With all due respect, I believe that you just punched a giant hole in your own argument. In this case, this is not a breed problem, this is an irresponsible owner problem. When we want to get serious about solving the problem of “dangerous” or “vicious” dogs, we will start targeting the owners.

Unfortunately the owner will not get help and is already repeating her anti-social dog training with a new animal. Hopefully her insurance will pay our significant costs, but nothing will compensate for the pain and suffering of both our dog and our family.

Al,

Are you aware that a husky killed a small child here in the states this last year? And that they also have caused several fatalities in Alaska over the past few years before?

No one blamed the dogs breed in these cases. There were a number of contributing factors, the same sort present in pit bull incidents.

i’ve had my dogs jumped and attacked too, but not by pit bulls. Once it was a GSD, another was a mix of this and that. And the worst was a husky whose owner had no control (second worst, injury wise was a golden).

So based on my own personal, experience, I should be advocating for the banning of a number of breeds, none of them bully related.

But I won’t. I realize that huskies are involved in a disproportionately high number of incidents in Alaska because they are very well represented there number wise AND that they are often not well socialized pets.

(And I realize that the husky who attempted to shred my dog was a frustrated, under socialized dog with a clue-less owner.)

Well, pit bulls are amazingly popular. There are a lot of them. And not always acquired or socialized appropriately, or cared for properly etc… because that is the price breeds pay for popularity. Before pibbles, it was rotties, and before that dobies and my mother recalls being terrified of vicious saint bernards, why do you think one starred in Cujo?

Pit bulls were the symbol of American fortitude and stalwart determination through two world wars. They were the nanny dog and family protector. And they have been abandoned and vilified by PeTA and HSUS and the popular media. An injury free “pit bull attack” is a headline, a mauling by virtually any other breed is described as a dog attack and relegated to the back page.

Dogs and people need to be judged individually. Instead of bad dog, I would be thinking that the suburban mother who owned the dog who attacked yours should be held accountable and needs training on how to properly raise, train and socialize a dog, because whatever she gets next is likely to repeat the performance.

My opinions are also based my own experiences. The racial/ethnic bias you describe simply does not apply here in Toronto. The owner of the dog that attacked my husky was a white, home-owning, local neighbourhood, suburban mother.

As you say, the breed was designed to fight other dogs, which is exactly what I experienced, so I am not ‘highly ignorant’ of the breed characteristics.

I don’t want to take peoples’ pets away and kill them, and I don’t have the view that individual pit bulls aren’t worth saving, but I would like to discourage creating more dogs that are pre-disposed to dog-fighting.

I also don’t want to be argumentative and have my comments banned, but I do believe there is a need for more discussion about this without all the personal and inaccurate assumptions.

You’re entitled to your opinion, and you’re welcome to disagree with me. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving you a free ride.

My opinion is that pit bulls are not hard-wired monsters who need to be eradicated, one and all. Your statement that they are bred to be aggressive is highly ignorant of the fact that the pit bull was bred to be a fighter of other dogs, but a fighting dog who could not be handled by people was unacceptable. Some true fight-bred pits are not only wonderful with people (witness the Vick survivors) but also fine with non-pits. It’s like a heavyweight boxer who won’t get drawn into a bar fight — he knows he’ll win and has nothing to prove.

My opinion is also that many (perhaps not you but many) people are consciously or unconsciously judging pit bulls based on the middle-class white person’s view of some of the people who are drawn to pit bulls. Just because that fact makes you uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s not true.

My opinions are based on my own experiences of knowing many wonderful pit bulls who deserve better than to have people cross the street in fear so as not to be near them. And in hearing, time and time again, people of my own socio-economic class and racial/ethnic makeup connect pits with people they are afraid of or don’t like.

I never said you were a PETA supporter because you share their view that pit bulls aren’t worth saving. Just as I’m not a PETA supporter because I am adamantly opposed to factory farms.

But I believe you are wrong about pit bulls, and that time is proving me right.

Comment by Al Hunter — January 14, 2009

Ah c’mon Al, where’s the fun in that?