Posted on 05/24/2006 8:42:10 AM PDT by rawhide
Cecil Wallace awoke about 4:30 a.m. Saturday to the bawling of cows and the howling of dogs. The Buford farmer grabbed his shotgun and went running out the back door.
His son and next-door neighbor, Kenneth Wallace, also jarred awake — also carrying a shotgun — joined him. Father and son ran toward the pasture...
...Reaching the pasture, the Wallaces saw a cow, bloodied and torn, its calf standing nearby. As they approached the animal, according to reports, two dogs came running towards them.
Kenneth Wallace raised his 12-gauge. Boom! The larger dog hit the dirt, howling. Wallace fired again, and the dog was quiet.
The female kept coming. Kenneth Wallace fired a third time, the blast echoing along the darkened reaches of Bart Johnson Road.
The Wallaces dragged the dogs' bodies aside and tended to the cow, Betsy. She looked bad — right ear torn off, the left shredded like paper. Her nose was ripped and torn. Two teeth were knocked loose. Not long after daybreak, Cecil Wallace took Betsy to a Cumming veterinarian, who prescribed painkillers and antibiotics for the Angus/Hereford cross.
"She's still in bad shape," Cecil Wallace, 73, said Tuesday. "She tries to eat, but she can't; her mouth's too sore."
Animal control officers have cited one dog owner with failing to have the animal on a leash.. They also charged the owner with violating the county's vicious-animal ordinance, which requires owners of a dangerous dog or cat to have it muzzled whenever the animal is off the owner's property.
Meghan Martin, who lives near the Wallaces, said she is the owner whom officers cited...p>
When I went to sleep, my dog was in bed with me," she said. A roommate let out her dog, plus a friend's pit bull, Martin said...
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Okay. I would like to know the proper name of these so-called pit bulls. I was often defending them, because the ones I had known were very nice dogs. My children would play with the dog next door and so would my labrador. Then, he started jumping the fence out of his yard. He would always come back bloodied. Last December he came back after two weeks. One of the first things he did was attack a little dog walking down the sidewalk. I had to call animal control and contact the owner of the dead little dog. Animal control talked to my neighbor, but wouldn't do anything about the dog unless he hurts a person. Have heard he had killed one other dog on another street and almost killed another. Until recently he had been chained up. He's been off the chain less and less. He still is very friendly to my dog (we have a chain link fence), but I do not trust him.
"Of course anyone who knows dogs knows that this is ridiculous. Herding dogs have certain innate behaviors, as do retrievers, spaniels, pointers, and so on. Unfortunately, so do Pit Bulls and Presas and so on. "
Sure, but what makes a herder a herder, and a retriever a retriever, are those traits - visual or behavioral. If a dog looks like retriever and acts like a retriever, it's a retriever because we say it's a retriever.
It isn't not a retriever because the AKC doesn't define it as a retriever. They're a business, after all, with a strong economic interest in limiting the breed designations to their papers.
Remember the big picture of my comment that "a dog is a dog". I was replying to some posts that said that there is no such thing as a pit bull, because it is not an AKC or CKC recognized breed. So, my comment was aimed at the assertion of authority to define what a breed is reposes with any private club. For their purposes, sure, but not for legal and public safety purposes. They have no pit bull designation, but there are clearly pit bulls. And they clearly have a higher propensity to be involved in vicious mauling incidents than most other dogs in our neck of the woods.
So, it makes sense to me that pit bulls need to be watched more closely and treated with greater circumspection. We CAN'T pretend that a dog is a dog when we're exposing children to dogs. Because you're right, it's not true.
That the AKC and CKC say there's no such thing as a pit bull is probably the best piece of evidence I can give for my point that these private clubs have no authority to define breeds or anything else about their hobby, other than for the purposes of what they do in their club. As far as society goes, there is too such a thing as a pit bull, and it's determined by appearance. Dogs that look like that tend to be on the hit-list of bad actors more often, so they bear watching.
I wouldn't prohibit them.
But I would treat a mauling by a dangerous breed to be criminal negligence by the owner. Keep a dog like that, IF it attacks somebody, you've done the same thing as have an attractive nuisance next to an open pit in your yard: some kid gets broken, and you're a criminal.
So, are you really saying "A dog is a dog"?
Or is there such a thing as a breed?
And does breed matter?
If you say there's such a thing as breed, what is that BASED on, other than appearance and behavior? Those are subjective standards. There's no truly objective standard for breed differentiation.
Holy cow!
Nice picture.
Oh I see....only qualified expert Pit Bull owners can identify Pit Bulls, despite the fact that Pits are overepresented in Animal control visits, in the shelters and being shot by police. The authorities are wholly unfamiliar with them.
It's a mythical problem and everyone should run out a buy a Pit Bull...Are you a breeder btw?
Find him when he's out of his yard and shoot him. Tell the cops you were in fear for your life.
That dog will attack your dog or you. Don't take the chance.
Doggie DNA tests won't give you an objective differentiation of breeds either.
Take an ordinary brand new cleaning sponge, soak it in meat gravy , and then compress that sucker into the smallest container you can, down to the size of a golf ball.
Stick it in the freezer overnight.
Run a little warm water on the container, slide out that compressed frozen sponge and chuck it over the fence in the dark,(two or three are better and quicker than one but also more suspicious)
In a week you will have no more dog problem in the neighborhood, and most owners and vets will think the dog just ate the sponge, if they are ever discovered.
My farmer friend says the owner should bury them, which is why he won't shoot them. The trespassing dogs usually swallow the frozen sponge in one gulp.
The AKC doesn't register APBT's because they wanted nothing to do with them. The history on them is a little confusing and the advocates like to exploit the confusion.
A good read about the registering organizations here:
http://dogs.about.com/cs/breedprofiles/a/pitbull_history.htm
I'm sure there is a joke in here soomewhere waiting to get out. Three holy men were walking down the raod when they spotted a Holy Cow. When the minister tried to milk her, only water came out....etc.
So far, he's been good about not leaving his yard. Last week some chihuahuas walked into his yard and my son was sure he was going to attack one so ran outside. The dog left them alone and went back to his own business after he saw my son run out.
I'd outlaw em.
Can't compare them to guns.
More like loose cannons.
Or Hand grenades....
I am so sick of this. First of all, AKC NEVER wanted "nothing to do with pit bulls". They simply changed the name to American Staffordshire Terrier to make it sound better. It wasn't their history they were worried about, as the dogs were WELL FREAKIN KNOWN for being very human friendly. They were worried about idiots like you guys who absolutely cannot LEARN! There is so much evidence out there that totally proves you wrong, yet in the face of it, here you are with your nonsense again!
A couple lab mixes killed a lady the other day, and guess what! No responses to that thread! Hmmm.. I wonder why. Perhaps YOU ALL WANT TO ACT LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENS!
And as for the post that somehow pit bulls attack MORE OFTEN than cocker spaniels, ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Cockers, Labs, and Goldens are the TOP THREE that attack most often. They just aren't as physically strong.
And another thing. I really do feel bad for the cow, but what do you expect from a breed whose original purpose, before dog fighting, was to bait bulls?? Where did you all think the name came from?? Never in their history have they been bred for human aggression, and you can talk till you're blue in the face, but the facts prove it.
Testify sister !!!
(an' slap all them dog hatin' crypto-liberals agin !!!)
"And another thing. I really do feel bad for the cow, but what do you expect from a breed whose original purpose, before dog fighting, was to bait bulls?? Where did you all think the name came from??"
I really do feel bad for other dogs and people when the Bull baiting genes kick in.
WELL FREAKIN KNOWN for being friendly...that's a good one!!!
Most people do not have the time, focus or correct knowledge and attitude to keep an aggressive dog breed so that it is under control and safe. Locking them in a yard and/or leaving them alone drives them crazy, they get insane.
I have no sympathy for such dog owners who get into trouble over an agressive dog breed.
A few years ago a kid in Montpelier, VT went into a Wolf/Dog hybrids yard to get a ball that was accidentally thrown into the yard. The Wolf /hybrid promptly killed the kid in about a minute.
Aggressive breeds have no place being owned by people who do not have the knowledge,ability, time or space to dedicate to them, because they become very dangerous animals, accidents waiting to happen. An agressive dog breed is generally a one person dog, not a family dog like some romantically want them to be. They accept no one as an alpha except their master, without a fight to the death or near death.And even then they will test the Master for weakness from time to time. Most people make the mistake of thinking it is play, and then doggie thinks he is the alpha, thats when the hurtin' starts.
Females are generally less high strung but can be more dangerous than males when they come into heat or have puppies. They just have different kill triggers, and are more likely to drag home what they kill.
I am convinced that only ranchers , and people with big spreads and lots of time on their hands are capable of safely owning an aggressive dog breed.
They have no place in the hands of the ordinary 9-5 working stiff who spends an hour with the dog each day and throws down a little dog food every day.
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