1) Look at the title: “Often no warning signs in Pit Bull attacks.” Completely untrue, as there are many signs that are often shown before ANY dog “attacks” anything. Did you see the signs? Do you know what to look for? Those are the appropriate questions, not just being uneducated about dog behavior and then claiming that there wasn’t any warning signs. Yet that’s the title they run with.
2) Notice how the title only says “Pit Bull,” yet the very first paragraph goes on to say that this “no warning signs” problem is something that actually affects all breeds and types. And I quote…
When it comes to dogs attacking people, whether it involves stocky pit bulls or fluffy poodles, there is one main thing fans and foes of the animals seem to agree on: Often there are no warning signs until it’s too late.
3) The San Francisco Chronicle claims that “fans and foes” of animals seem to agree on the notion that no warning signs are ever seen during animal attacks. Totally bogus and untrue. Beyond untrue.
4) Colleen Lynn from DogsBite.org has now taken the headline’s mention of Pit Bulls, and then the absurd paragraph claiming that fans and foes of all animals agree that there is very often no warning signs preempting a dog attack (from any breed), and spun that to say that “both sides agree” that there isn’t any warnings to “Pit Bull attacks.” You stay classy.
5) The next paragraph aims to talk about what cities across the country have done in response. It first mentions San Francisco, and their breed-specific legislation towards Pit Bulls. It then mentions Denver and Miami, and their outright ban on Pit Bulls. Yet there’s no mention or examples of the endless cities that have NO breed-specific legislation. There’s no mention or examples of the endless cities (and states, ex. Ohio) that have DONE AWAY WITH prior breed-specific legislation. There’s no mention or examples of the endless cities (and states, ex. Nevada, Connecticut) that have went the extra mile to pass legislation making sure that there isn’t future breed-specific legislation. Instead, the SF Chronicle’s paragraph simply implies that there’s a few different levels of breed-specific response that cities across the country are tripping over each other in order to put into place. Not quite.
6) The expert quotes are presented in a way that paints Pit Bulls as dogs who “snap.” This “expert” then talks about how Pit Bulls attack humans, and the “characteristic way” in which it’s done, even though human-aggression has repeatedly and purposefully been long ago bred out of Pit Bulls (as a top priority) by even the shadiest of characters (dog fighters). This person then says that it’s “poor policy to allow any child around a Pit Bull.” Such an awful and unfair statement. What he should of said was that it’s poor policy to allow any child to be left unsupervised (key word) around any dog, especially larger dogs. He does point out that the climbing on the dog’s back was unacceptable.
7) Further down Rebecca Katz, Director of the Animal Care and Control for both the City and County of San Francisco, states many obvious things that come with the institution of a breed-specific mandatory spay and neuter law. She states that they’ve “impounded 14 percent fewer Pit Bulls and euthanized 29 percent fewer.” Well duh. Pit Bulls being impounded over time are going to likely drop to some degree, post-BSL, as law-abiding citizens will be obliged to follow the law, no matter how misguided it is. If the eventual goal is to end the creation of Pit Bulls (these laws’ goals), of course you will eventually come to see “less impounds.” But why haven’t they seen a complete stop to the impounding of Pit Bulls? Why only a 14% decline and not a 60 or 80% decline? Because certain people, including many blatant criminals, will continue breeding them (and fighting them, and chaining them, and allowing them to roam, etc.), as they don’t acknowledge “laws” in the first place. That goes for the good laws and the bad ones, both of which often go unenforced to boot. They also have no reason to change their ways, as these types of “laws” are always put together in order to publicly scapegoat the dogs instead of focusing on the human behavior that leads to any individual dog acting out in such a negative manner.
8) Katz then sites her dog bite numbers…
Another significant indicator, she said, is that there have been 28 pit bull bites reported in the past three years – and 1,229 bites by other breeds during the same period. In the three-year period before that, there were 45 pit bull bites and 907 incidents involving other breeds.
^Um, does anyone else notice how the dog bites coming “from other breeds” have actually risen? Yet this goes unmentioned as being problematic. The very next sentence uses the word “effective,” as these numbers are praised. Wow.
9) This article actually quotes Kory Nelson, Denver attorney and Pit Bull hatemonger, who is responsible for the murder of God only knows how many innocent dogs. He then goes on to say that since Denver’s outright ban there’s been no “Pit Bull attacks.” Well, if you’ve killed every single dog that (at your discretion) even remotely looks like a Pit Bull, then how can any dog that remotely looks like a Pit Bull ever “attack” anything? Worth noting is the propensity of anyone getting killed by a Pit Bull, or any dog for that matter, is already extremely low. How low? Like multiple times lower than being struck by lightning. That low. And further, that’s in our current climate, where the present laws all-to-often ignore (and thus, fail to curb) the many human elements that lead to an individual dog’s bad behavior. So there it is… Kory Nelson can take an issue that’s already EXTREMELY RARE, and then continually kill all of the dogs that his policy deems fitting of a certain physical description, and still get away with posing as if he’s heroically eliminated this imaginary threat. Really? What a disingenuous chump. This also pays no mind to the absolute unjust and immoral aspect of murdering thousands of innocent family pets and treating them as continued collateral damage.
This is like how if a walled-off group of people eliminated all African Americans from their community, then never had another “black” person caught robbing a community liquor store. Does that stop the robbing of these liquor stores as an act? No. It just virtually guarantees that the next robber won’t be black. You can’t just demand that all black people leave, and then kill them if they don’t, like Denver did in regards to Pit Bull-type dogs. That’s about as unethical of a response as anyone could ever imagine. What you can do is focus on the individual incidents, punish those persons responsible, and oh yeah, not be a racist.
10) Nelson actually gets away with claiming that he was “able to prove there’s a difference between Pit Bulls and other breeds of dogs that make Pit Bulls more dangerous.” False. Incredibly false and just a flat-out lie on every level. Yet it’s right there in this article for the populace to gobble up.
So in Union City a 6-year-old child is out in the yard, unsupervised, with an intact male dog that lives exclusively outside. If he had adults in the yard with him then they must have been not paying that much attention. According to police the child was attempting to ride the dog “like a horse,” climbing on its back. Supervision or no supervision, if a child gets away with doing that then the adult in question is highly irresponsible. Further, was the dog loose in the yard, or was it tied to something? If it was tied then that just adds another element to it, as uncomfortable dogs can either fight or flight. Tied dogs don’t have a “flight” option. Weirder still, as many in the media report it as a “mauling” where the dog essentially tore into the boy, the facts show that it was a single bite on the top of the head. The owner came outside and got the dog, and then later ended up going to work because he thought that his son was going to be okay after a routine hospital visit. From the family’s attorney…
Stern said the boy was coherent, conscious and talking “for hours” after being bitten, and everybody assumed he would be fine “after a couple of stitches.”
It sounds like a far more complicated happening then what most people are repeating. Irresponsibility and misfortune colliding.
This all, while millions of Pit Bulls exist in the country. Literally millions. Dogs who are owned and loved by people. Pit Bull-type dogs (and their owners) who are totally innocent and who shouldn’t have to be constantly dragged through the proverbial mud due to the irresponsibility and circumstance of some individual incident. Godspeed to little Nephi Selu. What happened to him was certainly a huge tragedy. But so is multiplying tragedy by targeting (through bans, through other breed-specific legislation, through demonization campaigns) the haul of all Pit Bull-described dogs in response.