Professor Bainbridge links favorably to this article by Jon Katz, which ignorantly smears two dog breeds and takes numerous cheap shots at dog rescue groups. For some reason, the Professor describes Mr. Katz’s hatchet job as “a sobering article over at Slate on how the animal rights/rescue movements are compounding the problem of dog bites.” I disagree. I find this article neither sobering nor sober. If it’s a “must read” for dog owners, it is for the same reason that Fahrenheit 9/11 is a “must see” for fair-minded Americans who need to know what they are up against.

The smearing begins with the headline:

Dog Bites Man

Not a story—a national crisis.

There’s the first lie, right off the bat. The entire story focuses on one incident involving a dog bite, which Katz spins hard. So it is a story, not evidence of a “national crisis.” No national statistics are provided, nor is any evidence whatsoever presented to justify the labeling of dog bites as a “crisis,” national or otherwise. Even the John Edwards of dog bites, who proudly proclaims an “epidemic” of dog bites, bases that overheated rhetoric on an estimate that only 800,000 dog bites a year in the U.S. that require medical attention. That sounds like a big number – all national statistics do – until you consider that the U.S. population is over 290,000,000, of which 800,000 accounts for roughly one-quarter of 1%, assuming no one person is seriously bitten twice in any given year. By way of comparison, our national automobile crisis results in over 6 million reported accidents per year, over 3.2 million of which result in personal injuries requiring medical treatment, and over 40,000 of which result in death.

Yes, it sucks to be one of those 0.25% who get seriously bitten, and it hella-sucks to be one of the 17 per year (no, I didn’t leave out any zeros), or .0000059% of the population (no, I didn’t add any), whose injuries prove fatal, but as national crises go, this one is nowhere close to the automotive crises, the gun crisis, the tobacco crisis or even the time-honored “oh crap, I might get fatally struck by lightning” crisis, which kills four times as many Americans every year.

Granted, Katz himself probably didn’t write the headline. Nevertheless, this headline isn’t a Drudgie; it’s actually quite representative of the tone of the rest of the article.

Spice was a sweetheart, gentle with kids, the best pal of my border collies, generous with her toys and snacks, happy to play tug of war and chase endlessly across suburban lawns. Her owner Jan, an ad executive in my northern New Jersey town, was deeply involved in dog rescue. She believed it immoral to spend hundreds of dollars for a purebred dog (like mine) when so many dogs are in shelters facing death. Accordingly, she had plucked Spice—a 3-year-old mix of pit bull, Labrador retreiver, and probably a few other breeds—out of a Brooklyn animal shelter days before she was slated for euthanasia. Jan didn’t know anything about her history, except that she’d been found on the street, half-starved and beaten, and that “because she was a pit, she didn’t have much of a shot at being adopted.”

Note the sneer quotes at the end, it’s a recurring theme throughout this piece. Completely inappropriate here, as many people are reluctant to adopt pits, or even pit mixes like this one. Between them and the breed snobs who insist on racially “pure” dogs, even perfectly socialized pit mixes can be tough to place. This one, given her history of abuse, was not. That doesn’t mean Jan shouldn’t have adopted her, any more than it means Mrs. Xrlq and I shouldn’t have adopted our own pit, who had a similar history. It does mean that the dog isn’t for everybody, but from what we can gather about Jan, she’s not everybody.

So Jan bypassed calmer and easier shelter dogs and brought Spice home, trained her conscientiously and consistently, loved and pampered her. Spice proved a wonderful pet—obedient, easygoing, affectionate. I had no hesitation about her playing with my dogs,

So far, he’s said nothing about Spice to indicate she was anything if not calm and easy. So how did Jan bypass “calmer and easier” dogs to adopt her? Or is “calmer and easier” a euphemism for the “right” breed, akin to the proverbial realtor who cautions his black customers that they may not feel “comfortable” in a particular neighborhood?

and I listened patronizingly sympathetically as Jan complained about harassment and what she called “breed prejudice” — that fear of pit bulls that caused people who encountered them to grab their kids and dogs and cross the street.

What did I just get done saying about sneer quotes? Prejudices about dogs based on their breed are not breed prejudices, just “what she called ‘breed prejudices.’” A gratuitous “so-called” and a sneer quote built into one — and this is how Mr. Katz talks about his friends. Now comes the one-incident “crisis.”

Last fall, while they were walking in a park, a Pekingese slipped out of its collar and dashed toward Spice and Jan, growling and barking. Spice, startled, almost reflexively grabbed the dog’s head in her mouth, bit down, and hung on. Neither Jan nor a horrified dog owner passing by could get Spice to loosen her grip. The smaller dog yelped, then went still. The Peke’s owner, a woman in her 60s strolling with her 5-year-old grandson, screamed and rushed up to intervene. Spice had always been friendly and reliable around children, but now she was aroused, almost frantic. People were shouting. The boy cried and screamed in fear.

Translation: Jan walked her dog, on leash. Both she and her dog Spice were minding her own business, while some idiot walked by with a Pekingese whose collar had not been properly fastened. The little Pekingese got off the leash, picked a fight with Jan’s larger dog and, predictably, lost.

It all happened in a few seconds. Spice bit both the woman, who required 30 stitches in her arm, and the child, who after surgery still had small but permanent facial scars and most likely some psychological ones.

Translation: the idiot woman who couldn’t keep her dog on a leash, also lacked the smarts not to try to break up a nasty dog fight, or at least to keep her five year old grandson from getting involved. As a result of her idiocy, both she and the boy ended up getting hurt.

The animal-control authorities seized the dog. Local ordinances meant near-certain euthanasia.

Jan hired a lawyer and went to court to try to save Spice. “It was terrible,” she said, “but it was not the dog’s fault. You could see she was sorry. That Peke ran at her, the woman and the kid came charging up. I am terribly sorry it happened, but she is a wonderful pet. I love her to death. She was walking calmly, on a leash and under control. She doesn’t deserve to die.”

Based on what Mr. Katz tells us, Jan was right. Her dog didn’t attack anybody, she was attacked, and responded accordingly. What else do you expect the dog to do?

But the judge, in consultation with two local vets who worked with the town shelter, ruled that the dog was dangerous.

Depending on the locality (Katz doesn’t say), that ruling could mean anything from “this dog exhibits a temperament suggesting it is likely to attack without provocation” to “yup, this dog is a pit-lab mix, all right.”

Jan had implored me, “as a dog lover and dog writer,” to testify at the hearing and write letters on Spice’s behalf to the judge and the vets. She wanted me to affirm that Spice was gentle and that Jan was a responsible owner. She agreed to muzzle Spice when they walked and confine her in a new backyard fence she would build. She even considered moving in with her mother in a rural area farther west, where there’d be less contact with people.

Sounds reasonable enough. So of course Mr. Katz complied with this request, right? Right?

I thought about how I should respond.

What’s to think about? Jan is your friend, right? She’s not asking you to lie or anything; all she’s asking you to do is to tell the judge what you told the world in the first paragraph of this article. That should be a no-brainer. Of course, it may not be if you have an agenda of your own. At this point, Katz effectively admits as much by temporarily dropping his one-dog crisis and talking about generalities instead:

As America’s love affair with dogs has deepened, some dog lovers and those in the rescue and animals rights movements have advanced the idea of “no-kill” policies in public shelters, where virtually all dogs—especially those considered “adoptable”—would be kept alive, for years if necessary, until homes are found for them or they die natural deaths.

Pit bulls would probably be prominent among such residents. Known for strong mouths and aggressive behavior, pit bulls have become both the target of anti-dog activists and the focal point for many rescuers, precisely because they’re hard to place.

Note the strategic use of the passive voice here. It serves the same purpose as oblique references to “experts,” “accepted wisdom” and “many,” but it’s more subtle. What it means is “I think X, but have no evidence to back X up.” If I were to argue that pit bulls are not particularly aggressive breeds, I’d link to evidence that backs that up. I wouldn’t simply state that my opinion is “known.” Beware of those who do.

Pits (Staffordshire terriers, their partisans prefer to call them) usually make wonderful, safe pets.

Don’t you love the mentality that says people who agree with me are right, while people who don’t are “partisans?” In any event, the name “Staffordshire Terrier” did not originate with pro-pit bull “partisans,” but with the notoriously anti-pit bull American Kennel Club, which originally refused to recognize the breed at all. Only decades after the newly formed United Kennel Club registered the breed, did the AKC finally come around to recognizing the same breed under an assumed name. Even among AKC partisans, Katz gets the name wrong; it’s American Staffordshire Terrier, not simply “Staffordshire Terrier,” a name that lends itself to being confused with the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, a related but distinct breed.

But when they do attack, they often cause much more damage since they have a greater ability to injure people.

Although pit bull mixes and Rottweilers are the most likely breeds to kill and maim humans, other breeds have also been responsible for fatal attacks on people: German shepherds, huskies, Alaskan malamutes, Doberman pinschers, chows, Great Danes, Saint Bernards, and Akitas. Contrary to stereotype, retrievers, poodles, and other popular breeds are much more likely to bite people than pit bulls or Rottweilers. They also, as a rule, do less damage.

Owners who buy aggressive dogs for security may be kidding themselves: The chances that the victim of a fatal dog attack will be a burglar or human attacker are 1-in-177.

Ah yes. After all those years that the gun grabbers lectured us about how are guns were 43 times more likely to kill us than intruders, I suppose it was a matter of time before someone applied this tired reasoning elsewhere.

For some rescuers, saving violent dogs has become a mission. Violent dogs are now brought into the mainstream population by the thousands each year. Among some dog advocates, it’s considered immoral to euthanize a violent dog, but acceptable, even praiseworthy, to bring one into contact with children.

Time for Mr. Katz to put up or shut up. If he knows of any specific rescue groups that knowingly and deliberately place violent dogs, let him name names. Otherwise, I have to suspect that what he really means is that some rescuers specialize in placing nonviolent pit bulls, Rottweilers and the other “bad” breeds he and others malign.

The animal-rights movement sees itself as deeply moral, a powerful advocate for animals.

Note the semantic trick: one minute we’re discussing the pit bull “partisans” and animal rescue organizations Mr. Katz disparages, the next it’s the animal rights movement. Never mind that the groups are far from identical. Never mind that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights organization with the biggest profile in this country, is violently opposed to pit bulls. Facts don’t matter, only the ability to tar one’s ideological opponent by associating him with an unrelated and unpopular cause.

Spice was by no means a “bad” dog. There are, in fact, no “good” or “bad” dogs; the species is incapable of moral choice. Spice reacted instinctively when another dog approached her owner and got into her face, and Jan was right to insist that the incident wasn’t Spice’s fault. Nor can we blame Jan or the poor grandmother who led her grandchild into such a horrific scene.

Why the hell not? It was bad enough that she failed to do the responsible thing by keeping her dog on leash, but encouraging her 5-year old grandson to attempt to break up the fight is inexcusable. Not only should we blame her for it, she should be prosecuted for reckless child endangerment.

When people buy, rescue, or otherwise acquire a dog from unscrupulous breeders or amateur rescue groups, they are making a decision with ethical consequences.

Once again, Katz not-so-cleverly lumps in dog rescue groups, whom he pooh-poohs as “amateurs,” right in there with unscrupulous breeders. One group devotes scores of hours to helping place adoptable dogs at or below cost, while the other makes a profit by churning out dogs with health or temperamental problems. Two can play that game, though: when people take advice from tax cheats, crack dealers, Jon Katz or mass murderers, they are making a decision with ethical consequences.

They have a profound responsibility to consider their actions; to gauge the dog’s behavior, to train it thoroughly and rigorously, to protect other humans and dogs from harm.

Which is exactly what most rescue groups do, and it also appears to be exactly what Jan did. Her dog was on a leash, and fought the other only when attacked. Where did the aggressor dog came from? An unethical breeder, an “amateur” rescue group, or a “responsible” breeder who gets Katz’s seal of approval? From this article, there’s no way to tell.

I told Jan that I was very sorry. But I couldn’t help. Spice was euthanized.

Hey Mr. Katz: on behalf of your (ex-)friend Jan, pit bull aficionados and dog rescuers everywhere, thank you.