
That escalation is what Gary Templin, president of the East (San Francisco) Bay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, calls the "dark underbelly" of the dog world, because the street dogs are getting bigger and stronger.
San Francisco officials have already heard rumblings about the Tosa Inu, a large, mastiff-like fighting dog from Japan. There are others as well, even more obscure breeds coming out of the former Soviet Union and South America.
Can't find homes for them
Chuck Straw breeds Tosa Inus in Chula Vista, Calif. He turns down potential buyers who don't seem up to the task of properly dominating the demanding breed. But he knows they will go elsewhere.
After the infamous 2001 case in which two Presa Canario dogs killed San Francisco lacrosse teacher Diane Whipple, 33, on the threshold of her apartment, Straw says that breeders immediately started getting calls. "They wanted 'that dog that would kill,'" he says.
Even so, animal control officials say pit bulls are the most pressing problem right now.
Carl Friedman, director of the Department of Animal Care and Control in San Francisco, says he understands owners who worry that if one breed is targeted, all breeds might be one day. But, he adds, "we've got an overpopulation. Pit bulls are the only adoptable dogs that I kill because I can't find homes for them."
To him, the answer is to reduce the population through mandatory spaying and neutering. "I don't blame the dog," he says. But when people tell him it's not a single-breed problem, "the most polite thing I can say is they have their heads in the sand."
And, Friedman warns, "If we don't do something and there's another fatality, then people are going to start taking matters into their own hands."
On June 3, Nicholas Faibish's mother shut the sixth-grader in the basement to keep him away from the family's two pit bulls while she ran errands. She returned to find her son dead, mauled when he came upstairs.
The female dog was shot and killed by a police officer when she blocked access to the home; the male was led away by animal control officers.
Angry state legislators introduced a bill that would have allowed cities and counties to pass breed-specific legislation allowing an outright ban on the dogs, a distinction that is now illegal under state law.
But dog owners and organizations quickly rallied. The proposed legislation was subsequently amended to impose breeding restrictions but no ban. The bill is still under consideration.
The California debate has been played out in communities across the country reacting to attacks by dogs that are sometimes fatal.
Every year 4.7 million people are bitten by dogs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, 800,000 seek medical attention and 386,000 require treatment in a hospital emergency room. About 12 people are killed each year, a number that has been constant in recent years.
Denver, Miami and Cincinnati all ban pit bulls, the largest number of dogs involved in fatal attacks.
Denver first passed a pit-bull ban in 1989 but went through legal battle beginning last year to keep it in place. Since the ban was reinstated on May 9, the city has impounded 481 pit bulls, returned 111 to owners upon certification that they'd be taken out of the city, and euthanized 341, says Doug Kelley, the city's animal control director Doug Kelley.
According to Janna Goodwin of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, 19 states have dangerous-dog statues that require the owners of dogs that have threatened or injured people to take such steps as: registration, muzzling, posting the home as harboring a dangerous dog, purchasing liability insurance or even having the animal put down if it is deemed a threat to public safety.
From Pete the Pup to bθte noire
Dog fanciers and kennel clubs have not taken these restrictions lying down, often as in California mounting a united opposition. In fact, 11 states currently ban breed-specific legislation, says Goodwin.
Mark Threlfall of the United Kennel Club of Kalamazoo, Mich., says pit bulls are subject to unfair generalizations. "It's racial profiling in the dog world. It's like when everyone says the Muslim people are behind all this terror, but it's not the Muslim people as a whole. You can't make those generalizations about a religions or a race or a dog breed."
Threlfall points to famous pit bulls of the early 20th century as examples of how the breed's image has changed over time. Pete the Pup from the Our Gang movies, Nipper from the RCA logo, and Tige from Buster Brown shoe ads were all pit bull-type dogs, he says.
And the American Kennel Club, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Humane Society of the United States point out that pit bulls weren't the first and won't be the last dangerous dogs.
Pit bulls are just the latest "macho" street dog, says Stephanie Shain of the Humane Society of the United States. In the past 40 years, German shepherds have given way to Dobermans, then Rottweilers and now pit bulls in the progression of aggressive dogs.
"Twenty years ago German shepherds were more aggressive than they are today because that's what they were being bred for. Now they're considered a family dog," she says.
That escalation is what Gary Templin, president of the East (San Francisco) Bay Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, calls the "dark underbelly" of the dog world, because the street dogs are getting bigger and stronger.
San Francisco officials have already heard rumblings about the Tosa Inu, a large, mastiff-like fighting dog from Japan. There are others as well, even more obscure breeds coming out of the former Soviet Union and South America.
Can't find homes for them
Chuck Straw breeds Tosa Inus in Chula Vista, Calif. He turns down potential buyers who don't seem up to the task of properly dominating the demanding breed. But he knows they will go elsewhere.
After the infamous 2001 case in which two Presa Canario dogs killed San Francisco lacrosse teacher Diane Whipple, 33, on the threshold of her apartment, Straw says that breeders immediately started getting calls. "They wanted 'that dog that would kill,'" he says.
Even so, animal control officials say pit bulls are the most pressing problem right now.
Carl Friedman, director of the Department of Animal Care and Control in San Francisco, says he understands owners who worry that if one breed is targeted, all breeds might be one day. But, he adds, "we've got an overpopulation. Pit bulls are the only adoptable dogs that I kill because I can't find homes for them."
To him, the answer is to reduce the population through mandatory spaying and neutering. "I don't blame the dog," he says. But when people tell him it's not a single-breed problem, "the most polite thing I can say is they have their heads in the sand."
And, Friedman warns, "If we don't do something and there's another fatality, then people are going to start taking matters into their own hands."