Posted on 07/09/2004 2:10:42 PM PDT by Shermy
Eighty-eight year old Mabel Wong was still in critical condition in John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek on Monday. She's been there since a week ago last Saturday, battling for her life, after a horrible mauling by a neighbor's pit bull near her Concord home.
In the aftermath, people wondered how it could happen. What did this little elderly lady do to trigger such an attack? The answer is simple and blunt. Nothing.
"This lady had interacted with this dog hundreds of times,'' said Lt. Abe Gamez of Contra Costa Animal Services. "She was just trying to get from one place to another.''
Whenever there is an account of a mauling by a pit bull, there is a howl of protest from those who love the breed. There are no bad dogs, just bad owners, they say. Or they ask how the media reporting the incident knew the dog was a pit bull. Pit bulls, they insist, are no more inherently dangerous than any other breed of dog.
That's not true.
"What I usually say is that it is not uncommon to spend thousands of dollars breeding a good hunting dog,'' says Gamez. "With a good hunting dog, that is not something you teach -- he's got it in his genes. The pit bull is bred for fighting.''
"You can't make a German shepherd stop herding,'' says Merritt Clifton, editor of the Washington-based Animal People magazine. "You can't make a Chihuahua stop barking.''
It is at this point that everyone starts yelling at each other and pointing fingers. My pit bull, someone says, plays with my children every day. He's the cutest, most affectionate pet we've ever had. Pits are no more aggressive or dangerous than beagles.
That's not true.
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(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Some people have called my Lab a BC in a Lab suit, but her intensity is only intermittent. She does "stalk" like a BC though.
Speaking of which, she caught ANOTHER squirrel. This one never knew what hit him -- BAM!
Buddy of mine lost one of her Jacks awhile back - he was trying to get over their wrought-iron fence and caught his collar. I have had nightmares about that for weeks.
No, I don't recall that. Think I'll do a google search, because I don't know what they look like. I've never even heard of that breed of dog until now.
AnAmericanMother pointed out that pit bulls and Presa Canarios are in vogue with the trash element at this time, and that certain puppy farms breed for the trash clientele.
Perhaps we need some sort of character test before allowing people to buy or breed dogs.
I misspoke (miswrote?), it's a Presa Canario.
See, you raise an interesting point. I have NEVER in 35 years met a cocker spaniel with more than two brain cells. Those are THE dumbest dogs on the planet.
My JRT is clearly smarter than my brother's Border Collie.
It's just that he's far more independent.
(He doesn't have that "oh no, me people is mad" cringe.)
Important to make a distinction. This isn't indiscrimate breeding that accidently creates untintended bad temperaments.... It is intentional fighting dog breeding as the primary characteristic and purpose of the dog.
(If anything, indiscriminate backyard breeding might mix in a few wimpy dogs that actually mellowed the breed ;~D)
The numbers are skyrocketing because the backyard breeders are answering the trailer trash demand for this dog - and then they are discarded when they turn out to be more than Mr. Redneck or Mr. Gangsta can handle.
My late cocker mutt was ~really~ bright, but I think it may have been some beagle that gave her that. I agree. Any dog that the fru fru show people have had their hands on very long are pretty as heck, but have had the brains bred out of them.
But this is indiscriminate breeding with overt aggression as its only goal (rather than the spots of a Dally or silky coat of an AmCocker). And the overt aggression is no longer limited to dogs - now it's anything that moves. Not to mention that the trash thinks that the way to make a "bad dog" is feeding the poor thing red pepper, taunting it on a chain, and beating it daily.
ANY dog with aggressive tendencies does not belong in close-quarters residential areas. I don't care WHAT breed it is.
Estimates of the pit bull population in this country range from 500,000 to 1.2 million.
http://www.staffordclub.com/Breed/rescuinf.html
Since 1982, there have been a total of 831 attacks that this guy documents in his column. Fatal attack numbers are 57 TOTAL from 1979-1994 (CDC study) and 68 in a 1979-1998 (JAVMA study).
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/06/BAG0C7H3811.DTL
On the face of it, I think that breed-specific legislation is going way overboard. Particularly when there's evidence that earlier problems were shrugged off (as this column seems to admit).
The problems here seem to be twofold:
1. Owners who don't properly handle the responsibilities that come with owning their dogs.
2. Neighbors don't report problems with the dogs BEFORE someone gets mauled. The column itself said so: "As in the Diane Whipple case in San Francisco, where people came forward *after the fatal attack* with accounts of having had earlier concerns about the dogs, Wong's neighbors are now reporting having had problems with the dog that attacked her."
If a dog starts to menace me, I'm reporting it IMMEDIATELY, and getting a complaint on the record, unlike the neighbors in this incident. The neighbors who did NOT report the earlier problems with the pit bull in question have to shoulder some of the blame in my book.
Then it isn't indiscriminate. It's intentional, and that is my point. These dogs have been created and honed to kill. It's as much in their nature as retrieving is in a labrador or herding is in a border collie.
Jacks are very smart, very agile, can dig like few other breeds, they can jump six feet or more, and they can climb chain link. And they're the most stubborn dogs ever bred.
They may not have an intelligent bone in their body, but they usually don't have a mean one, either.
The problem here is, how does one define what is a "puppy mill" in terms that can stand up under our system?
"I know one when I see one" does not suffice, IMHO.
IIRC, Petey was an American Bulldog.
What does she do with the squirrels after she catches 'em?
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