Stay classy, Brampton bureaucrats

For real.

The Brampton dogs are back home at last, safe and sound. Check out the happy photo of Ines Branco with her dog Brittany, the, um, so obviously not a pit bull, from the Brampton Guardian:


An independent veterinarian took one look at the two mixed breeds and said to the geniuses at Brampton Animal Control and City Hall, "Holy crap, anyone with enough neurons to make a synapse can tell these dogs aren't pit bulls. They aren't purebred anything. I can't believe you had to pay an 'outside expert' to tell you this. You must be dumber than a box of hammers. Give the dogs back already. Oh, and get over yourselves. Mean people suck."

Of course, the officials of Brampton couldn't just hand over the dogs and say, "We screwed up. Sorry." For pure spite, dishonesty and a last-minute dollop of abuse of power, it's hard to beat this:

Despite the vet’s ruling, as part of the agreement with the city, the owners had to agree to allow the dogs to be designated “potentially dangerous” and they must wear muzzles when out in public.

Branco paid the $50 for a license and picked up Brittany, but was shocked when he found out he would have to post a big red sign on his fence declaring a “dangerous dog” lives at the home.

“I have never seen anything like that in Brampton before,” Branco said.

Remember, these two dogs were never, not once, accused of running loose, accused of bothering neighbors, or accused of harming or threatening to harm a soul.

Do the Brampton bureaucrats have any idea how this makes them look? News flash, Brampton officials: whenever people see the sign [and I hope it's photographed and shared around the world], they'll be thinking about how cruel and stupid and malicious you are.

Here's a blank, folks. Feeling creative? Knock yourselves out ;~)

Click to embiggen.

I could just die

One of the lucky ones found alive at a hoarder's "sanctuary." Photo from the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County, Ohio. They were able to save 162 dogs and dozens of other animals — you can drop off a donation here.

What's the old saying? "Our prayers are answered when we are motivated to do all that we can." Bad Rap tells why help is needed: a self-described "no-kill, non-profit organization" billing itself as a "humane sanctuary" was raided on Feb. 12 by police and the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County, and 162 dogs, 18 cats, 14 chickens, 5 ducks and 2 horses were found struggling to survive in horrifying conditions.

A third of the dogs were pit bulls. No surprise, says Bad Rap — pit bulls have nowhere to go in Ohio:

Courts found the sanctuary owner guilty of misdemeanor animal cruelty and sentenced her to five years probation. Yes, she got in over her head. Typically, hoarders are treated as people with mental illnesses, and you can certainly understand why an animal lover would lose their marbles in a state with rampant puppy mills and laws that send families with pit bulls into a desperate tailspin. Hell, I might turn into a psycho hoarder in her shoes.

And you know you're a psycho hoarder when there are dead dogs in your bedroom. Graphic photos here: feel free to give them a miss. More from Bad Rap:

The surviving animals from this death camp are being cared for by the now very crowded Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County. This struggling organization has an antiquated shelter, a tiny operating budget of only $350K, and now they have the weight of the world on their shoulders as they try to sort out all the animals from this raid, including and especially the pit bulls. Send them your donations, good people. Here they are in the middle of BFE Ohio trying to help pit bulls that no one else wants. I mean, I could just die.

I know times are tough, but if you have a few bucks to spare, the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County could sure put them to good use.

[Also: is it just me, or is March turning into Sicko Hoarders and Troubled Sanctuaries Month? In the news lately: hoarder in San Diego; [Toronto] Animal shelter turned into a ‘house of horrors’; Orange [County, New York] could seize no-kill animal shelter; and now this from Ohio. Holy crap, people. Let's pray things improve for homeless animals.]


Related:
Trumbull County OH: where BSL victims went to die

Irrational and unjust

A few years ago, someone I know — a latina, a friend of a friend — was mugged by a black man in a mall parking lot. The attack transformed her. She began to speak of black people as n*****s. She considered her mugging to be proof of black people’s innate criminality, and she condemned them as a group: she blamed, and hated, all of them.

I suspect that when the victim and aggressor are from different backgrounds, this sort of emotional reaction to the pain and shock of a mugging may be fairly common.

It is also so irrational and unjust a response that most of us hope we'd never be guilty of it.

Dogs aren't people, of course, but non-human animals can also be the target of hostility and stereotyping. Writer Charles Leerhsen has anger to spare: his dog was attacked by a pit bull, he writes in The Daily Beast, and therefore we should get rid of all pit bulls.

I'm sorry Leerhsen's dog was hurt, and furious at the owner who not only failed to control his own pit bull, but through his lack of control put my good dogs at risk from hate-mongering like Leerhsen's. And I'm sorry it didn't occur to Leerhsen to pick up the phone and talk to the CDC or experienced dog trainers or veterinary behaviorists.

Because the truth is, no one knows whether pit bull-types bite at a higher rate than, say, shepherd-types [though the ACOs I know would beg to differ: they say shepherd-types win, hands down].

No one knows, because it is impossible to know the number of dogs of each breed or type in the general population, though we do know that "pit bulls" make up one of the most numerous types of dog in the country.

Dog bite statistics are not really statistics, and they do not give an accurate picture of dogs that bite. Invariably the numbers will show that dogs from popular large breeds are a problem. This should be expected, because big dogs can physically do more damage if they do bite, and any popular breed has more individuals that could bite. [From the American Veterinary Medical Association Task Force on Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions: A community approach to dog bite prevention.]

Leerhsen is agitated by "people, groups and Web sites that defend Pit Bulls from those who would criticize and legislate against them." He thinks we are hypersensitive. But we love our dogs as much as he loves his, and we know far more about our dogs than he does. We know that BSL — legislation based on ignorance, hysteria and urban legend — has killed tens of thousands of good dogs in places like Denver, Colorado and Lucas County, Ohio, and subjected law-abiding citizens to considerable anguish.

If he were a dog person, Leerhsen would know that breed specific laws are over-inclusive, in that the vast majority of dogs targeted will never hurt anyone, and under-inclusive, in that a great many dangerous dogs will be overlooked. As veterinary behaviorist Karen Overall has said, "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."

As I've said, if Leerhsen were a dog person rather than a distraught man who loves one dog and knows very little about dogs in general, let alone pit bulls, he would be aware of all these things. But in his present state it doesn't matter to him that my dogs, like the overwhelming majority of the millions of pit bulls and pit bull mixes in the U.S., have never harmed or threatened to harm anyone. It doesn't matter to him that I love my dogs at least as much as he loves his. All that matters to him is that his dog was hurt, and in his grief and anger Leerhsen wants me and my dogs, and you and your dogs [provided their heads are broad enough], to pay dearly for his pain.


This exchange from the Daily Beast comments section deserves to be reprinted:

"Each dog is an individual and should be treated as such."

degreesk

Dear Mr. Leerhsen,
I think you might be letting your emotions get the best of you here. You obviously love your dog, and I am sorry that she is hurt. However you are incorrectly focusing on the breed more than the individual dog and idiotic, irresponsible owners in this case. Count me among the "PC Urban professionals" (I am a Pediatric Cardiologist) who in my lack of imagination and intelligence decided to go to the ASPCA and rescue a beautiful and sensitive pit bull puppy named Ace one year ago. He is 75 lbs of pure muscle, but uses his strength primarily for cuddling. If I were to drop his leash, all you or your dog would get is a wet kiss. He rarely even barks, let alone growl or bite. He goes to "doggie daycare" and gets along with dogs of all sizes, and once let a Yorkie chew on his neck to the point that the collar broke off. Most of the other pit bull owners I meet at the dog park have the same experience with their loving pets.
So why should is my pet less deserving of life and love than yours??
Do you know how judgemental and condescending your article sounds? You look down your nose at the rest of the world as "rednecks", insecure yuppies, or "unattractive" people from (gasp) somewhere other than New York. It must be easy to look down coming from such intellectual and moral high ground of Brooklyn, but the most scientific way you can gather statistics on how dangerous pit bulls are is a Google search? Do you think that there is a possiblity that a news story is more likely to make it to the wire if it contains a controversial phrase in it like "pitbull?"
Dogs are a product of breeding, experience, and responsible or irresponsible ownership. If a dog, whatever its breed attacks other dogs, it should be kept away from them. If it is hostile to people, it should be put down immediately. If a dog attacks a child, the owners should be thrown in jail as if they did it with their own hands. But to focus on the breed alone is to oversimplify the situation, as if Pit Bulls having some sort of collective conscience that tells all of them to attack everything that is alive. Its breed-racism.
My dog was attacked as a puppy at the dog park by a Golden Retriever-Labrador mix. He needed 4 stitches on his neck, but of course, I didn't run crying to the New York Times with a vendetta to get the two breeds exterminated.
I hope your dog Frankie recovers fast and well, and after you've had some time to let your anger disperse I hope you might be less encouraging of the killing/eradication/illegalization of my dog, Ace. I think he would appreciate you not convictging and sentencing him to death based on his race.

1:40 am, Mar 13, 2010

***

PitsR4Fools

You claim to be in Pediatrics and making these statements about pits?? Here is something you can sink your teeth into before your pit does and it is from your fellow physicians.

http://journals.lww.com/plasreconsurg/Abstract/2009/08000/Pediatric_Dog_ Bite_Injuries__A_5_Year_Review_of.28.aspx

Pediatric Dog Bite Injuries: A 5-Year Review of the Experience at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

More than 30 different offending breeds were documented in the medical records. The most common breeds included pit bull terriers (50.9 percent), Rottweilers (8.9 percent), and mixed breeds of the two aforementioned breeds (6 percent).

Now do the math. If pits, rotties, and their mixes are doing over 66% of these attacks, that leaves 34% to be divided between 27 other breeds or about 1% or so per breed. Read it again, pits did over 50%, one breed. Seems your fellow physicians might disagree with you.

Believe it or not, there never has been a worldwide conspiracy to "get the pits". The media reports because of the severity of the attacks by pits. They would do the same if it were another breed and do.

Racism applys to humans, Doc, not to animals. Your version of racism is my version of saving human life. Isn't that what you are supposed to be doing?

4:47 pm, Mar 13, 2010

***

degreesk

Its impossible to know if someone is who or what they claim to be when they are posting things on the internet, so I will put aside my initial reaction of anger to you questioning my dedication to caring for children. How could you know that I worked in an indigent medical clinic for 3 years before training in Cardiology or know that I was one of the first physicians on the ground in Port Au Prince after the earthquake? (send me your email, and I'll send you the pictures)
But let me bring focus back on my actual point, which is that each dog is an individual and should be treated as such. Why you think my pit will eventually "sink his teeth" into something is beyond me. A dog with a bad temperament who is aggressive to other dogs should be kept locked up, and a dog who is aggressive to people should be destroyed, whatever the breed. But taking a percentage of a small group of dogs (dogs who bite people) does not mean that that percentage applies to the total number of dogs of that breed. To dumb it down for you, if, for example, there are 10,000 pitbulls in the US and there were 600 dog bites with 50% of them being from pits, it would still leave 9,700 pit bulls that had nothing to do with the problem. Oh, and in the CHOP study that you site, 72% of the victims were African American in race. Does that mean that dogs like the taste this race more, or could it merely be a function of the catchment area of the hospital in downtown Philadelphia where the study sample was taken (as pointed out by the authors in the results section of the article)? Could this possibly mean that in a low income environment where dogs are less supervised and well trained and where aggressively raised pit bulls are a status symbol and therefore more prevalent? Nah, its easier to just read the abstract of the article and blame genetics. Of course,as a University employed physician, I have access to the full article and so I can read the authors describe the fact that "these types of dogs with aggressive reputations are popular in crime- and drug-ridden communities" and that "as guard dogs to the criminal element, these dogs may be selected or trained to be violent, bite-prone animals.Children living in these areas may therefore be at higher risk for bite injuries, and these breeds may be unfairly blamed for the bad behavior of their owners." So my "fellow physicians" might just be more advanced thinkers than you give them credit. Did you by chance actually read this whole article?? Again, send me your email address (or a fake one that you can check, whatever) and I will send you the whole article as a PDF. The article also cites a study done in Denver that cites Chow Chows and German Shepherds as the breeds most likely to bite, and an article from Austria cites German Shepherds and Dobermans as the culprits. My point isn't that Shepherds or Chows are bad, but rather that dog behaviors and bites are variables of communities, training, living conditions and owner responsibility and breed specific reactionism is over-simplification and arbitrary generalization. Breed-specific legislation and its "justification" of reasons that pit bulls are more dangerous than other dogs are pointed out in the article as being from a law journal rather than from a veterinary journal. I don't think there is any conspiracy to get the pits. I just know that my Pit Bull loves nothing more than to lay on his back and let Labs, Wheatens, French bulldogs, and daschunds jump and nibble on him, and I've also treated a little girl in the emergency room who needed reconstructive facial surgery from a daschund bite. I don't blame daschunds, I blame the parents who kept a mean daschund in their house allowed their daughter to, while unsupervised, bring the dog to her face. (See how that works? A horrible situation created by irresponsible humans). Gross generalizations of breeds are the product of simple minds who are looking for simple answers to complex problems.

Who's a bully now? Brampton hires big-city law firm to defend the indefensible

[Photo from Facebook's Injustice Brampton Dogs on Death Row.]

It's official: Brampton bureaucrats have lost their minds.

They have hired a pricey Toronto law firm on the Brampton taxpayers' dime to defend the warrantless seizure [and, perhaps, the killing] of friendly dogs that have committed no offense. Dogs that belong to law-abiding Brampton citizens. That is, to the very people Brampton's government is obliged to protect and serve.

At least I thought that was the way it worked, but apparently Brampton officials think covering their posteriors saving face is their first priority, and cost be damned.

Imagine what people like this might be capable of doing to those poor impounded dogs — the dogs no family member or family-chosen veterinarian is allowed to visit.

And the cost? If Brampton officials are this determined to torment their own citizens and kill beloved pets, the cost may turn out to be far greater than they imagined.

Related:
More bullshite in Brampton
Brampton dogs: Still on Death Row

Brampton dogs: Still on Death Row

Hmmm... sure looks like a pit mix to me. Kilo ponders his fate during Saturday's rally for the boxer-mixes locked up in Brampton. Rambo and Brittany haven't seen their families for over a month, for some damn reason that is too incredibly cruel and stupid and petty for me to imagine. Stay classy, Brampton bureaucrats. [All photos from Facebook's most excellent Injustice Brampton Dogs on Death Row].

This coming weekend there will be a rally in Kingston, Ontario, to protest the persecution of responsible dog owners in the province. The rally will be in front of City Hall, Kingston, at noon on Saturday, February 27th.

As is clear from the situation in Brampton, Ontario law grants officers the right to come into a home with no warrant and confiscate a licensed dog that has committed no offense. If the dog isn't killed for the crime of possessing a short coat and a relatively broad skull, he can be shipped from the province and adopted out to total strangers.

"Issues like this must be thoughtfully and cautiously considered," say Brampton officials, as they spread fear and anguish among law-abiding citizens, and kill or threaten to kill good dogs. "Thoughtfully considered"? Spare me. Like all terrible legislation, Ontario's breed-specific law is at its disastrous worst when interpreted and enforced by idiots bullies like the ones in Brampton.

A few of the signs from Saturday's rally in Brampton. Did I mention that someone in Brampton's City Hall found this blog via Facebook? Leave the Dark Side, Brampton bureaucrats!

For more Brampton coverage, please check out the following blogs:
One Bark at a Time
KC Dog Bog
Brindle Stick

Amen, brudder.

Dogs still at risk in Brampton

Remember those two dogs in Brampton, Ontario? The dogs that 1) have never harmed or threatened to harm anyone; 2) have never been the subject of complaint by neighbors; 3) have never escaped from their yards or been found wandering loose; 4) have licenses and law-abiding owners; and 5) are by all accounts friendly, much-loved companions?

Yeah, those two: the ones facing execution for the crime of living in Ontario while having a short coat and a wide-ish skull.

The execution has been postponed, but the families are barred from visiting or even glimpsing their pets, and their family vet is likewise barred from checking on the dogs, which have been locked up for the better part of a month. [Habeas canis, anyone?]

On Saturday demonstrators rallied in support of the families and their dogs, and the bureaucrats are now "moving forward very cautiously."

The goal is to find a solution that works for everyone in the best way possible while respecting the legislation.

"Respecting the legislation" — Gah, I love that. Because defying a piece of crap legislation simply isn't done! Unless, of course, you happen to have a backbone and a shred of integrity.

For updates on the fate of the dogs in Brampton, keep an eye on the following blogs:
One Bark at a Time
KC Dog Blog
Social Mange

Edited to add a new bog covering this story: Brindle Stick. The more coverage of Ontario's epic BSL failure the better, sez I. Thanks to Lori for the heads up.

Brampton officials forget to pull heads in before shutting window. Again.

These two dogs are on death row in Brampton. Crime: not a damn thing. They're nice dogs, with loving - and very worried - owners. Brampton sez they're ticking time bombs, though, on account of being "pit bulls." So Brampton officials have to kill them. It's the law.

How on earth [a commenter wonders] can a city veterinarian, in good conscience, euthanize a healthy dog that 1) has never harmed or threatened to harm anyone; 2) has never been the subject of complaint by neighbors; 3) has never escaped from his yard or been found wandering loose; 4) has a license and a law-abiding owner; and 5) is by all accounts a friendly, much-loved companion?

How can animal control officers justify entering a family's home and taking possession of such a dog?

How can city bureaucrats justify their willingness to inflict such cruelty on a dog and such anguish on law-abiding citizens?

Beats the hell out of me. But it's apparently business as usual in the Ontario city of Brampton: two families are sick with worry and two dogs have been impounded and may be killed, and killed soon, because of Brampton's canine version of the one-drop rule. Doesn't matter if Momma Dog was a Boxer and Dad was an AmBull mix: there might be some pit bull blood in there somewhere, and we can't have that.

Seems Brampton didn't get the memo that ignorance, hysteria and urban legend are terrible grounds for legislation; and Brampton officials lack the balls, the brains and the integrity to take a stand against a crappy law that hurts citizens, kills good dogs and wastes the taxpayers' hard-earned money. And that's where things stand tonight, in 2010, in Ontario, Canada.


H/T: One Bark at a Time

Related:
From Brent's awesome KC Dog Blog: The Problems with BSL - Brampton, Ontario Edition [be sure to check out the links]

ASPCA Position Statement on BSL

I heart this photo. Zippy Hernandez and family (clockwise from left): Vanessa, Berenice, Jesse, Francisco and Eliana. Awesome photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice for Sports Illustrated.

The ASPCA is totally against it. As a wise commenter on the Bad Rap blog mused this morning, "[W]on't it be interesting when pibble-killing legislators have only PETA on their side?" For those new to this whole issue, ASPCA is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and BSL stands for "ignorant chuckleheads who missed the news that phrenology is so terribly 1800s." PETA stands for "Ingrid Newkirk thinks I'm a thug and wants my dogs dead."

From the ASPCA position statement:

[T]he ASPCA advocates the implementation of a community dog bite prevention program encompassing media and educational outreach in conjunction with the enactment, and vigorous enforcement, of breed-neutral laws that focus on the irresponsible and dangerous behavior of individual guardians and their dogs. The ASPCA believes that this approach—promoting education in the appropriate care, training, and supervision of dogs as well as state and local laws that address licensing, reproductive status, chaining/improper confinement, cruel treatment, and at-large dogs; imposing civil and criminal liability on guardians for their negligent and reckless behavior; and targeting problematic dogs and guardians early with progressively escalating penalties—constitutes the most compassionate, fair, efficient, and ultimately effective means of resolving concerns related to dangerous dogs in the community.

Read the whole thing. It's excellent. And if you ever get a chance to hear Bill Bruce talk about Calgary Animal Services, don't miss him. Quite an education, in the best sense of the word: no BSL, no mandatory spay/neuter, no limit laws regulating the number of pets a person can keep — just the best animal control program in North America.

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

Heartwarming story o' the day, from the fine folks at Our Pack: Life's Peachy for Peachy. Our Pack totally rocks.

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

A final thought that should probably have its own post [damn you, vacation DIY projects]: as someone with a fair amount of experience with intact male dogs, I disagree with the ASPCA's implication that reproductive status is by itself a contributing factor to dog bites and "dominance aggression."

In North America, intact male dogs frequently belong to a class of people that might be categorized as "irresponsible pet owners": they tether their dogs, for example. They live in poor neighborhoods and keep dogs for protection. Their dogs are unsocialized and untrained. All these factors are far more likely to contribute to a bite or attack, IMHO, than is a dog's reproductive status. When a chained-up, untrained dog is driven nearly mad by social isolation and deprivation, and that poor, neglected dog bites someone, the fact that the dog was an intact male is one of the least important contributing factors, if you ask me.

Bad Rap celebrates double digits!

At a sake factory! I love CA.

The actual anniversary was back in April, but the party is December 5, repeat, December 5, 2009. Should be a rockin' good time. ["And we hear tell Vick dogs are busy autographing copies of Sports Illustrated mags for you to grab up"!!!] See this link for all the details, and while you're at it, grab a virtual toolbox and do your part to get the barn finished. There's a new matching challenge...!

"Why do the children keep dying?"

It's those terrible pit bulls! And those terrible pit bull mixes that are actually 100% real pit bull, whatever the hell that is! Oh, wait — my bad — these children actually died of abuse and neglect at the hands of their human "caretakers":

All told, the records show, 32 children in Los Angeles County died in 2008 from abuse and neglect, including physical assault, drowning and malnourishment. Eighteen of the children were in families that had never been in contact with the family services agency.

But the other 14 families should have been well-known to child welfare officials, based on previous referrals and investigations.

There have been numerous calls for reform -- but little action. In the passing years, an unknown number of children have been harmed or killed.

At least a dozen reports have landed on county leaders' desks since the early 1990s saying agencies that work with troubled families must improve their ability to talk to each other. County supervisors have freely admitted that the system is broken, and even have voted several times to establish computer systems to open communication channels.

Solutions have been doomed by bureaucratic infighting, turf wars, privacy concerns and limited political attention spans. When horrific deaths or abuse drop out of the news, the board and department heads often focus elsewhere, leading to long stretches of inaction -- until another case gives them a terrible jolt.

If you ask me, politicians who waste a nanosecond on BSL or MSN or other junk legislation should have their posteriors handed to them on a platter. "Yes, kids are dying on our watch — but we hammered out a rockin' spay/neuter ordinance in 2008!" Kudos to you, L.A.County Supes. You must be so proud.


In other dreadful news, an unsupervised 17 month old Merced child was killed yesterday by a mixed-breed dog. No, sorry: it was an Akita. I mean an Akita mix. Akita/pit bull mix. Dammit, no: a pit bull/Akita mix. I mean a pit bull. That's it, a pit bull. Yes, sir, I'll be sure to put that in the headline.

260 news stories and counting, and most articles have failed to report that the dog was, in fact, a mixed breed. Even birthers don't bring of the stupid quite like journalists with their canine one-drop rule.

This dog killed a child in Merced. This dog looks just like my dog. Therefore, I should arrange for my dog to be castrated at once, and I should keep him muzzled at all times, and I should move out of the city and confine him in a high-security enclosure and pay big insurance premiums, all because my dog looks a lot like "the dog that killed that little baby." Except that my good boy is fine with children. He's even friendly with cats, not that any of that matters.

It will be interesting, by which I mean "as disappointing as ever," to see how long our local politicians can keep their gnat-like attention spans on the lives and deaths of children under county supervision. Me, I'm betting on a new round of "Kill all the Akitas pit bulls!"

Ask Dr. Science!

What kind of dog is that? Hard to tell, sometimes, with a pound pup or shelter mix. Take Smoky, my cur-dog [when you pry his leash from my cold, dead fingers, you hate-mongering BSL wingnuts]. Smoke has the fullness below the eyes common to bull breeds, along with a hound's voice, a sheepdog's temperament, a brindle coat and a blue-black spot on his tongue. Pit/GSD? Plott/Chow? Beagle/Boxer/Bull mastiff? Search me.

But looks are all that matter to the breed-hating nutters, and they'd slap a muzzle and other restrictions on my good dog in a New York minute, if they could, or even haul him off to be killed -- never mind that Smoke loves everyone he meets and has never harmed or threatened to harm a soul. He looks like a pit mix, and BSL has everything to do with how a dog looks. As opposed to, I dunno, say actual temperament and behavior.

Enter Mixed-Breed Dog DNA Analysis.

Enter Animal Farm Foundation.

Take the Animal Farm Foundation's test [pdf link here; H/T Bad Rap Blog] and find out whether you know a "pit bull" mix when you see one. [Click on the image below for a real darn big (1000 x 1500px) jpg version]:


Will DNA analysis change the wingnuts' narrow little minds? We'll see. It took the Vatican 359 years to admit Galileo was right after all, but sooner or later, science trumps superstition. Eppur si muove, you breed-hating chuckleheads. Eppur si muove.

They don't call it the Athens of East Central Missouri for nothing

Honest to God, Aldermen of Troy, just pretend you have enough neurons to make a synapse and admit you don't know what you're talking about.

In an unanimous vote Monday evening, the Troy Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance prohibiting the ownership of pit bulls within the City of Troy. This followed several complaints of these dogs running loose and a fatal attack on a pet dog by two pit bulls.

In the ordinance, the board of aldermen 'finds that pit bull dogs are dangerous and potentially hazardous to the community because the breed possesses characteristics of aggression, strength, gameness, viciousness, predaceousness, unpredictability and savageness not possessed by other breeds of dog.'

The ordinance further defines the "pit bull dog" the Staffordshire bull terrier, American pit bull terrier, American Staffordshire terrier breed and any mixed breed of dog which contains an element of these breeds.

"Contains an element"? Based on what? DNA? Pedigree? A brindle coat? The One Drop Rule for dogs? Paging Dr. Science!

Read the whole big bag o' stupidity here.

Related: Almost too absurd to be true

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.

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

"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 ;~)

Cha-ching...!

BSL/BDL is money down the drain - but you knew that. Screen grab from the Best Friends BDL Calculator. [Click for big.]

Via Ken Foster, author, editor and friend to pit bulls, comes word about a neat little tool at Best Friends: the BDL [Breed Discriminatory Legislation] Fiscal Impact Counter. Here's a link to The High Costs of Breed Discriminatory Legislation, and here's the BDL Economic Impact Calculator itself. Be sure to check out the excellent article by Ledy VanKavage: All Bark and Fiscal Bite – Are Breed-Discriminatory Laws Effective? [pdf] [Do chickens have lips?]

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.

Patricia McConnell on breed recognition and breed-based behavior predictions

The most excellent veterinary behaviorist/trainer/author Patricia McConnell [on the left with one of her working border collies] has a most excellent blog, and she reports here on the recent IFAAB [Interdisciplinary Forum on Applied Animal Behavior] meetings in Tucson.

"All this is good ammunition against breed bans… who can be sure a dog is a “pit bull” anyway? This study has the potential of providing good science that can be used to fight breed bans, which I am adamantly against."

Excerpts:

There were two very interesting talks about breed recognition and breed-based behavior predictions. Victoria Voith, one of the first board certified veterinary behaviorists in the country, enrolled us in a study she is doing on breed identification. Given that breed bans are based on, well, breed identification, she and others are gathering breed identifications [...] Most of the dogs shown came up as mixes of mixes: 25% this, 12.5 % that.Very few came out as 50% of one breed and 50% of another.

I’ve always wondered why people tend to describe mixed breed dogs as the offspring of two pure bred parents, and I’ve long believed that it is VERY difficult to guess parentage of a mixed breed dog. I came to that conclusion after reading Scott and Fuller’s study, and looking at the photos they have of some of their crosses (beagle/cocker for example.) If you look at all their photos, some of the pups look like their father, some their mother, and others look like just about nothing at all (or another breed altogether.) Dogs are so structurally labile, surely it is truly hard to predict exactly what a mix is going to look like.

Read the whole post here.

Candlelight Vigil in North Carolina

Once a victim of cruelty — forever a victim of [HSUS] policy:





Read more here.

PETA wins coveted ALA "Doublethink" Award

The American Language Association has announced the winner of its coveted "Doublethink" Award, presented to the individual or group which best illustrates the act of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and fervently believing both. From today's press release:

"The American Language Association is pleased to award this year's Doublethink to PETA. PETA members simultaneously believe

1) that all pit bull-type dogs should be killed by animal control workers rather than evaluated on an individual basis and offered for adoption — thereby promoting not merely a type of profiling based entirely on appearance, but a form of canine "genocide" as well; and

2) that the American Kennel Club, a dog registry and dog show licensing group, is similar to the Ku Klux Klan, a hate group with 'a record of terrorism, violence, and lynching to intimidate, murder, and oppress African Americans, Jews and other minorities and to intimidate and oppose Roman Catholics and labor unions.'

"The ALA further wishes to recognize PETA's imaginative use of Ku Klux Klan imagery and ideology during Black History Month — an action that helped to corroborate PETA's true-believer syndrome in the view of the judges.

"This is the second time that PETA has received an ALA award. Founder Ingrid Newkirk was honored in 1989 with the "Most Inaccurate Definition" Award for defining symbiosis as 'enjoyment at a distance.'"