What's it going to take? Pit Bull Attack in Omaha

[lynnzop[$]]

Warning, graphic content and not-Pippa-friendly content.

Yet another pit bull attack. This time, a 15 month old girl's scalp was ripped from her head as an unprovoked Pit Bull mix broke his leash and attacked the girl, who was riding in a wagon pulled by her mother. Last report was that she was in critical condition.

I am so angry about this right now, I can't even begin to articulate. How many dead or critically injured kids (or adults) is it going to take before people realize these dogs are NOT bred to be family pets??????

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

What other countries and communities are doing

Very good look at the types of legal restrictions different communities have enacted to try to curb (sorry for the pun) dog bites.

[lynnzop[$]]

Very informative page, MJ, and gives a lot to think about.

[theworm[$]]

What a horrible story. That poor little girl.
This dog bit 4 people in the attack.

I think that pit bulls are beautiful dogs. I also think that Grizzly Bears are beautiful animals. Neither make appropriate pets.

It's not the dogs fault, and the best of owners can prevent this (although the dog should have been muzzled).

I know it's a hot topic for some, but I agree with Lynn - the breed should not be allowed.

In S. Fl county laws made it illegal to own not just a pit-bull, but also pit bull mixes. It's a good law.

[magenta321]

This really reminds me of someone posting a story that a black man raped a woman and then saying "how many black men raping women does it take to realize that they should not be roaming free on the streets." It's a statement based on ignorance and fear.

Pit Bulls get a bad rap because so many people abuse them. Of course abused dogs attack. If you teach a dog to fight since it's a puppy, of course it will fight. Of course it will be aggressive. And if your dog attacks, are you going to admit that you trained it to? Or are you going to whine that it's all the dog's fight, and you had no idea that it would do that.

I think that people who dog fight are the ones who should not be tolerated in this country.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I would go with that if it weren't for the number of pit bulls that weren't trained to fight that have attacked people anyway. This one didn't seem to be trained to fight, and yet the owners had a hard time managing it (according to the neighbors) and it went after a child unprovoked. Some breeds are either more agressive naturally and need to be trained well, and some breeds because of their physical characteristics are more likely to inflict severe damage and need to be controlled well. If we want to blame the owners for not training their dogs well or controlling them well, that's all well and good - but at what point do you intervene when people aren't training/controlling the dogs well? Because so far it seems the intervention happens AFTER the dog has injured someone, which doesn't seem to be a real good plan.

[lynnzop[$]]

magenta321 said

This really reminds me of someone posting a story that a black man raped a woman and then saying "how many black men raping women does it take to realize that they should not be roaming free on the streets." It's a statement based on ignorance and fear.

There is NO correlation between that statement and mine whatsoever. I'm speechless that you would even begin to put them in the same category.

Oh, and guess what. Another pit bull attacked a cop yesterday here. Not a poodle, not a pug, not a lab.

No time to discuss right now, but I'll be back.

[theworm[$]]

Margaret - I'm with Lynn on this. It's an unfair comparison.

Nobody is saying that pit bulls are bad dogs, but based on this history, some of us think that they are not appropriate pets. Lots of cute animals don't make good pets.

I may very well be wrong on this, but I was told that there is some kind of locking mechanism in their jaws that make them bite down. IF that is true, than even the most loving playful dog is an accident waiting to happen.

In this particular attack, there was clearly an angry aggressive dog that did a lot of harm.

I think pit bulls are beautiful dogs, and I'm sure owners love them, but if it's an aggressive breed, that might be beyond the owners control.

I'm looking for insurance for the new house. One of the things they ask is if I own one of a number of breeds of dogs. They're working on statistics. The list includes chows - big beautiful teddy bear dogs, but they're strong, and even if properly trained there is a higher risk of incidents.

[lynnzop[$]]

Okay, I'm better now.

I'm totally with Delia's line of thinking. I don't think the breed needs to be exterminated - I'm not that extreme. But I don't think pits belong in a house as a pet either. There are plenty of "jobs" that pits or pit mixes can and probably should do. And those dogs should be treated humanely, not chained to a tire or a cement block in the back lot of a scrap shop.

[jgibson2[$]]

The problem is not the breed, it's the irresponsible breeders.

With MOST breeds, aggressive dogs are simply NOT bred. They're sterilized and if they're too aggressive, they're euthanized. Unfortunately, this hasn't been the pattern for pit bulls as a breed.

Yes, there ARE responsible pit bull breeders, but unfortunately, there are far too many who were either bred for combat or are descendants of dogs who were. This makes for a disproportionately high incidence of aggressive dogs -- and far too many of them owned by people who don't have a clue about training dogs.

I have an Australian Shepherd who should never be bred. Her herding instinct is overdeveloped and she has a tendency to be territorial. We've spent a lot of time training her and she no longer chases cars, bicycles, or joggers. HOWEVER, she's still very territorial when strangers, especially men, come into my house and I have to watch her every minute. I also have to spend a lot of time putting her in a down/stay until she is willing to believe that the visitor is a friend (a command I've spent a LONG time working with this dog).

I would never in a million years allow this dog to go to the SPCA or any group other than an Aussie rescue group should I not be able to keep her. Her needs are very specific and she needs a strong hand. This is not at all dissimilar to the majority of pit bulls and pit mixes who are available through casual/careless breeders and the few SPCA/pounds who will even place them rather than immediately euthanizing them.

The major difference -- Aussies NIP. Pit bulls BITE.

Mine has never broken the skin and has only occasionally torn someone's pants if they insisted on running. She's gentle with children and most aggressive toward adult males, so we think she might have been abused -- or witnessed abuse against a child. She actively separates children from adult males in a way that's quite humorous if it's not your kid she's keeping you from. I have one BIL who manages her well and another who came the closest to actual damage until I convinced him that if he got bitten, he'd be leaving, not the dog. He insisted on getting between me and my youngest son -- not a smart move with most dogs and certainly not with mine.

[magenta321]

Here's the last time we discussed pitbulls http://www.eaforums.com/forums/anima...not-breed.html

I had to take a while off from this thread because the idea that pitbulls are these monster dogs offends me. I don't mind a thread about dogs hurting children, but to scapegoat an entire breed, one that is so often abused, just really is upsetting. This belief system is why poor pits are sitting in the pound, or being killed because people are afraid to adopt them. This belief system is what makes bad owners, people who want a fighting dog, attach themselves to this breed.

I talked to my boyfriend about this thread. He's an even bigger dog lover than I am, and has spent way more time studying and working with different breeds than I have. He was upset by what I told him about this thread too. But, he said, it's just a cycle. Right now the pitbull is the scapegoat. A while ago it was Rotties. Before that it was Dobermans. Before that it was German Shepards. I burst out laughing with that, because I think German Shepards are either police dogs or family dogs, and I could not picture them as "mean" dogs. It's just the pitbull's time for the negative attention right now, he said.

[eris esoteric]

Anecdotally speaking, because as much as I love y'all I stopped reading about halfway through the thread, it has been my experience that pit bull mixes do not have the serious aggression problems that SOME full blood pit bulls can have a tendency toward.

In particular, I would like to point out Dylan, a pit/shepard mix whose biggest disciplinary issue was he wept like a child when left alone. He was also a hell of a lot smarter than the crackheads I bought him from for the cost of a rock.

And then there was my friend Autumn's dog, Cedar, a pit/rot mix. She adopted him from a shelter because one of her friends who worked there begged her to... no one wanted to adopt him because of his VISCIOUS background. Right. This is a dog I regularly as a pillow. He was also an enthusiastic and popular therapy dog at one of the local hospitals.

I would also like to point out that I've been around a LOT of pitbulls in my life, and not ONE of them has even growled at me.

Some say it's all training, I don't really believe that. I think the psycho dogs have a genetic predisposition. Like most damn over-bred dogs, but without the "supervision" that usually prevents dogs too closely related from being bred to each other.

Pits have a LOT of good qualities. Certainly there's no call to kill all dogs because the people in charge of them are idiots.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Last night's news

Unleashed, uncollared, unlicensed dogs.

[jgibson2[$]]

That one is likely to turn into a negligent homicide charge. At 90, the man may not have the reserve to recover from being mauled by 2 dogs. Again, irresponsible owners. A dog shouldn't maul someone, even if provoked, unless it's cornered. It seems likely to me that the injuries to the dog occurred when the neighbor was rescuing the 90 year old.

They also mentioned that the dogs had been 'terrorizing the neighborhood since spring'. Barring a serious biting incident, it's very difficult to get irresponsible dog owners disciplined. It isn't that the enforcement people don't try, but it all takes time.

[lynnzop[$]]

That's horrific.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

The cops say no one called to report malicious dogs, so they were surprised to hear the dogs were well-known in the neighborhood.

Back to the question I raised above, if a breed ban is inapprorpriate, should owners of dogs that can do a lot of damage (because of physical characteristics, behavior traits, what have you) have to meet a higher standard to be allowed to own the dog in the first place?

[jgibson2[$]]

Local rescue groups and responsible breeders DO make sure that anyone adopting a dog which is larger or from a breed characterized as more dangerous meet a higher standard. They're careful about placing all dogs and reluctant to place puppies with anyone who isn't home in the daytime.

Puppy mills and irresponsible breeders have no such restrictions. I don't know how you'd even go about making sure that any restrictions were enforced.

Oh, and the dogs involved in the mauling described above, no tags, so registering them is apparently not particularly enforceable. FWIW, if a neighbor had dogs that scared me and let them run loose, the authorities would be QUITE familiar with them. I'd speak to the neighbor first, but if they persisted in letting the dogs roam, I'd call.

[wivabef]

To any dog that is trained to fight, of any breed, a small child looks like a pork chop.

I keep my children away from all strange dogs. Dachshunds to Newfies. I don't know who raised them. I have trained my children to not approach any dog that is not on a leash, and only to approach dogs on leash having asked permission at a considerable distance.

I love dogs. And the dogs I know and trust are beloved by my daughters. My youngest is known as "the dog whisperer." But she knows, from my drilling it in her head, that when 'Brini the part dalmatian pulls her ears back and growls, she needs to keep her distance.

Having a healthy mistrust of strange dogs is not a bad thing. And, given the numerous calls I hear over the scanner in the newsroom for this pit bull and that pit bull being left uncared for and unattended because they are a status symbol of young, irresponsible people, I don't think it is unreasonable to fear a misunderstood breed that is all too often abused by humans.

When dogs are abused by human, one way the react is preemptively.

[eris esoteric]

The problem with the "pits aren't pets" theory is that these dogs often aren't seen as pets... they are seen as protection. From the point of view of many of their owners, these are working dogs.

My idea, which nobody would ever support, is to classify pits as dangerous weapons, and require registration and licensing. The owner would be required to have a license in order to own a pitbull. Licensing would be free, and would require the owner to reasonably demonstrate that she or he is capable of caring for and properly restraining the dog. Registration would incur a modest fee, and would require that the dog registered have obedience training. Possession of an unregistered dog by an unlicensed owner would be considered probable cause to a law enforcement official, to check a domicile for other contraband.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Ooo, I like that.