On October 24th it will be National Pit Bull Awareness Day for dog lovers across the country. True to trollish form, a co-opting of the day from the anti-dog internet hate group is in order. Their energy, while everyone else will be celebrating the amazingness of dogs or just going about their usual business, will be on pushing fear and horrific imagery to conjure up negative and irrational emotion. That irrational emotion will then be used to promote intrusion, promote prejudice, promote bans, promote death; and only on platforms where the promoter cannot be intellectually challenged by people that disagree with them.

Surprisingly (or not), PETA has officially aligned themselves to the effort stunt. Imagine that, the “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” being completely unethical.

^What the commenting Brian Christ fails to realize is that PETA also seeks the destruction of Pit Bulls. And look at the response by PETA!! Actually claiming that this “advocacy coalition” wants to “help, not hurt, Pit Bulls.” Um, wow. Yeah, either they have literally no idea in the world who they just aligned themselves with or they are simply lying. I’ll go with lying.

So who are these groups and what is their deal?

Well first, we have the unabashed crowd of anti-Pit Bull deceptive internet aliases, known to follow and parrot the Mount Rushmore of dog hate (Colleen Lynn, Merritt Clifton, “Craven Desires,” Jeff Borchardt). The poisonous ideology they push is dedicated to violence against dogs, really by any means but mainly through collective blame and calling for legislation that mandates multifaceted violence from the state. Many of these folks will go so far as to justify initiated violence against any animal looking (to the perpetrator) like a “Pit Bull.” To these individuals it does not matter what the dog has or has not done. It does not matter that 99.9% of all dogs, no matter the grouping, will forever be innocent of any and all charges made against them. Abhorrent to the extreme but their hate is obvious, which is why they have no support among the general public.

With PETA, their dog ideology centers on sanctioned violence against Pit Bulls (ending their life) in order to save Pit Bulls from potential future violence. They are far more sophisticated about their messaging and will literally lie to your face about their objectives. They’re also helped by their wide-ranging positive work in other animal-related realms, which produces useful idiots that will blindly defend them against their own quotes and commentary on this specific issue.

Now with PETA’s brass in tow, the hate group has come together and created a website for their hijack. And there’s some interesting and telling tactics on full display within the website…

On the page titled “partners and friends” you will see a perfect representation of how repetitive visuals and links aim to give the illusion of unanimous agreement and wide-ranging support for the idea that Pit Bulls are evil and the nation’s bogeyman that should be banned. In reality, these are a handful of blogs and Facebook pages run by the same 10-15 people.

Among these “partners and friends” are 33 Facebook pages, Merritt Clifton’s website, Colleen Lynn’s DogsBite.org and her 3 spinoff websites, Craven Desires’ Blogger page and then 11 more Blogger pages run by the same 3 people, Tony Solesky’s e-book website, Jeff Borchardt’s Daxton’s Friends website, Daxton’s Friends Facebook page, Jeff Borchardt’s WordPress page, Jeff Borchardt’s personal Facebook page, and rounding everything out is PETA. For those counting at home, that’s 5 or 6 separate websites, PETA, and then 50 or so shadow pages.

This is the manifestation of a virtual echo chamber.

In reality, damn near every actual dog and human safety expert organization as well as nearly all mainstream animal welfare groups (except PETA) have publicly stated that breed-specific legislation is both ineffective and wrong.

Regarding the victims of individual dog attacks, it’s always a tragedy when someone truly gets hurt. No one wants other people to get hurt, let alone killed. But with that, every unfortunate scenario is its own happening and comes with its own set of circumstances, and the narrative of the one size fits all response is emptier than uninformed empty. Continuing to scapegoat groups that equate to millions upon millions of dogs does nothing for public safety. It does nothing for getting to the root of a problem. It does nothing for making this world a better place. It does nothing for actual justice.

I support the police. They are each human beings. There’s thousands and thousands and thousands of them from all across the country and they are each individuals with their own lives but who also happen to work for a larger department. Some of the policies and tactics that these departments may use I definitely don’t support. But even so, most officers will go their entire career without ever having to fire their weapon on the job. There’s probably a fair amount of cops who actually follow this page. I do support you. I wish you each protection and good health and clear minds. I stand against the collective blame that you will ultimately suffer when a bad apple police officer goes out and abuses his power to whatever degree. We’ve seen egregious examples of this, both the abuse of power and the sad statements that are made against all police in the aftermath. Many people in the public domain will react to such incidents with anger and thus say things that scapegoat all cops. That’s not fair. It damn sure isn’t right. I’d guess it’s mostly emotion-driven and primarily comes from a place of frustration, and from a sense of a lack of justice being served.

This page, being a Pit Bull-centric page, knows all too well how collective blame works. The ideology of collective blame is the enemy to humanity and to the truth and to justice, not all cops or all Pit Bulls or all whatever else that you’d want to add to this list. I’d say to the readers of this page, be consistent with your point of views and with your arguments on issues and with your tones, or else they intellectually cancel each other out.

Now with all that being said, there’s a loony and loud fringe of society (mostly online and mostly repetitively fake) that absolutely hates Pit Bull-type dogs and any dog that looks like what they’ve determined a Pit Bull to look like or any other dog that they may vitriolically fear by appearance or learned bias alone. They devote their entire lives to highlighting the less than 0.1% of dogs that have ever killed or seriously injured a person or another dog. They ignore the 99.9% that prove daily they’ve done nothing of the sort. They shout from rooftops that x-amount in whatever calendar year have killed people! They subjectively categorize these things by breed when on most occasions they are strictly going off of media statements and nothing further.

Did you know that at least 91 people were killed by police in January of this year alone? That’s more than 2x the amount of people that were killed by dogs of all breeds in the entire year of 2014. At least 85 more people were killed by police in February. Looking backwards, there was at least 1,106 people killed by police in 2014. By that figure, that’s almost 27x the amount of people that were killed by dogs. To further crystallize my point, there’s many (many) millions more dogs in the United States than there are police officers.

I say all of these things solely for objectivity. Not to demonize the police as a whole. Just scaling something for perspective. Look at Sgt. Mills from the Tampa PD who just yesterday was photographed saving a Pit Bull who had been shot and tied to the railroad tracks (to link these subjects). These are human efforts. Cops are mostly really good people. And to those that are acting in an opposite way, remind them of their humanity, don’t just vaguely give them more reason to forget that.

Should we be looking at individual officer conduct? Yes. Should we be allowed to call for changes in police policy and take issue with the almost robotic move to always justify use of force after the fact? Yes. Should we be asking for wearable lapel cameras in an effort to get more transparency? Yes. Should dog owners be asked to keep their dogs on leashes and not let them freely roam around neighborhoods? Yes. Should dog owners be asked to treat their dogs like living beings and not lawn ornaments or alarm systems? Yes. Should individual dogs who have proven that they are indeed vicious then ultimately be treated as such? Yes.

None of this should be offensive. What’s offensive is when certain folks move to blame completely uninvolved entities for the actions of an individual anything. That’s offensive, and ignorant, and completely pointless.

So today myself and my mom went over to Eaton Canyon to take a few of the dogs on a hike. While there, we encountered this really angry person who acted as if he was just looking for someone to fight with his free time. All was well for the first hour and then we hit this break in the trail that led us down into a stream and falls area. Almost immediately this dude comes from out of nowhere and starts haranguing me from the top of the cliff. He must have saw our dogs coming and worked his way down the side of the hill, and with the sole intention of insulting us.

Guy: You must be a really big pussy to feel the need to bring 2 Pit Bulls out here with you.
Me: What you talking about, man?
Guy: Are you that big of a pussy to need to have 2 Pit Bulls?
Me: Nope, they’re just my dogs. Why you being a dick?
Guy: I’m not being a dick. You are. Why do you gotta bring your 2 aggressive Pit Bulls into this stream, there’s 2 more right over there. All these Pit Bulls shit everywhere and no one picks anything up. Did you bring your bags with you?
Me: Yeah.
Guy: Sure you did…
Me: You wanna see them? (Pulling the roll out of my pocket) Here they are.
Guy: Take your aggressive dogs and get the hell out of here.
Me: You don’t even know my dogs, why you calling them aggressive?
Guy: (Shouting now) They all are aggressive. It’s in their nature, you fucking idiot!
Me: The only one being aggressive here is you.
Guy: Yeah, you want some? I am aggressive. I’m a Pit Bull like that.

Keep in mind that while this is happening the 2 dogs that are with us (Falcor and Zeus) are happily swimming together and pouncing around splashing water everywhere. There’s a girl and a guy, both probably younger than me, with their 2 dogs (1 senior Pit Bull-type and 1 little English Bulldog) that are less than 10 feet away but up a level on some concrete. This dude refers to their dogs as Pit Bulls as well. They are looking at me like wtf, who is this guy and why is he so unhinged? My mom is standing there trying not to get her shoes wet and telling me to come on, let’s go.

Long story short, he ends up standing still on his perched area until he’s thoroughly alienated everyone and we all 4 leave this little falls section that the dogs were really happy with. It’s like he was praying to come across another loose cannon personality so that he could pick a fight with them. Either that, or he knew that no one could easily reach him from up on his elevated cliff and so desiring to spew hostile foolishness was his preferred outlet for his low self esteem. I mean, who goes out of their way to make their presence known in such a pretentious way and then break the ice by calling someone a pussy twice? For no reason. Other than the fact that he obviously hated my dogs, not because of anything that they actually did but simply because of the way that they looked and their perceived breed. Another thing, he made it seem as though only Pit Bulls were shitting in the canyon. First off, dogs have no ability to pick up their own shit, and secondly, he’s making the random pile of poop on the ground a Pit Bull issue and not a general dog and their owner issue. That’s rational.

I feel bad for this dude. He’s clearly not too bright, but then he’s taken his ignorance and slanted ways of looking at things and soaked them in aggression and anger and a desire to control and this mentality of needless posturing. And while calling my dogs aggressive. I mean, is that just simple hypocrisy or more like being so out of touch with what is actually happening that you become your own cartoon character? He’s literally out in the middle of a canyon trying to provoke other people by being as big of an asshole as he can be to them. Unloading his learned ignorance onto me and my dogs for no reason whatsoever other than that he’s got this quite obvious axe to grind against Pit Bulls. It kind of boggles my mind.

We encountered at least 100 people today. All nice, all smiling, all actively doing something and all minding their own business. This is kind of a nice metaphor for society as a whole in comparison to individual ideologues who have a visceral disdain and hate for entire groups of anything.

My biggest fear coming out of this Benjamin Devitt lawsuit is that Marcia Mayeda will attempt to scapegoat Pit Bulls to the Board of Supervisors in an attempt to dismiss the many allegations leveled against her department and to keep her position as ruler of the county pound system intact.

Up to this point, the Board of Supervisors have shown absolutely no interest in holding Marcia Mayeda accountable for anything whatsoever.

To those on the ground and in the know, Marcia Mayeda is quite possibly one of the worst shelter directors in the entire United States. This is not hyperbole. Her reign of incompetence has been long and protected.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors are the ones that appointed her way back when, and they are the only ones that can get rid of her now. Thankfully we have had 2 new Board members recently elected, Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl, but they need to actually engage this issue and see it for themselves, not just accept a trumped up narrative or do a fabricated “walk-through” while everyone is on their best behavior.

At last week’s meeting another animal control-related issue came up…

Supervisors Hilda Solis and Michael D. Antonovich called Tuesday for a study of the county’s animal control system, including looking at relocating shelters to make them more central to constituents and coming up with a plan to repair the existing facilities, which range from 38 to 68 years old.

Okay, that’s great and all, and a very legitimate point to be made. But you can’t just “fix” the buildings and keep the top-level tyrants like Mayeda in there to continue running the show. That’s the equivalent of wrapping a turd in a shiny new sheet of paper with a beautiful ribbon tying it all away from view. The turd is Mayeda’s managing style and her desire for control, silence and compliance through retaliation. You cannot get hired unless you carry the flag for this non-transparency. You cannot volunteer if you ever step out of line. This is the county’s biggest problem, because it affects and soils the culture of the shelter system and breeds apathy and vindictiveness.

Hilda Solis is quoted further down the article as saying…

I don’t want to put any blame on the county staff, because I think the folks I met there on the ground are doing as much as they can with the limited resources. But I can tell you that we do need an overhaul.

Trust, you don’t need to blame the county staff as a whole. Most are good people who care or have simply been beaten down by their superior. But you do need to blame those individuals that are breathtakingly terrible at their jobs, and Marcia Mayeda is one of those people. The lack of innovation and creativity is evident. The lack of lifting a finger to try something new is evident. The desire to dismiss ideas out of hand and make excuses instead is evident. Most of the “county staff” that Solis references, their hands are basically tied when it comes to the scope of making legitimate change. Their hands need to become untied and people need to be held responsible for the jobs that they are hired on to do. That’s the bottom line.

New buildings would be great. Many of the buildings are not up to snuff. New locations would be even greater, as many of these shelters are currently placed in the most obscure of places. With Carson, for example, you could drive right by it and not even know it was there. But none of this matters if you still leave a despot in charge of it all. Real change is brought on by courage and ideas and volunteerism and communication and transparency and working together amidst your differences. None of that is possible with control freaks at the helm.

The article references how overcrowded the shelters are, and mentions Carson specifically, as if the “sheer volume of animals” excuses everything else under the sun from being done. It’s also a way to always excuse the killing or the profiling or the discrimination against the impounded dogs. I was at the Carson shelter 10 days before Christmas and over 1/3rd of the shelter was absolutely empty, yet they were still actively killing dogs every day. I know that this is done so that there are less kennels to clean. I went to the Board of Supervisors meeting that next week to further talk about Mayeda and the department. I mentioned this continuation of “killing for space” while kennel after kennel sits empty. This was my 4th time speaking in front of the Board in the last 3 or 4 months.

History shows that the Board of Supervisors are happy to sit idly by while Marcia Mayeda gets to whitewash any situation. This can change. I hope that it does. But if it doesn’t then it will not be surprising. We all have to voice to this Board that Mayeda IS THE PROBLEM. She should’ve been relieved of her position years ago and shouldn’t be able to continue sucking at the teat of the taxpayer by way of her 6-figure pension. She is a blight on this community and on Los Angeles County. Do not let her spin or pivot around this lawsuit’s purpose.

Part 1: L.A. County DACC being sued by Pamela Devitt’s husband

Last week the husband of a woman fatally mauled by dogs in 2013 sued the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control (DACC), alleging officials at the county agency “knew of problems with the animals and failed to do enough to mitigate the danger.”

Benjamin Devitt filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging wrongful death, fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, negligent misrepresentation and public nuisance.

The article announcing the lawsuit prompted many infamous anti-Pit Bull web aliases to flood the comment section in an attempt to narratively blame millions of uninvolved dogs for Mrs. Devitt’s tragic death. I chose to comment and pointed out that even Devitt’s grieving husband, the one who is actually bringing this lawsuit, doesn’t blame “Pit Bulls” as a whole. Hell, he doesn’t even blame the specific individual dogs who killed his wife! He blames the irresponsible person who allowed this situation to manifest itself, who repeatedly allowed these dogs to roam freely. That person’s name is Alex Jackson. Further, he is now suing the animal control department for repeatedly ignoring these situations when they went reported, among other things that he is now learning about said animal control department.

For example:
-Alex Jackson’s dogs were involved in “at least 7 other altercations in the 18 months leading up to the attack on Devitt.”
-9 witnesses, including several horse riders and a postal worker, testified about these 7 previous encounters.
-One of the horse riders “offered to provide free fencing and help Jackson put it up to keep the dogs on his property,” which Jackson refused.
-Jackson purposefully let his dogs roam in order to “ward off people from his property that was also a marijuana grow house.”
-DACC employees “did not adequately follow up on complaints by area residents about the dogs by citing Jackson, requiring enclosure of his animals and warning the public of the danger.
-The complaint alleges that “DACC employees entered updates in internal records to make it appear that they did not know” about Jackson’s dogs before Devitt was killed, and that they “followed up on complaints after they were made by the public.”
-Some DACC employees who worked out of the Lancaster office “were often under the influence of alcohol and ingesting illegal substances while on the job.”
-DACC Director Marcia Mayeda “knew that some employees were under the influence at work and while driving county vehicles, but failed to fire them.”
-The plaintiff claims that Mayeda “was not truthful” when she told the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in May of 2013 that no dogs were ever found on Jackson’s property when her workers responded to complaints.
-Records show that the DACC began receiving complaints about Jackson’s dogs as far back as 2005.

^Is this not enough red flagage? I mean, holy crap. We have dogs that are consistently left to run loose. We have dogs that are used to protect a drug operation, meaning they likely weren’t very socialized, and probably purposefully not. We have numerous reported prior attacks on other animals. We have numerous reported prior instances about the dogs always being left to run loose. We have a very obvious reckless dog owner. We have an animal control department that failed to genuinely follow up on any of the numerous reported incidents of the past. We have an animal control department that is committing fraud by post-altering internal records to reflect untruths. We have an animal control department that is failing to reprimand its employees when they are blatantly violating codes of conduct while on the job. We have an animal control department that is looking the other way to certain employees driving drunk in their county vehicles. And on, and on, and on.

So as I point these things out in my comment, DogsBite.org fanboy Dennis Baker (contributor to many anti-Pit Bull Facebook pages and California resident) gets on and calls me the “biggest troll here.” But wow, I was just stating what the Los Angeles Daily News put into their own article, if Baker even bothered to read it. I mean, how dare I point to a few things that are further fleshed out in the above 10 bullet points? According to Baker and other known exploitation artists, none of that matters and it’s simply the fault of every Pit Bull-type dog and its owner, every single one of each in existence. Yeah, that’s rational. Yeah, that’s not being a hyper-troll.

What is an internet troll? As one of my friends recently said, “trolling is the act of making obnoxious and transparently provocative comments on the internet for the express purpose of inciting conflict.”

So yes, me, simply stating obvious facts about the case (all reported in this very article), as well as about Pamela Devitt’s husband’s own video recorded comments regarding him NOT BLAMING PIT BULLS = Troll. Riiiiight. Dennis Baker and select others, ignoring all reckless elements of this case (and the actual victim’s take on the matter) in an effort to solely scapegoat millions of Pit Bulls and Pit Bull owners for the actions of a few dogs and 1 person = Not a troll. Riiiiight. Way to be objective, guys!

Baker goes on to call me a “little man.” Okay, cute. But this little man has been trying to engage anyone with an anti-dog agenda on a platform that is out in the open and recorded, for almost a year now. Not a single DogsBite.org fanboy or fangirl has been willing to discuss any element of these numerous issues with me (or anyone else that doesn’t wholly agree with them). Instead, they conversate in an echo chamber and publicly act as though they are so righteously above the fray to anyone with a differing view. These individuals refuse to (or can’t) even communicate with the common man or woman about anything related to dogs or their blame-heavy positions. But again, I am here to facilitate just this very thing. So if Dennis Baker ever wants to have a human conversation with the “little man” on these many issues, I am ready to do that and would be happy to take part in it.

Dennis (or anyone else who wants to criminalize, regulate, ban or kill millions of dogs simply for the way that they look), you can call me at 657-206-7929 or email me at swayloveorg@gmail.com and I’d be happy to set such a communication up. If you are too scared to have a human to human conversation then you can feel free to leave a message on my voicemail and I’d happily attempt to engage your point that way. What isn’t going to continue to happen is having you guys filling comment sections with tired hatred for dogs that you’ve net met, and not have someone reach out to you and then document your failures to engage in an open platform. That is happening now. That will continue to happen.

Part 2: Warning: Mayeda will attempt to spin the Devitt lawsuit

So there’s this new piece of writing coming from a South African citizen that the pro-BSL crowd is super into right about now. I swear, they find “logic” in the weirdest of ways. Anyways, it was published a few days ago by someone named Hauke Liefferink and is now being spread around by Pit Bull hatemongers as a retort to anyone who says that dogs are individuals or that 99.9% of whatever the breakdown of dog breed/type is actually innocent. These are both facts, by the way, and they are reality-based facts that will continue to be impossible to retort. Sure, they can be ignored by someone with a crackpot agenda, but they can’t be repudiated at any level.

Liefferink begins by referencing Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, as a way to align this theory written about in the book to Pit Bulls and Pit Bull owners.

So first, to explain what a “Black Swan” event is… The book’s author uses the example of turkeys, and how from their vantage point they live rather happy and content lives for 364 days out of the year. Each day goes by, they know their routine, they have come to trust the person that feeds them, and they have no reason to think that this will ever change. Then comes a day prior to the Thanksgiving holiday where they are all basically slaughtered in mass, turning their world upside down. To the turkey, they never saw this coming nor expected it. To the butcher, he knew that this was always going to be the case eventually. This is an example of what’s been coined by Taleb as a “Black Swan” event. Okay, that makes sense.

Now Hauke Liefferink comes along, grabs this concept, and starts to blatantly bastardize it. Right out of the gate he claims:

It is in this little fraction of time (0.001%), that Pit Bull owners and turkeys get it very, very wrong, with death being the penalty paid.

Okay, first of all, that sentence alone makes no rational sense. In the example of the turkeys being raised for food, they all die. They all die each and every year. Every single one of them. How in God’s name does this in any way apply to Pit Bulls? It doesn’t. Unless this man can show that every single Pit Bull eventually kills someone, his point falls flat on its face. Reality is almost 100% opposite of what he is implying. He obviously cannot show any of this because 99.9999999999% of all dogs at any level deemed to be a “Pit Bull” (or otherwise) have not killed or seriously mauled someone. This is indisputable.

Liefferink goes on to reference the Colombian child-murderer, torture-killer, and rapist known as “La Bestia,” who has apparently confessed to killing at least 140 children and is suspected of murdering over 400 victims. Liefferink says that he is the most successful serial killer of all time. What does this have to do with anything, you say? Hauke Liefferink goes on to say that “in La Bestia’s 42 years of life prior to apprehension, he killed 0.001% of the time (if he spent 1 hour killing each of his 400 victims).” He then compares “most Pit Bull owner’s reactions” to any attack that may happen in the universe with those same Pit Bull owners “being surprised when a man like Luis ‘The Beast’ Garavito kills another victim.” After all, he’s “already proved his tremendous ability and affinity to do so.” Liefferink ends his paragraph by stating that Garavito may have been a nice guy 99.999% of the time.

Holy wowza, what an incredibly ignorant stretch. The fact that anti-dog folks online are holding this guy’s ludicrous perspective up as a proper response to scientific obviousness just shows you what kind of irrational, non-objective individuals we are dealing with.

The Colombian serial killer is 1 man. He is 1 man that has repetitively committed heinous acts of violence and murder, a total criminal, an obvious piece of filth. I don’t care if 99.999% of the time he wasn’t out physically killing people. He still murdered over 400 people. How in the hell that is relatable to 1 dog, let alone millions, is absolutely beyond me. I mean, it’s so absurd. If any dog, no matter the breed, goes out and kills a human being, whether provoked or not, that dog is usually euthanized almost immediately! Again, if a dog kills 1 person then the dog dies. That’s how that story goes. Yet this Liefferink guy, now being cheered on by anonymous dog-haters across the internet, is trying to compare a psychopathic man’s repetitive criminal intent with any dog’s alleged intent after a singular incident. But I thought that dogs don’t have any comparison to human beings, folks? This is what any Pit Bull-hater that I’ve ever come across will say when they need to dodge any direct or philosophical points that are being made, that at any level involve any kind of a human reference. You can’t have it both ways. Now dogs have criminal intent? Lol. Worse, he’s scapegoating every dog (millions) as being like an individual serial killer with 400 notched kills!

This guy continues…

Thus when Pit Bull owners are telling us that their dogs are so loving, timid and haven’t eaten any kids yet, what they are actually saying is that they haven’t experienced their day 1,000 yet.

We haven’t experienced our “day 1,000” yet? Liefferink says that as if millions of people will inevitably face this day 1,000; never acknowledging that almost all people with Pit Bulls (or any dog) never face such a day. Take me, for example. I’ve lived every day since early 2001 with at least 1 dog that we can go ahead and categorize as being a “Pit Bull-type” dog. It’s now 2015. Since 2010, I’ve been living with 3. I lived nearly 3,285 days with Sway. She did nothing negative to anyone, ever. I’ve since lived over 1,825 days and counting with my 3 current dogs. They’ve did nothing negative to anyone, ever. My mom, my girlfriend, a few cousins, my old roommate, numerous close friends of mine and about 200 acquaintances that I could name-drop in about 20 minutes, from just Los Angeles County alone, would have the same kind of testimony to give about their own dogs. Testimony based on actual history. Testimony based on actual reality. Testimony based on fact. Yet we don’t count to anyone with the agenda of exterminating all dogs that look like Pit Bulls. It’s funny how that works.

He then accuses “Pit Bull owners” of denying science. Denying science? Every peer-reviewed publication that I’ve ever seen in my life not only clearly explains that breed is not the issue, but it then breaks down why it isn’t. Further, quite literally every single dog or human safety expert organization in North America as well as all professional animal welfare groups have come out publicly stating that breed-specific legislation is not only ineffective but unjust.

Liefferink sources numerous Wikipedia links referring to dog fighting and bull-baiting, both totally illegal, mind you. He wants you to believe that every single dog mixed at any level with a Pit Bull is a “fighting dog” that comes from an actual dog fighting background and environment. In reality, so few dogs, Pit Bulls or otherwise, even fit that history. Actual dogs coming from a fighting environment are incredibly rare, and those that do, most of them are bait dogs or dogs that don’t show the ability to be the kind of fighters that scumbag dog fighters even desire. This notion that every Pit Bull is a dog fighting dog is completely untrue. It’s fear-mongering. It’s a lie. He then sources a study from 1990 which involved 168 Philadelphia children. Only 12 of those 168 children were hospitalized following their incident with whatever dog they encountered. German Shepherds were identified in this study as being the most common “perpetrator,” yet they go unmentioned in Liefferink’s rant. The study explains in no way how they went about identifying any of the dogs, and the unreliability of Pit Bull identification has been made quite clear by, wait for it, scientific studies. It states that 46% of the dogs were “provoked” prior to biting. It states that over half of the dogs were freely roaming at the time of incident. None of these things are even highlighted by Hauke Liefferink.

Are we noticing the trend of outright ignoring any and everything that overwhelmingly contradicts the Pit Bull-hating narrative?

Upon viewing this trash heap of an article being shared around Facebook by the DogsBite.org klan, I couldn’t help but take note of some of the comments rolling in from their echo chamber. One commenter posted a YouTube video link showing Andrew Millard, an investment advisor out of North Carolina, taking a few minutes to explain what a “Black Swan” event is to his subscribers. At around 1:58 in the video he says this… “On the other hand, we should never let fear dictate our actions.” Well said. Apparently they didn’t even watch it.

For BSL-advocates, dog-banners, dog-hating exterminators, collective blame ideologues and prejudicial control freaks, fear is the only thing that dictates their every move.

My take on Laura Schlessinger saying what she said about Pit Bulls is that no matter how much you may not like it, she has a right to say it. We all have a right to say whatever we want to say. I personally found her comments to be spectacularly ignorant, but we all have a right to be ignorant. It’s obviously unfortunate that she chose to flippantly behave in that way on the platform that she’s privileged to have. It’s also unfortunate that she doesn’t seem to grasp or understand the real-life consequences that her words will have, perpetuating unjust cycles, and equally unfortunate that she provided literally zero context to her statements.

Take this one for example, speaking about a shelter she visited…

Well, it was about 95% Pit Bulls, or Pit Bull-mixes. Now, I know this is going to get somebody angry but I think that they should all be put down. First of all, they were taking up space and nobody was going to adopt them. That’s why they were all there. People were getting rid of them.

There is a stunning amount of context missing from such a pompous statement. Pit Bulls, which ultimately is a slang term, are by far and away the most discriminated against dog on the planet. This leads to breed-specific legislation, routine profiling, perpetuated myths, collective blame, generalized fear, housing restrictions, among other things related to existential hardship. So no, that’s not “why they were all there.” Schlessinger clearly has no idea what she is talking about. Just in referencing her own local shelters, she is casting the net and speaking on behalf of people she has never and will never meet. Secondly, people do adopt them, a lot. That’s why they are one of the most popular types of dog in the United States of America. There are millions of them across the country. This is reality.

So as Schlessinger is clearly an idiot on this topic, I support her right to be an idiot. When this becomes a freedom of speech thing, I will stand with those not looking to ban or blacklist speech, no matter what kind of speech it is or who happens to say it. I also support those speaking their minds to her sponsors, and that is a legitimately powerful form of protest. So in closing, she has a right to say whatever she wants, just as we each have a right to criticize her for it, and we also have a right to simply turn her off. Don’t try to disappear someone, rather objectively inject common sense and give a differing public perspective to their nonsense.

So recently Jeff Borchardt published a post on his website where he attempts to demonize everyone who opposes his anti-dog tactics, and in the same group-type response in which he demonizes all Pit Bulls. What’s clear is that if you’ve ever attempted to engage Jeff and said anything that he didn’t want to hear, well, you’re basically then accused of “attacking a victim.” That’s his narrative, anyways.

That’s not to ignore or seek to justify some very reprehensible comments that he has received from others. It’s within his post that he shows you some of the cataloged screenshots. But again, people are individuals and some folks are just senseless assholes. An unavoidable fact of the matter is that there’s senseless assholes from every group of people, from every race or type of people, from every city, state and country of people. There’s no perfect fix for that, and that’s what makes people human. People are individuals, and there’s some shitty people out there from all walks of life.

But anyways, Mr. Borchardt routinely lumps valid criticism of his tactics and ideology in with ludicrous criticism and heartless commentary. This is quite obviously done so that he can avoid ever having to take accountability or have an intellectual back and forth with anyone about the actual issues, and instead just ignore all criticism across the board or use 1 person’s crappy comment to paint everyone else as insensitive or discredited. It’s a tactic, it’s obvious, and it’s lame as hell. It’s sort of like how 99% of a protest is peaceful and then you have the less than 1% that go around busting out store windows and setting fires. Then in the media the hundreds or sometimes thousands of protesters get condemned as an entire group for being “rioters” and “looters.” It’s no surprise coming from a character like Borchardt, but just pointing it out as being his mode of operation.

For instance, it was pointed out to me that he was ranting about me in the comment section of this post. I went over to both read his post and then read the comments.

It’s within Jeff’s main post where he attaches screenshots of disgraceful comments coming from (as mentioned above) senseless assholes. One person suggests that he get to “play kickball with Jeff’s son’s head.” That comment is clearly embarrassing, mental, crude and heartless. Another person tells him to “put a gun to your head and join your ugly son.” Embarrassing, mental, crude and heartless. Another person posts a photo of Jeff’s son with the caption “my dartboard.” Embarrassing, mental, crude and heartless.

Jeff uses these screenshots to typecast ALL PIT BULL-TYPE DOG OWNERS. That’s millions of people, folks. Apparently everyone is to blame for some fucking asshole making a psychopathic comment about his son! Actually, the only person to blame for whatever piece of shitty commentary that was made is the person that said it. That’s it.

Do you see a pattern with Borchardt’s world-view? He just scapegoats everyone for the actions of an individual. You disagree with him on anything regarding Pit Bulls? Well, then you’re an insensitive “nutter” who apparently rejoices in the death of his son… Complete bullshit and utter lunacy, but that is the narrative that Borchardt pushes.

Borchardt actually included a screenshot of something that I sent him on Twitter, and places it alongside some of the statements referenced above. Lovely. What did I say?

That’s not my video. No clue who ‘foamertalk’ is. Address them, not me. Also, you call that an ass-handing? That’s interesting. Clifton has ducked just as you’ve ducked for 2 months. Your online bravado does nothing for you outside of the hate group. Fire up your webcam and stop being a coward.

Mind you, this was in response to him attempting to mock me on Twitter, not the other way around. He referenced me daring to go up and engage Merritt Clifton at a conference, which I did, with my camera rolling. That video has obviously pissed a lot of people off. He said that I got my ass handed to me. Okay. Right. I then pointed out that Clifton has actually ducked getting back to me on the proposed debate that was referenced numerous times in the video. I also point out that Jeff has done the same kind of avoiding, as I proposed publicly talking to him about the issues on webcam about 6 months ago. This was suggested because Jeff most definitely has a working webcam, as he does media interviews using Skype while pushing breed-specific legislation. I then call him a coward because he constantly avoids discussing public safety issues with anyone that doesn’t either 1) give him a softball television segment or 2) totally agree with him.

Borchardt’s post then gets even more passively aggressive. In the comment section someone named Brian Adamson offers a pretty level-headed paragraph towards Jeff, which then pulls in numerous anonymous (surprise!) commenters in response, and then Jeff himself. Someone with the alias “Who Else” states that the Adamson guy is a “shill for Pit Bull breeders” who “helps dog fighters get kids and pets killed.” Um, wow. In his next comment he states that Brian Adamson is “hooked up” with me. What the heck? I am described as “that creepy guy who has Lisa Camuso telling him what to do.” Lol. I’ve never met or talked with Brian Adamson, I have no clue who he is. I’ve also never met or talked with Lisa Camuso, although I’ve seen her comment below my Merritt Clifton video. I have literally zero link with either person. I most definitely don’t have anyone telling me what to do, Lisa or otherwise. Jeff then comes on and starts shouting at me in the comments, as if I’m actually on the comment section, which I’m not. He then accuses me of posting on a Facebook page called “Truth Be Told,” which I don’t. Borchardt goes on to state that this page is where myself, Lisa Camuso and Brian Adamson go to “associate.” Jesus Christ. He then refers to us as the “Pit Bull lobby.” This is his term for anyone that has a Pit Bull-type dog or disagrees with BSL or breed bans. Again, in reality this is millions of people, folks! I’m a dog owner. I have dogs that are Pit Bull-type dogs. That’s it.

This was partially the Brian Adamson guy’s reponse to Borchardt’s claims, found further down within the comment section:

I have never had a single conversation with Josh Liddy. I mentioned him in one comment, one time and all of a sudden we are brothers in arms. That is a glaring example of how flawed your thought process is. You draw wild conclusions based on a fractional amout of evidence and research. You then present these conclusions as though they are proven, undeniable facts.

That’s actually pretty spot on.

Jeff Borchardt has no ability to actually stick to specific facts and instances. He seeks to blame everything on everyone, and link everything with everyone, and paint everything with the same brush. He fundamentally rejects the fact that people are individuals and dogs are individuals. This is a fact, he can ignore it all that he wants. When I criticize people they are being specifically criticized. I do not post for any Facebook page other than SwayLove.org. This is also my website. I write here. I do not have any aliases. I try to engage everyone. I’m 1 person who stands up for not only my dogs but tries to stand up for everyone’s dogs. My dogs have done nothing to anyone. Nothing that Jeff Borchardt has to say has anything to do with my dogs or millions of other dogs. Nothing. I am not funded by any other organization. I do not take marching orders from anyone. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jeff. I also have a working webcam. I’ve invited you to have a public conversation, talk, debate (whatever you want to call it), as human beings. I will talk to you about anything that you want to talk about, and at any time. If you’d “school me,” as you like to say, then what exactly is the problem? Wouldn’t it be of benefit to you to publicly school me on these many issues? I am not scared of you or your information. I can stand on my own feet. You can spin things however you want to spin them, but deep down you know that’s being done to make yourself feel better and reaffirm what you already believe. Step outside of your comfort zone. Have the conversation.

Honestly, the people that scare me the most are the one’s that don’t even want to hear anyone else’s opinion unless it’s something that they already agree with. I don’t live in an echo chamber. People can say a lot of things about me, but they can’t say that. I engage, I respond, I communicate. I try to do as much of that as I can, both here and on my Facebook page. Those concepts are healthy for lifting discussions, or they should be. Bottom line.

Duck … Duck … Duck … Duck … Duck … Duck … Duck … Duck … Goose?

Godspeed to Tata and her unborn puppies. This is so horrendous. These cops had no business in that yard. Some members of the “law enforcement” community just seem to think that they can violate every law in the book. It’s certainly a paradox. Chances are that this dog didn’t do much of anything to them, yet these officers get to claim whatever they want now, and no one can ever question a police officer’s word after the fact, right? It’s like a sacred cow. What a ridiculous notion to continue to allow. Police officers are just as fallible as any other person. They are people, after all. Even if Tata did go to protect the yard, it’s her yard! She was also very much pregnant, and possibly in labor at the time they entered the wrong property!

Honestly, the officers that killed this dog by shooting it 3 times in the head give police officers everywhere an unjustified bad name. Lapel cameras now! These would serve all sides. Not all cops are bad, nor are they hellbent on using quick-triggered force. Quite the opposite. But using this kind of force, especially in a situation where they are trespassing into a contained dog’s area, is an outrage.

So as we grieve Eric Garner, and Kaldrick Donald, and Aiyana Stanley, and Akai Gurley, and Ty Worthington, and Tamir Rice, among others–all unarmed and all recently lost to reprehensible acts of police brutality and overreaction–keep in mind that the same exact things happen to animals, too.

Obvious common threads are that some officers may observe certain types of people (and certain types of dogs) as a threat, either by how they appear in that moment and/or by convicting them with a stereotype or a belief system in that moment. Only fools can discard this parallel. Fools and useful idiots.

To support Tata’s owner and stay up-to-date on what is happening, please consider signing this petition and liking this Facebook page. Also, to those that will just blanketly move to condemn “Pit Bulls” or condemn Tata’s owner for having a pregnant dog or condemn all police officers for the actions of individual unnamed officers, y’all are jackasses.

The recent opinion piece submitted by Susan Robinson on Friday was both offensive and confusing. It was offensive because she was taking a massive group of dogs, millions of them, and condemning them as a whole. It was confusing because she claimed to be big on “facts” and “evidence,” when she clearly isn’t big on either.

From what I can tell, Susan seems to only pay attention to the sliver of her reality that reaffirms what she already believes, rendering her first 3 paragraphs pretty much irrelevant.

First off, let’s attempt to deal in actual facts. Pit Bulls are dogs. They are domesticated dogs. They are not wild animals. They are dogs, just like any other breed or type of dog. They are not “different,” as the title claims, they are simply dogs. “Pit Bull” (as used by most Americans) isn’t even a breed of dog, it is a slang term used to represent groups of dogs that look a certain way. So Susan Robinson’s definition of what a Pit Bull is likely wouldn’t fit mine, yours, or the random person pulled off of the street.

Also, Susan Robinson, unless she left it out of her description of herself, is not a geneticist. So when she references genes and what they are “bred to do,” she’s simply feeding you a soundbyte. Actual geneticists refute her made claims, but that doesn’t make it into her diatribe because it doesn’t align with her message of painting every Pit Bull as a fighting dog.

Robinson then references her sheltie and her son-in-law’s Pit Bull Odin as if they were inanimate objects that are reflections of every other thing coming from the groupings that she’s placed them in. Again, facts go against her painted narrative, because dogs are actually individuals and not mirrors or carbon copies of each other. Meaning that Odin is Odin, Odin is not my dog or your dog. She also interestingly claimed that Odin was a “Pit Bull mix” but doesn’t ever reference what he was mixed with, if she even knew. Robinson’s happy to saddle the Pit Bull portion of that Odin equation with all of the negative stuff and let whatever other fraction off scot-free. How convenient.

Her desire to hitch Odin’s behavior to the back of my dog is nothing but fearmongering. That is not scientific. That is not factual or rooted in actual evidence, whether broader evidence or individualized evidence concerning the life that my dog (or any other dog) has lived. What Susan Robinson presents is simply emotion driving fear, plain and simple. She’s had a bad experience with Odin, wants to rehash his misgivings, and then blame millions of other dogs for it.

Further, she wants to scapegoat all Pit Bulls because 4 dogs, alleged Pit Bulls, killed Modesto resident Juan Fernandez last month. 4 loose dogs, mind you. Where was the owner of the dogs? Nowhere to be found. Why were they out and running loose? No answer is apparently worth focusing on. Were the dogs living inside of a home or simply yard dogs, unsocialized and normally living on a tether or chain? These are all circumstances that matter but none are sexy enough to ever become a media focus. Actual dog behaviorists and animal welfare professionals will tell you that these things are precisely what you should focus on if you genuinely care about improving public safety, not breed.

Robinson goes on to say that she doesn’t support “solving any animal problem with killing.” But then in the very next paragraph suggests breed-specific legislation, which results in the wholesale killing and condemnation of Pit Bulls and mixes, as the answer. Apparently they don’t count.

To close, she kept saying that docile Pit Bulls don’t exist. I’ve got news for Susan Robinson, millions of them do exist, and she certainly knows it. She will point to the 30 or so dogs that kill human beings every year, and then highlight how many of those 30 or so the media have tagged as being Pit Bulls. Okay, subjectively fantastic. What she is ignoring though is the 5 million Pit Bulls in the United States right now that have never done anything to anyone! And that number could easily be double that depending on how one opts to identify the dog. With that context, how are her hysterics even remotely factual? She talks “evidence,” but by whatever mathematical equation she can put forth, it will still show that 99.9% of the grouped dogs do not fit her murderous characterization.

Her piece was empty on evidence. It was full of fear. I agree that people acting recklessly should be held accountable. But shouldn’t the recklessness be the focus? Robinson speaks of accountability without ever taking into account all of the innocent dogs that she’s scapegoating with her words. You can’t selectively apply your definition of “accountable.” It’s either account for all aspects of the topic or fail to address the topic. I don’t ignore that up to 4 dogs ended up killing Juan Fernandez. She shouldn’t ignore that my dogs, or millions of other dogs, had absolutely nothing to do with it.