As some of you know I met Councilman Steve Madison at the Pasadena Humane Society on Saturday March 29th. It’s something I’d been trying to make happen since shortly after the last relevant January Council meeting. My ultimate goal was to just put him in front of some of the dogs that he so eagerly demonizes. Dogs are the best teachers, and they do more for themselves than any person who would be out aiming to advocate on their behalf.

But none of that would matter if Madison wouldn’t be open to the interaction and experience. How many demonizers of Pit Bulls are completely shut down to the idea of interacting with one? How many demonizers of Pit Bulls have had little to no experience with one? I’d say that the answer to both of those questions is the vast majority.

Since the shelter here in Pasadena is obviously open to the public I asked him to meet me there and we could walk through as 2 members of the community. To Madison’s credit he eventually said that he would and told me to call his office to arrange a time. A few days after leaving him a voicemail about my schedule I received an email from his field representative saying that a guided tour of the facility had been arranged with PHS director Elizabeth Campo. Not exactly what I had in mind but you have to roll with these things as they come.

What I honestly envisioned is that we’d both show up, spend a few minutes at each dog’s kennel, have him see me interact with each dog, maybe him take an interest in wanting to meet or pet that dog, maybe even take a few dogs to the play yard, and hopefully talking more in depth along the way.

Unfortunately none of this actually happened. I had since asked dog behaviorist Brandon Fouche to meet us there, as he is a huge wealth of knowledge for anyone wanting to know about dog aggression, and so upon arrival myself and Brandon, as well as Marla Tauscher and Steve Madison got the facility tour by Elizabeth Campo. This was cool, and the facility is huge and really nice, but we were there for about an hour and the tour lasted around 50 minutes. About 15 of those minutes were spent walking through the runs, hardly ever stopping to focus on any of the individual dogs. The rest of the time was spent touring the attached buildings and offset rooms that were affiliated with the Humane Society. We were not allowed to get any of the dogs out. I only got to directly converse with the Councilman for about 60 seconds while the others poked in to observe some kind of training class that was going on. He spoke of the “amount of damage” that is done by the dogs and I spoke about human recklessness and the failures of breed identification.

Councilman Madison then had to run, and I know he is a busy man, but I just thought that it would go so differently. Again, I give him credit for taking the time to come out. I do appreciate that much.

5 days later I saw that he had posted a link onto his Facebook page regarding “Pit Bulls” that had allegedly killed an 85-year-old Texas woman. Along with this link he chimed in that bans on breed-specific legislation “make no sense.” However there was no mention by Madison of how the dogs were kept locked in a back bedroom for months, or of the other 6 that were found on the property who lived their entire lives outside as caged yard dogs. Interviewed neighbors stated how some of them were known to run loose in the neighborhood (7 documented complaints). Many of the dogs visible in the numerous provided videos look nothing like Pit Bulls, but they were repeatedly called Pit Bulls anyways. The pictured dog embedded inside of Madison’s linked article looked pregnant with stretched nipples. According to relatives, the victim’s son apparently breeds the dogs.

Further, several articles claim that police are uncertain on how the woman died. Um, that’s kind of important…

It is unclear whether the dogs were responsible for her death, or if the Kaufman woman died before the animal attack.

Police say that 2 Pit Bulls, yesterday around 5 o’clock, mauled Hamilton. Police don’t know if she died before being attacked or was killed by that mauling.

So much for him not continuing to exploit tragedy in an attempt to achieve his desired legislative objective. What was wonderful though is that one of his fellow Council members, Councilwoman Jacque Robinson, came onto his thread to politely refute his assessment. See below…

He then responded, not to Jacque but to the thread in general, that Pit Bulls are responsible for 90% of the fatal attacks yet only represent 4% of the dog population. Both of these figures are absurd lies and unprovable fallacies promoted by 1 website, the anti-Pit Bull operation DogsBite.org. When one points out the invalidity of the statistics, or the twisted bias of the source (Colleen Lynn), or the fact that said statistics are completely cherry-picked from unverified media mentions, or the non-science and failure involved in breed identification, or the numerous reckless circumstances surrounding whatever incident, well, all of this usually goes ignored by Steve. I’m not sure why, if he’s truly concerned with public safety, but he still ignores it all.

So there is an update on what’s going on in regards to Pasadena and Mr. Madison. I hope to see all of you come out for the next related City Council meeting in July.