Weekly Roundup Week ending March 9, 2008
Another busy week this week - not so much on the dog bites/attack side, but legislatively there's been quite a bit going on. Here's the week, in a wrap.
Cheyenne Wyoming Revamps Dangerous Dog Ordinance
Looks like some pretty reasonable suggestions. They have changed the ordinance so that a bite doesn't have to break the skin in order for the dog to be declared dangerous and changed minimum fines to maximum fines. One more controversial piece is that if AC picks up your dog a second time, they can require it to be spayed/neutered before its return.
Owners with too many pets could face fines
Apparently Cass County (a county just south of the Kansas City metro) has started enforcing its 15 year old pet limit law, which starting to cause some people out in the county to lose their pets. My favorite comment on this was when Bill Bruce (Calgary AC) was in Kansas City and I asked him about pet limit laws and he responded that it'd been his experience that an irresponsible pet owner was going to be a problem, he was going to be a problem with 1 dog or 50 dogs. If an owner was responsible, they were going to take good care of their animals regardless of how many they had. 87% of the peole who took the poll on the website thought the pet limit law in the county was ridiculous.
Another serious dog attack in the UK
This one was a stray black Alsatian that attacked two younger boys.
Vicious dog attacks on Merseyside Children are rising
Yet another area of the UK has seen dog attacks go up in spite of their ban on pit bulls and 3 other breeds of dogs.
Ten things about Ceasar Millan
Kind of a quirky story from the Detroit Free Press, but I always think Millan's thoughts on BSL are worth reading:
Pit bulls aren't inherently bad, people treat them badly. "Educate the human. Don't ban anything. That only creates fear and ignorance. We don't solve the problem by banning the breeds. People are the problem."
Shreveport Police kill "pit bull" after 3rd Attack in a week
They headline may be a bit misleading as there was really no attack here. Some school age kids here complained that the dog was chasing them. Now no offense to these kids, I'm sure they're very fast, but if this dog was chasing them, and actually wanted to attack them, it would have been able to do so with no problem. The dog was roaming free through a hole in the fence, which is definitely a problem, but the definitely wasn't an "attack" and I"m not certain that the dog deserved to have a bullet put in it either.
17 pit bulls, 2 dead, found during drug raid
I'm never quite sure why the dogs make the headlines and the cocaine and cash found at the scene do not, but either way, it looks like some more dogs were rescued from what would have been a horrible death (or life) with these likely dog fighters in New York.
Four year old boy, mauled by "dog" recuperating at home
The boy was badly bitten in the face by a Bull Mastiff last week.
Romney WV changes animal control laws
It now includes provisions for animals that attack other domesticated animals. Another change is that it no longer allows for owners to control their dog via voice command -- which I don' t really like. While I am huge proponent of leash laws, I do think that we should encourage owners to work with their dogs on voice command (and not just a leash). If an owner doesn't have voice command over their dog, then if they get off leash, they will cause a whole host of problems where as one that can be voice commanded back, likely will not. We really shouldn't be discouraging owners from using voice control of their dogs.
Family dog bites 1 year old boy in the face
The 'mixed breed' dog attacked the boy when the dog was being fed. Note that Miami Dade County also has a ban on certain breeds of dogs but if you ignore all of the reasons why people (mostly children) are likely to be attacked by dogs, cities won't become safer.
A new state law proposal in Florida would end the state's ban on breed specific legislation. Possibly the most amazing thing about this article is that Miami Dade County, which has a grandfathered in BSL policy, has NO IDEA if their law is working or not because they haven't been keeping dog bite statistics during the time of their 20 year ban. I can't for the life of me figure out how a city would make a law based no numbers or data and then with no tracking mechanism to measure whether the law was actually helping the problem. That's pretty amazing to me.
Hat tip Caveat on this one, who has a good, more thorough take.
A two year old girl got bitten by one of the family's two-mastiff crosses when she jumped on the sleeping pet. Animal Bylaws officer Bill Bruce said:
"This does happen from time to time when it's a household pet. The dog is not at large and not a danger to the public". And of the 134 dog bites in the city last year "In a city of a million people and over 105,000 dogs, that's not too many" he said.
Interesting story from out of Kennewick WA where a man was apparently trying to teach his dog to swim and the dog started barking at a stranger. The dog never bit or attacked anyone, but because the man's dog was a "pit bull" the man could face criminal charges and and a permanent criminal record for having his 'pit bull" off leash.
Police discover apparent dog figthing operation
Police seized handguns, shotguns, ammunition, drugs and six pit bulls from this Silver Springs, MD assumed fighting ring.
Lancaster County SC looks at Breed Specific Legislation
The county is looking at cracking down on three breeds of dogs: "pit bulls", American Bulldogs and Canary dogs. Those three breeds were singled out as dangerous because they are more likely to bite although county officials acknowledge that they have not based the new ordinance on any actual statistics that show these breeds to be more dangerous.
A woman went out to get here morning newspaper when she was bitten by two American Bull Dogs in this small Alabama town.
This is a good article for folks to know their rights when animal control comes knocking...I'm seeing WAY too many people who are letting animal control officers get by with illegal searches and seizures because people don't know their rights. Know your rights and protect yourself from some of the crooked AC people out there.
Vick's Former 'pit bulls' making progress at Utah Animal Sanctuary
Here's a good article from the USA Today about the former Vick dogs that are at the Best Friend's Animal Sanctuary. It's nice that they're getting the publicity in the nation's largest newspaper.
The most recent issue of Best Friends Magazine has a cover story on the "Vicktory Dogs" as they're calling them which is really quite good -- as well as a really well written article called "Wrong end of the leash" that is about the misguided thinking behind BSL. It's a shame that this story isn't available online as it covers a lot. They cover the Denver BSL situation and the Ohio situation. They quote Karen Delise, Janis Bradly, Kory Nelson, Merritt Cliffton, Sonya Dias and many others. They also end on the Calgary plan of targeting owners and not breeds with quotes from Bill Bruce (who's a three time winner in this week's roundup). Calgary has doubled their return to owner rate, and cut the euthanasia rate in half without BSL.
"This is not rocket science," says Bruce. "If we can put a man on the moon we can do this."
For the life of me, I can't figure out why everyone in the country isn't tripping over themselve trying to follow the Calgary model. Instead, I only get push back that it won't work in some place like Kansas City because the demographics are different. I don't understand why we're more hell-bent on creating excuses than creating effective policy.
Know your rights is the best defense; as they say, "They have rights, who dare defend them", and even defending them may amount to "how much justice" can you afford?
One thing not mentioned by CA atty is the Open Fields Doctrine. It is related because often AC comes knocking on account of neighbors attempting to snitch off each other. Let's just say that if they trespass in order to see what you have going on even in your backyard, they can and do engage in it all the time. I recommend security cameras which have night vision, 24/7. An example is that AC attempted to trespass on property, but at the gate saw the sign re security cameras, and saw the camera. And that's with the sheriff present. Investigator told me they left because of that. Oh, and not to mention they saw several dogs. They do not like being filmed--trust me, I have had cases thrown out where they tried to say they saw "6" dogs when there were only "2" and one 3mo old pup. The county this happened in is notorious for illegally seizing animals.
Posted by: S. kennedy | March 09, 2008 at 02:53 PM