Letters to the Editor
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Let's see now...
In the 60's, German Shepherds were considered dangerous dogs. I know because my family had four of them over that decade, and we got the kind of flack that this article talks about.
In the 70's, it was Doberman Pinschers that were the menace. I know because my family had three of them over that decade, and people used to be afraid to come over, even though not one of those dogs ever bit anyone, and one of them was a certified coward who would practically cry if you looked at her wrong.
In the 80's, Rottweilers were the awful dogs. My best friend, who is a veterinary nurse, has had two of these, both of them complete pussies, and she talks about how no one would go near her when she walked them.
Now it's pit bulls. I've known a number of these dogs (though not lived with them), and they've all been great animals. Not a one of them has ever been mean or threatening that I've seen.
We go through these cycles with dogs, it seems, as a way of denying the fact that it's the people, not the dogs, who are at fault. Dogs can't help their genetics (good or bad) anymore than people can help theirs, and yet we label them killers without bothering to find out if the dog in question actually is violent or not. It's a holdover from the mindset that says animals are just soulless machines without their own personalities, and each one is much like another.
Personally, I'm very glad that my dad had such an enthusiasm for precisely the breeds that everybody else wrung their hands over. It taught me a lot about not judging based on looks or prejudices.
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Dog profiling, and spay/neuter
All the folks throwing around vaguely remembered statistics, truisms, and anecdotes might want to look at this Malcolm Gladwell article from the New Yorker last year:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/06/060206fa_fact
Gladwell discusses received wisdom and breed-specific laws about pit bulls in conjunction with modern profiling of terrorist suspects, and finds both, well, insufficiently reality-informed. Generally the best way to profile whether a dog is dangerous is by looking at its owner's history. Most of the high-profile dog-attack cases had big red flags all over them, if anyone had looked.
Of course, some dogs of any breed are dangerous. Pits are not the breed most likely to bite a human (those talking about how they're "bred to fight" should stop and consider that they're bred to fight dogs; a dog that is aggressive, or less than worshipful, of humans will not be bred by an actual fighting-dog breeder, and will in fact probably be put down). I'm a fairly good reader of dog body language, only bitten once as an adult: by a fluffy little Benjie mutt, as I was petting its happy, wagging companion. I do know if crazy Benjie had been a pit, I'd have needed more than some antiseptic and a bandaid. (I also wouldn't have put my hand within five feet of him, since he was giving me no signals at all, positive or negative, before he lunged. Shouldn't have anyway. A blank dog can be a dangerous dog.)
It's wise to be careful around any strong dog, but Gladwell is convincing that profiling pits doesn't end up making a whole lot more sense than profiling Arabs. Both practices give a very false sense of security, when looking at real threat indicators could have actually made you safer.
A note about San Francisco's Breed Specific Regulations: I know many had some mixed feelings about the law (which is a simple spay/neuter requirement for pits). But like many cities, San Francisco has far too many people overbreeding pits for cash and machismo. The SF SPCA actually goes to other cities to get shelter dogs because voluntary spay/neuter here has made what used to be extreme dog overpopulation a thing of the past. But there are still too many unwanted pits, the dog most likely to end up in the city shelter.
This BSR is not malice toward pits, but an effort to catch them up to other breeds: not to be churned out, undersocialized, in some garage or back yard, same as most other breeds aren't here. And if we can get a general spay/neuter regulation for all breeds (waivers for responsible breeders), that would be great. Overbred dogs of any kind make for a heartbreaking rate of euthenasia. We owe it to them not to bring them into the world unwanted or to be abused.
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also about neutering:
A neutered dog of any breed is less likely to bite than an unaltered one. It'll be less stressed, to, especially if it lives in a dog-crowded area full of hormone-y smells, and have fewer health risks. Do like Bob Barker says.
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Of course some breeds exhibit particular traits
Anyone who says otherwise is a retard. A hundred generations of breeding leads somewhere besides physical traits.
Do any of you fools know what a pariah dog is? I have two of them and they have extremely unique personalities compared to purebred animals. Why? A few thousand years of having to fend for themselves has crushed out the weakness that would cause them not to survive. Same thing in reverse. A few hundred years of breeding for work or sport or hounds means you have a dog built for that.
Geesh people, I know this is America where animals are people but they're still animals. They're not your kids. They're animals and some of them have traits that lend themselves to certain behaviors. Stop treating dogs like they have civil rights and you're outraged that no one else understands that.
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If we're going to ban any dogs...
...how about we ban those horrifying yippy little doguettes that never ever EVER stop barking once they get going? Talk about awful creatures. I personally would prefer the outside chance that maybe, someday, a larger dog would bite than the certainty that those hateful little critters WILL bark all night, every night. And if you don't know what I mean, you haven't lived next door to SIX of those things going off at all hours. Now that's enough to make you want to call the dogcatchers.