So on Tuesday “a pack” of 5 “German Shepherds” were “attacking people” while roaming loose outside of an elementary school in South L.A., and 4 people ended being taken to the hospital. I saw nothing about it on TV and very little about it online.

Those few links I did find online, check the headlines. Never mentioning breed, pretty standard (unless it’s a “Pit Bull”). Of course the story is the same… Roaming dogs with no identification, and still no owners to be found. That’s the problem. Not the breed or type of dog as a broad characterization. And I don’t create this post to advertise that the “attacking” dogs were noted as being “German Shepherds,” in any effort to gloat or promote another breed’s misbehavior in this specific situation. No. German Shepherds are awesome dogs as well.

But wait, were they even German Shepherds? Because then 5 dogs turned into 4, and then 3. And then 3 German Shepherds turned into 2 German Shepherds and a Belgian Malinois, which then turned into 2 Belgian Malinois and a Dutch Shepherd… And yes, 0 German Shepherds.

All this fixating on breeds is corny, but I have to do it here in jest because this is so often all that’s ever done.

My ultimate point is the media can’t even keep details straight. No one knows the ultimate breed-mix of the dogs involved. There still is no owner, which means there is no papers (if papers existed), which means that people are simply guessing. The very limited media is reporting on dog breeds though–albeit not in the headlines–and getting it wrong, and getting the amount of dogs wrong, and getting the amount of people going to the hospital wrong.

Had this situation involved dogs deemed by someone to be “Pit Bulls” then it would have been on every TV station and every print and digital outlet. You see what happens when it’s not. But again, the real story is always the same… Dogs getting in trouble because they are roaming freely, loose, and with no supervision in that moment. Or in other cases, unsupervised children in the mix with unsupervised chained dogs or yard dogs that are often territorial. That is the first thing that should matter and the first thing that should be addressed, and every time, the circumstances. Dog breed or type doesn’t matter. Public safety is not about a witch hunt. Pick any breed and show me a horrible incident which involved an individual “visually matching” that breed, and reality and common sense shows you thousands, hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dogs “visually matching” that breed that weren’t.

My suggestion for an appropriate headline would’ve been: “Roaming dogs bite onlookers near Los Angeles school” … The main problem is right there in the first word.