Pit bulls shot to death after attack on cow (sad picture of mother cow, protecting it's calf)

ajc.com ^ | 05/24/06 | Mark Davis

[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...

[Feiny]

Oh, I am devastated by your witty retort. It reminds me of a liberal who wants to end an argument by calling someone a fascist.

You posted an insane comment with what you perceived as threatening overtones to all pitbulls & pitbull owners. I accepted your challenge as I am an owner of the breed. Have you ever seen the Dog Whisperer? Have you ever read a book about the breed which you seem to despise?

[Feiny]

I figured you would be here as it seems to be your life's mission to post on all "pitbull" attack threads.

We have posted to one another ad infinitum with no results so I won't continue with you anymore. We disagree on this issue in a major way, but I still like you.

You are correct, the gun analogy is stupid. You are incorrect about the genetic traits of these dogs. I have sent you plenty of links relating to their history & true nature, but you willfully ignore them.

All respectable ABPT breeders cull for human aggression as it is an aberration in the breed. They were bred to fight bears & bulls, but never to attack people.

I cannot stay & play "let's bash pitbulls & their owners" today as I am off to the range for some shooting time.

[sinkspur]

You can protest all you want, but the evidence is reaching the point of being nearly overwhelming:

Pit bulls and pit bull mixes are a danger to society. Start denying homeowner's insurance to anyone with a dangerous breed of dog, and go from there.

[Smokin' Joe]

There are a lot more pit bull attacks than Cocker Spaniel attacks. It's just the way it is.

Got a source for that data?

[Theoden]

First, posting STFU usually makes the context of a comment/reply personal. I made a similar attack in reply, but I am going to fore-go making anymore personal comments.(I was in a pissy mood this morning).

Now, this is a forum for comments, so if you cannot deal with them, then you really have no business being here. I posted a silly comment on purpose. It was supposed to be comical, and a bit of a rant at the same time.

No, I have never seen the Dog Whisperer. I have not read books on pit bulls, but I have read many articles on various breeds, including pit bulls, and their breeding history.

Please see my reply on post 76 to another member.

I have had many encounters with pitbulls and rottweilers, none of them good. I have seen what they are capable of doing. I am NOT advocating their destruction as a breed, only their restriction. Again, my post # 76 states all my thoughts on the matter.

I took offense to being told to shut the *%#@ up, and that is the only reason for my snide reply, and I apologize for that. Also, my comment is primarily aimed at those who are not fit to own pit bulls in general, and there always exceptions. Thats all I have to say. Good day.

[Candor7]

Comparing them to a gun, which will do what I want it to do, every single time I want it to do it, is ridiculous.>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Both result in deadly force. The law sees it that way, not just me. It takes more training to properly control the deadly force which can come from an animal, as compared to a gun.

The law allows for people to own dogs that can manifest deasdly force, and owners should be responsible for that force when it is misapplied, but I do not see how Liberty is maintained by banning any dog that is properly controlled. Its just that we have a culture which romanticizes the animal kingdom, including dogs.

Aggressive dog breeders who sell their dogs to people who are not competent to handle them should also be held responsible. That way, people would get the training they need and would not purchase such a dog unless they could have the proper conditions for it.

I see no reason to ban any breed of domestic dog but the ownership of WILD Animals, such as WOlf DOg hybrids perhaps should be banned.

[Finny]

Start denying homeowner's insurance to anyone with a dangerous breed of dog, and go from there.

It's a start, I suppose, but realistically, I think, it would only affect a tiny fraction of irresponsible powerdog owners. It won't affect renters, who are easily able to have dogs without landlords' knowing it. It won't affect people who lie to their insurance companies. Anecdotal, I know, but in my immediate neighborhood, a mix of mostly nice homes with a few junkers tossed in, the ONLY pit bull-type dogs are at the two low-rent junkers.

As we see again and again on these threads, there are many responsible owners of powerdogs who passionately defend the dogs and blame on the owners all cases of rampant dogs causing damage, as if the breed had nothing to do with it. It's the owner, not the breed! is the mantra. And it's 50 percent true 100 percent of the time.

But the thing is ... if all those problem owners had greyhounds, poodles, spaniels, etc., there wouldn't be a problem. Not that those dogs don't bite -- they do. But those dogs rarely kill or maim to the point of the victim needing prolonged surgery. (Not withstanding solosmoke's recent thread where she FINALLY, halleluja!, found her Holy Grail, a case where some labs, instead of pit bulls or Rottweilers, killed a woman! Aha, PROOF that poor pits and rottweilers are being unfairly DOGGY PROFILED!!!).

When responsible owners attack folks like us, who DO engage in DOGGY PROFILING!!!, they're on defense, and fighting the symptom, not the cause. I think they should take a page out of the Minutmemen's notebook, create neighborhood posses, and look for the thousands of irresponsible owners whose potentially lethal powerdogs can be easily spotted through inefficient fences, on weak chains or tethers, etc. Each one of those dogs represents fairly good odds of yet another bad-press news report about how a pit bull or Rottweiler killed or nearly killed a human being.

If I was a powerdog owner who really wanted to do something to prevent further outcry to ban dangerous dog breeds, I'd deal with the cause, (careless power dog owners), not the symptom (people who complain about the dogs). I'd get off the stick and start doing some SERIOUS peer-pressure intimidation of people who are irresponsible owners of powerdogs. Forget irresponsible owners of poodles, spaniels, labs -- they're not the problem, and pretending they are will only make powerdog defenders lose credibility.

Banning breeds would be a bad thing, wrong on many levels. There must be another solution, but it won't happen until powerdog defenders develop the stones to actually make judgement calls and face up to the truth that this is NOT solely a problem of bad owners -- the breed of the dog is KEY.

[sinkspur]

Aggressive dog breeders who sell their dogs to people who are not competent to handle them should also be held responsible. That way, people would get the training they need and would not purchase such a dog unless they could have the proper conditions for it.

You obviously find no irony in requiring training for people who own certain breeds of dogs.

Your own words indicate that you realize that there are dangerous dogs.

We're not allowed to own hand grenades and, there will come a time when certain breeds of dogs will be banned.

[Candor7]

We're not allowed to own hand grenades and, there will come a time when certain breeds of dogs will be banned.

Yes that may be true, but the people will decide,not liberals who want to paint all ( or many) dogs as evil as they did guns, and hopefully those laws can be in force before we get into a cycle of single event driven, knee jerk legislation, as we did with guns, because somebody's aunt was eaten.

I would love to own a Siberian Tiger, but he would eat too many of my neighbors, after he cleaned my land of rabbits and other smaller critters.

[Wristpin]

"Banning breeds would be a bad thing, wrong on many levels. There must be another solution, but it won't happen until powerdog defenders develop the stones to actually make judgement calls and face up to the truth that this is NOT solely a problem of bad owners -- the breed of the dog is KEY."

Nice post...But forgettaboutit!...Most of the advocates are breeders and have money at stake in pushing the myth that genetics has nothing to do with the problem. If they admit pesky gene problem, the whole doggie industry gets thrown on it's head by lawsuits.

How much do you think it costs when a little girl gets scalped and her hair has to be rettached after being removed from a Pit Bull's stomach? Gotta be high six figures for all the surgeries required, easy.

Currently, the victim is made whole by going after the owner, if the owner has insurance and assets.

[Vicomte13]

Sure.
My memory.
From seeing and hearing the news every day for the past 30+ years.

[Smokin' Joe]

From seeing and hearing the news every day for the past 30+ years.

Like the news channels which always say so when the vehicle accident victim didn't have their seat belt or helmet on if they got killed, but never mention the seatbelts or helmets that were worn when people got killed?

Reporting bias just might be skewing your stats by only reporting the 'sensational'.

Got anything peer reviewed? How about based on police records, health department records, or animal bite statistics?

Otherwise, that is an opinion (valid or not), and I just want to know if you have some verifiable facts to back it up.

[Vicomte13]

"Otherwise, that is an opinion (valid or not), and I just want to know if you have some verifiable facts to back it up."

It's an opinion, mine. It's factual, but no, I haven't collected the detail to back it up and thereby convince somebody else.

[GMMAC]

"Most of the advocates are breeders and have money at stake in pushing the myth ... "

And you had the gall to call me a liar in an earlier post !?!?!
(...which, at the time, I politely ignored)

If you'd bothered to follow them, I posted links way back in #30 which documented numerous unbiased & pertinent bodies totally opposed to breed ban legislation.

Seemingly, it doesn't matter what logic and/or facts statist, control freak, 'pit bull' haters are confronted with, they all have the same liberal-like 'feeling' that somehow they just know better.

It's laughingly ironic to find people so down on dogs which supposedly have this same compulsion to clamp onto something & then not let go no matter what.

[proud_yank]

The question I would pose to any of the anti-'pit bull' types: Say for instance pit bulls are banned nation wide, which breed will be next? Why not just 'big dogs', as they can be intimidating to toddlers?? They have the *potential* to kill an infant or a child after all!!!

As far as I am concerned, any dog has the potential to be 'viscious' depending on how it is treated. Being related to/descending from wolves, they all have 'animal instincts'. When fluffy picks up his stuffed toy and visciously shakes it back and forth, those are 'animal instincts' and how they would kill critters.

The heck with prosecuting irresponsible owners, why not ban canines in general, in the name of 'public safety'?

Even a lot of the laws as to what constitutes a 'viscious dog' are obsurd.

In the end, this type of nonsense will one day result in nothing less than only being allowed to own yorkies & chihuahuas. But hey, the SF metros & trannies will be happy as they easily fit in a purse.

[proud_yank]

From seeing and hearing the news every day for the past 30+ years.

Really, following that logic, what is your annual donation to the Brady Campaign?

[Vicomte13]

Zero.

[Candor7]

We're not allowed to own hand grenades and, there will come a time when certain breeds of dogs will be banned>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

No domestic breeds should be banned. And I have yet to see a dog explode and kill a room full of people. Maybe you have.

People who do NOT know how to handle aggressive bredds either need to be trained to handle them, or people should not own them, and breeders should not sell to people who do not know how to handle them.

Just as you do not ban guns, in a democratic republic, you do not ban dog breeds.You train people to handle them.Its called education, and without it, BTW, a democratic republic does not function.

I would love to breed an exploding dog, just feed it lots of beans and pull its tail, BOOOOM!

They would be popular in Iraq and other Muslim countries.You could make a lot of money.

[Fair Go]

The advocates of the "pit bull" ban can be traced to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) - a well known animal rights extremist group. The "pit bull" is just the start. They are against all dog ownership. They have started with the so-called "pit bull" for no higher reason than its ancestors were used for dog fighting in England more than a century ago. In doing this, PETA has selected dogs that for almost a century have been selectively bred for their sociability and love of humans. Like all extremists groups wanting to control people, PETA associates with the political left.

[Fair Go]

If anything must be outlawed, it is people who wilfully keep dogs that have not been socialised, that are not cared for and that will attack people. These people should be outlawed, irrespective of what breed of dog they keep. Lumping in all animals that can be traced back to breeds used for fighting is ridiculous. It will not cure the problem.