Another dog tragedy, this time involving a Rottweiler (h/t Tom Girsch). Adding a cruel sense of irony, it was a 150-pound male named Enano, which is Spanish for “dwarf.” True to form, the story does not tell us whether or not the dog was neutered, a factor that is far more likely to have been responsible for the incident than the breed of the dog. Meanwhile, here in “the” O.C., another such tragedy was likely averted when cops shot a chow mix that had just attacked a 12 year old boy and had bitten a 2 year old two months earlier. Also true to form, the story doesn’t report whether the dog’s idiot owner, who spoke only Spanish during the interview, had any business being here.

Pit bulls and their owners in California can breathe a little easier, now that Senate Bill 861 has been watered down to allow breed-specific spay and neutering programs only. I think that’s actually a good idea, albeit one being passed for all the wrong reasons. The right reason is that supply and demand is not equal for all breeds, so it is reasonable to be more lax about spaying and neutering those that are in short supply while being more strict about it with breeds that are overpopulated – such as pit bulls.

Unfortunately, the news from Colorado isn’t quite so good. While state law prohibits BSL, Denver continues to exempt itself from state law, pushing canine genocide. The only semi-good news to report here is that some Denver families have managed to save their pets by transfering them to an out of town sanctuary and promising never to bring them into the Fiefdom of Denver again. If you have the misfortune of living in that God-forsaken city, my only advice is to vote with your feet.

Once again, leave it to a liberal to do the wrong thing, even on an issue that is not traditionally viewed in terms of liberal vs. conservative. Via Classical Values, Uncly-Wuncly and San Jose Mercury-News (BugMeNot), we learn that State Sen. Jackie Speier, (TAKEAWILDGUESS-San Mateo), has introduced gutted and amended S.enate Bill 861 to allow breed-specific legislation (BSL) in California. On the one hand, I suppose I should be congratulating Gavin Newsom for finally working with the Legislature to “fix” a state law he doesn’t like rather than simply ignore it as he usually does. On the other, I’m a much bigger fan of the regular Olympics than the Special Olympics, so I’m loathe to give Frisco a medal for following a basic procedure we rightly expect any other city to follow as a matter of course, especially when the bill being pushed is a bad one.

Speier’s Bill would generally allow cities and counties to enact BSL, by amending the anti-BSL clause of Food & Agriculture Code Section Section 31683, which currently says this:

…[N]o [city or county] program shall regulate [potentially dangerous or vicious] dogs in a manner that is specific as to breed.

To say this, instead:

Cities and counties may pass breed specific legislation to address public safety and welfare concerns in their communities, provided that no program shall institute a ban specific as to breed.

Lovely. In other words, Frisco won’t be allowed go the way of its PETA adherents or its would-be sister city Denver, but they could come damned close. If this turkey passes, watch for Frisco to pass incredibly onerous “regulations” applicable to pit bull owners only (or maybe applicable to Rottweiler owners, too, but not to owners of presa canarios, as that would make too much sense), followed by inevitable lawsuits over which regulations are permissible, vs. which ones are merely a ban under a different name. Call it the Lawyers Full Employment Act of 2005.

Once again, someone in the Bay Area has been attacked by her own pit bull. Once again, watch for ample coverage of the fact that the pit bull was a pit bull, and relatively sparse coverage of the fact that the dog had a history of aggressive behavior, and sparser coverage still over whether or not he was neutered (the smart money says he wasn’t).

Speaking of crappy coverage, remember how Rex, the oversized “pit bull” believed to have mauled Nicholas Fabish to death supposedly had no prior history of violence? Or, as would-be pit bull Expert^* C.W. Nevius recently put it, that Rex had previously behaved like “the sweetest, most loving pet in the world [who] plays with neighborhood kids all the time?” Err…, not quite. We now know he had bitten Nicholas earlier that day, prompting his idiot mother to lock Nicholas in the basement before disappearing for two hours.

^*So Expert^TM is Mr. Nevius, I might add, that he’s the only person in the world who has managed to uncover the well-kept secret that pit bulls have an unusually low tolerance for pain.

UPDATE: John Cole alerts me to another tragic incident apparently involving a pit bull, this one in Huntington, WV. Once again, the “pit bull” in question weighed 80 pounds, again raising serious doubts as to whether the “pit bull” was in fact a pit bull. Once again, the “pit bull” was a dog with known aggressive tendencies who had recently bitten someone else, and in this case was supposed to be under quarantine at the time. And once again, the media hides the ball as to whether or not he was an unneutered male. Interesting discussion here. It got particularly interesting when an an anti-pit activist cited to a bunch of phony pit bull “facts” she had unwittingly pulled from a pro-pit bull (or, more generally, anti-BSL) site, which in turn proceeds to debunk these made-up “facts” on a separate page.

While a tiny number of dogs turn on their owners’ children, others help to save them.

Today’s Frisco Chronicle reports that the Animal Control and Welfare Commission is responding to last week’s tragedy by urging the city to require most evil, nasty pit bulls dogs to be spayed and neutered. The article also quotes Frisco P.D. Sgt. William Herndon as saying that aggressive animals brought before the city’s dog court are almost always unneutered males, as was one of the two dogs involved in last week’s tragedy.

The Commission categorically declined to recommend any new regulations targeting specific breeds, which commissioner Richard Schulke rightly warned would lead to “canine ethnic cleansing.” It also cites dog trainer Ron Cole (i.e., a guy who trains dogs, that is, not one who writes for the L.A. Dog Trainer) questioning whether the “pit bulls” involved in last week’s attack were pit bulls at all:

“The male certainly doesn’t look like a pit bull to me,” Cole said, noting that it more closely resembled an American bulldog.

The size of the dogs, roughly 80 pounds, is more consistent with them American Bulldogs than ordinary pit bulls, whose males normally range from 30 to 60 pounds. Still, the American Bulldog is a very close relative to the pit, and some may argue it’s a sub-breed of pit, so I have to wonder if the paraphrased portion of the above quote lost something in translation. I can’t imagine Cole would have said the male certainly doesn’t look like a pit bull but certainly does look like an American Bulldog.

If the dogs turn out not to be pit bulls after all, that sure isn’t going to look good for Frisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius, an anti-pit, anti-gun-owner fanatic who only three days earlier wrote this:

Then there’s the old “you-don’t-even-know-if-it-was-a-pit-bull” argument. These people argue that there are mixed pedigrees and blurred breeds. You can count on someone sending along a link to the “find the pit bull” Web site, where photos of dogs that look like pits are mixed with some who are hard to identify. You are supposed to take the test and then marvel at how hard it is to say which dogs are pits.

You know what? It isn’t that hard. Owners identify their dogs as pit bulls all the time. So do shelters. There are characteristics, we can recognize them, and those dogs have certain tendencies that are dangerous. It isn’t poor training or bad owners mistreating them (although that dramatically raises the likelihood of an attack). It is the breed.

Perhaps, so, if the “breed” is defined such that any dog who (1) is an unneutered male, or (2) attacks someone is considered a “pit bull,” by definition. Then the brainiac sinks even lower by claiming as fact that pit bulls have an uncharacteristically low tolerance for pain, when of course the opposite is true. [Imagine what a short fight it would be in the ring if the first dog to experience any pain were to yelp and submit.]

This Ass. Press account buries the lead/lede, and in fact leaves it out altogether, so here’s the real story:

Last spring, Frisco strongman mayor Gavin Newsom claimed his city was exempt from Sections 300, 301 and 308.5 of the California Family Code, which mandate the traditional definition of marriage througout the state. In December, his junta City Council proposed a handgun ban, in blatant violation of California’s preemption law, Section 53071 of the California Government Code, not to mention that embarassing Second Amendment.

This spring, they toyed with the idea of exempting themselves from the First Amendment, as well as Article 1, Section 2 of the California Cosntitution, by regulating blogs, though on this rare occasion, they ultimately backed down. Now, less than a month later, they’re moving on to yet another target: pit bulls.

“We have to be realistic,” Newsom said. “You’ve got dogs that literally can kill. We’ve seen it demonstrated. If we can’t change people’s behavior and make them think what’s in their best interest, then that’s when government comes along and becomes a bit paternalistic.”
[Emphasis added.]

(more…)

As you probably know by now, 12-year old Nicholas Faibish of San Francisco was mauled to death by one or both of his family dogs on Friday. If you do, you probably know the breed of the dogs, too. When reporting on tragedies involving dogs, the MSM is consistently good about reporting the breeds of the dogs in question, provided that the dogs involved are or are believed to be pit bulls. Already one family member is trying to make political hay out of it:

Nicholas’ [sic] maternal grandfather, Colm Brennan, who owns the small apartment building on Lincoln Way, walked by with his Jack Russell terrier, pausing at the shrine.

“I’ll tell you what I would do: kill every pit bull in San Francisco,” a red-eyed Brennan said earlier between sobs. “I don’t like pit bulls, never have.”

“This is a lesson for people who have pit bulls and children. Don’t trust them,” said Brennan, adding that he hopes his grandson’s death will start a movement against the breed.

Never mind that pit bulls, as a group, have a better than average temperament. Never mind that Jack Russell Terriers, such as Brennan’s, don’t. Never mind that dogs as small as Pomeranians have been known to kill children when left with them unattended. Never mind any of that. All that matters is, Colm Brennan doesn’t like pit bulls, and therefore, you shouldn’t be allowed to have one.

The Frisco Chronicle story goes on to suggest to note, almost parenthetically, that the male dog was unneutered and that the female may have been in heat, itself a potentially deadly combination. Apparently, the primary caregiver had been out of town, and the house was empty in anticipation of a move, two other factors that may have freaked the dogs out. The article further suggests that both dogs were total sweethearts until they magically went bad on Friday:

A woman sitting by the shrine in a wheelchair identified herself as Maureen Faibish’s sister, Cathy French. She said the dogs had never given any indication that they might turn on the family.

“They had these dogs since they were puppies, and there was never a problem,” said French. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

That can’t be the whole story, though. According to the Associated Press account, some neighbors had a very different impression of the dogs’ overall temperament prior to the incident:

The dogs were described as “sweethearts,” by one neighbor but not everyone remembered them as particularly friendly.

Asked about the dogs’ behavior, 13-year-old neighbor Aaron Vinnick said: “Sometimes nice, sometimes mean.”

This suggests there may have been some early signals the dogs’ owners either didn’t see, or perhaps didn’t want to see. More than anything else, it suggests the following:

1. Don’t breed dogs. If you are a commercial breeder, you’re probably going to ignore this bit of advice. If you’re not, don’t. Yes, there are a few rare, exotic breeds of dogs for whom the demand exceeds the supply. Pit bulls are not among them. Too many friendly, well-socialized pits get put down every day simply because there are too many of them out there and too few families willing to adopt them. Don’t make the problem worse. We probably need a few commercial breeders, but not as many as we have. We don’t need any “backyard breeders,” i.e., random dog owners who think it’s cool to make a little money on the side by breeding their pets, at all.
2. Get your dogs spayed or neutered. Part of the reason to do this is #1; we don’t need more homeless dogs. An equally important part, however, is that unneutered males are far more likely to become aggressive than neutered ones.
3. Never trust your dog around a child, unattended. Unless your child is the one who trained the dog, your dog probably doesn’t see him or her as an “alpha” to be deferred to, but as an “omega” to be treated as a play toy whenever the real alpha (that would be you) is not around to keep him in line. Pit bulls are generally quite good with kids, and both of my dogs utterly fawn over Xrlq 2.0 when we’re around. I don’t know how they’d act around him if we weren’t, and frankly, I’m not interested in finding out.
4. Don’t surrender your pit bull solely because he’s a pit bull. Unfortunately, a number of people in the Bay Area have done just that in response to Friday’s tragedy. Your dog can’t read, so he isn’t going to up and copy Friday’s event as human copycat killers are wont to do. If he’s been a friendly, loyal companion for the past five years, he’ll probably continue to be one for the next, assuming he lives that long. If you are concerned, have him temperament-tested. If you just can’t bear to keep your pooch after reading about someone else’s tragedy, contact a pit-friendly rescue group such as Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls (BAD RAP). Don’t hand him over to county “shelter” if his only known or suspected offense is being a pit bull.
5. Don’t assume your dog can’t attack people just because he isn’t a pit bull. This is the flip side of #4. What happened with these dogs could have happened with dogs of any breed – and does. It doesn’t happen often with any breed, but it can and sometimes does with every breed. When in doubt, consult a trainer. A dog may be man’s best friend, but he’s also the wolf’s nearest relative. Never forget that.

Between murdering innocent dogs, harboring illegal aliens and grabbing people’s guns, I think it’s about time we ask the City of Denver to provide good cause to show why it should not be kicked out of the union.

Once again, canines trump humans in the compassionate department, as a stray dog in Kenya rescues a baby that had been left to die by its parents.