Letters to the Editor
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regulatory alternative from a pit bull-loving animal attorney part two:
Overpopulation and Animal Abuse
As I mentioned, we are in a pet overpopulation crisis. Millions of animals each year are killed simply because there are no homes for them. Spay/neuter and breeder permitting (as an initial step at least) would help reduce this problem dramatically. In addition:
1. Animal control/state-sponsored animal shelters should be required to make adoption a central goal. This sounds absurd and obvious, but many of these agencies were enacted for public health and nuisance reasons when rabies was a problem in urban areas. Rabies is essentially gone, but many of these institutions still consider themselves basically disposal arms for stray and abandoned animals. These shelters should put more of their resources toward adopting out animals - training, socializing, advertising, adoption events, obtaining volunteers - and perhaps most importantly - becoming visible rather than tucked away neatly in some industrial corner of the city - rather than toward killing animals. Once adoption rates, spay/neuter, and accountability for abandoning animals increases, those resources could be freed up to go toward marketing these animals to the general public. Currently, only 20% of 'owned' animals come from shelters. That is a marketing problem. Shelter animals are no different from "breeder" animals and of much better quality than pet store/puppy mill animals. In fact, 1/4 - 1/3 of shelter animals are purebreds. The focus needs to be on adoption rather than hiding away and killing animals. Public outreach and education should be a part of that as well, to get people more interested in adopting an animal rather than buying one.
2. Animal cruelty laws should have a private right of action. Essentially, since these are criminal cruelty laws, prosecutors are the only ones who can enforce them in most states. In some states animal control officers have psuedo-police powers, but these are limited. If a private individual or organization has evidence of animal cruelty, they should be able to enforce the law, or at least to bring the evidence directly before a grand jury or judge. In addition/alternatively, civil laws should be enacted for animal cruelty. Currently North Carolina is the only state with such a law. This would help private individuals find some monetary and/or injunctive relief against abusers of animals.
I'd also like to note here that BSL is NOT the answer for another reason: without the types of laws I've suggested, if pit bulls are banned, fighting will go deeper underground and/or fighters will switch to different breeds/mixes. Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shephards, Chows, and Akitas are all popular "protection" breeds in inner cities and are often abused and neglected the way pits are. Laws should be targeting the abuse and the behaviors toward animals that are likely to make them more mean and create too many of them. Demonizing the dogs through BSL and media hysteria does nothing to solve the problem - it's more likely to shift the problem to other breeds or make the abuse more hidden. Instead, we should be bringing this abuse and the merits of pit bulls out into the open, increasing adoption rates, and enacting and enforcing laws that are actually effective against animal abuse and preventing dog bites.
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There still needs to be criminal liability
These are all good, but they do not address two things: the greater damage done by pit bull/Rott/Presa bites and the bad owners, who will not register no matter what the law is. The biggest goal should be to deter doofuses and vicious people from owning ANY dog, not just bully breeds. The biggest problem is that no one EVER thinks they are a bad owner. COme down on irresponsible owners, and they feel they are being persecuted because people are afraid of the dog, etc. There's always an excuse. The meatheads one block away from me felt that their dogs never displayed aggression to them (although the two unneutered males displayed aggression to PLENTY of other people) so people were making to much of the fact that the dogs were constantly getting out (sometimes twice in one day). The more the dogs roamed, the more aggressive they got. These people never understood that a low fence was not adequate to keep an American Pitt and a Staffordshire (the two males we dealt with) properly enclosed. A cement bottomed dog run would have solved the problem. They were too cheap (or could not afford) to do that.
Core problem: How do we drill it into these people's heads that they can not control these dogs, or that they even NEED to? The large set of owners talking about "good temperment" IS the problem here. No matter what the temperment, the dog needs to be under control at all times. The bad owners believe their dogs temperment does not require such control, whether it be to terrorize people or from sheer irresponsibility. Good dogs bite, especially when they get out. Some dogs can not be allowed to get out and roam, even once.
Breeders should be forced to microchip, and display of registration tags must be mandatory. If there is no collar and tag, even if the dog is on the property, it should be seizable.
I think dog bites and roaming should be treated like human assault with a weapon. If there is minimal damage, then it is a misdemeanor with only civil liability (like a auto ticket or a drunk/disorderly ticket). Once one gets to serious damage, the owners should do jail time on a sliding scale based on the severity of the bite, the size of the dog, and the history of control (do the dogs have a history of roaming; if it is a big dog, is the fence adequate to a reasonable person? etc).
The situation in my neighborhood is becoming more common. "Good" areas are seeing bully dogs taught to be mean by brat teens who see them on music videos, fearful people afraid of methheads, or the usual idiots. Add the "pitts/rotts/goldens/presas/rodent/dog mutants (I loved that) are sweet and my dog would never bit" mentality, and middle class people are beginning to experience a small fraction of the fear that good inner city people experience. You can't go outside, you can't let your kids play outside without you being right on top of them, you can't walk your baby carriage or ride you bike without fear of knuckleheads in the ghetto. In these middle class areas, it's fear of the knuckleheads' dog. Roaming pitts make people prisoners of their own homes.
WHile I would love to take the "vigilante" option to the one set of knuckleheaded owners in my neighborhood, it's not legal to shoot humans for being jerks or creating a public nuisance. It is legal to shoot the dogs if they are on my property menacing my kids. I live in a hunting area, in a small town. If that baby bull pitt gets out once, it will be shot. People are really tired of these owners and of being afraid. Now they are also aggravated at what they see as a middle finger to the law.
How do we convince nuckleheads not to own bully dogs? Will fear of jail and mandatory display of registration/microchipping work? If the mandatory display/microchip law allows the cops access to search, I think it will discourage drug dealers and knuckleheads. They don't want to give the cops an opening.
Regulate backyard breeders, microchip and mandatory display, and criminal liability look like good preventatives to me. I prefer them to shooting a dog. I may not get that choice, however.