KC DOG BLOG

Friday's Assorted Links

Some good reads out there that I want to pass along to you in case you have down time on a Friday or over the weekend.

It looks like Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out - you can pre-buy it here-- a collection of many of his articles that he has written for the New Yorker over the years. I'm thrilled that Troublemakers has made the list of articles they've decided to include.  Troublemakers is a great article from 2006 in which Gladwell takes an analytical view of 'pit bulls'.  The book is named after an article that he did on Ceasar Milan entitled "What the dog saw" which I remember liking as well.  Gladwell is a brilliant writer and it will be great to have Troublemakers included in a book that is likely to become a national best-seller.   If you've never read Troublemakers, click the link and spend the time with the article.

Winograd has a great blog posting from yesterday about shelters denying potential adopters with Good Homes Need Not Apply.  The post starts with a touching tale of a couple who came to the shelter to get a cat a year after their cat of 15 years passed away -- and why they were declined by the shelter 15 years later.  Here's a clip:

 Unfortunately, too many shelters go too far with fixed, arbitrary rules—dictated by national organizations—that turn away good homes under the theory that people aren’t trustworthy, that few people are good enough, and that animals are better off dead.

I've often joked that I would have a difficult time actually adopting a dog from the rescue organization I regularly foster for....and this post hits the nail on the  head of a lot of reasons why.

The final article is one that Winograd posted a couple of weeks ago on Forcing Transparency. The article was written by Kate Neiswender, an attorney who presented at Winograd's No Kill Conference in Washington DC in May. I've been meaning to post a recap for 3 months now -- so I at least get to take that off my to-do list.  The article is a great look at State Public Records Laws (Freedom of Information Laws, Sunshine Laws) and how to use them in order to get information on shelter killing, dog bites, spending, etc to hold cities accountable for their animal control/sheltering services and for laws that are designed to "increase public safety" that often don't.  For too long, these groups have gone relatively unchecked by the public and it is time we begin to hold them accountable.  Our country has a beautiful system of open records laws that make this information open information for the general public...and knowing how to use the information is extremely important. So go check out that as well.

Have a great weekend.

A historical view of dangerous dogs in the United States

Karen Delise has a great new post over at the NCRC about the history of dog attacks in this country, the breeds of  dogs involved, and how the media reported the attacks.  The post is essentially an overview of her book, the Pit Bull Placebo, but is a great shortened version of the book for people without the dedication to read the book.

In the article, Karen notes that the late 1880s, the most feared type of dog was the bloodhound. Similar to pit bulls now, bloodhounds represented a large grouping of multiple breeds of dogs -- and their "ferocity" was played out by the media to creat the certain fears. Stage productions such as the The Tom Shows, and in books like Sherlock Holmes' Hound of the Baskervilles, showed the dogs in a negative light and led to their being feared.

Over time, order was restored, and people began focusing more on what caused attacks vs breeds of dogs that were responsible. Several different examples were given.

Meanwhile, during the time from1959 to 1979, none of the dog bite or fatal dog attack studies make any mention of either pit bulls or rottweilers. Neither of these breeds were popular in the use of guarding or for negative functions at the time, and the breeds most often used for these functions were German Shepherds, Great Danes and Dobermans. And in fact, during this period, these were the breeds often feared -- with misinformation abounding about them (remember the ridiculous myth that because Doberman's had smallish heads, as they matured and their brains grew their brains would press against their skull and eventually cause them to "snap" without cause?  Sound at all familiar to anyone?)

In the decade of 1965-1975, less than 2% of all fatal dog attacks in the United States were attributed to either a  pit bul, a pit bull type dog or a Rottweiler. 

Then in the late 1980s, media hysteria grew about a type of dog that was used by a small, violent sub-culture who were using for dogfighting purposes -- that came to a head mediawise in July 1987 when four major magazines contained articles about 'pit bulls'.  Some of the stories contained some innaccurate information in them abot the dogs -- and many of the myths from these stories still exist today, in spite of so much information available that proves it to be false.

The publicity, and the fear surrounding these dogs then created demand for them among people who wanted dogs for negative functions and for guarding....and with that, their involvement in more major attacks.

And so we have the cycle that we are in right now -- where the people who want dogs for guarding or negative functions are gravitating toward a few particular types of dog. And now, the public fears these breeds of dogs - -not much different than Bloodhounds in the 1880s.  So these are the stories picked up by the media.  The difference now is the wide availability of information with the internet where every story written in a local newspaper anywhere is available almost instantly to any person anywhere in the world.  And so the hysteria continues.

But let's make no mistake. There is nothing crazy-different about these dogs. There is no dangerous DNA in them, or certainly we would not have gone through several decades of dog bite studies with them barely represented.  They are just merely a breed of dog that due to the cycle of human emotions and hysteria that has become the victim of our irrational fears.  And this is why attempts to ban the breeds has not been met with success -- because it was never the dog's breed in the first place.  It was the owners -- and how they intended to use the dogs that was. And unless we focus on dog ownership issues, the cycle will continue, but in 30 years we'll be talking about entirely different breeds of dogs that need to be banned becaus of their supposed genetic predisposition to attack.

None of which will be true...just like it isn't now.

How important is breed history, really?

History is something that people talk about a lot when it comes to pit bulls. You don't have to look far.

-- "Pit Bulls were bred to fight."

-- "Pit Bulls were bred to be dog aggressive (but not human aggressive)".

-- "Pit bulls have an aggression gene that makes them more likely to attack."

-- "Pit bulls have been bred for hundreds of years to attack other dogs, you just can't take that out of them."

These ideas are prevelent.  You will see them in the comments section almost any time there is a story in a newspaper about a dog bite online (even if a pit bull isn't involved).  You can certainly read all about it from people who want to use this information as a reason to ban these dogs -- or even make them extinct.  Heck, you will even see it on a large number of rescue websites.

But are they true statements? I mean, really?

Does the history of the breed really determine their current behavior -- in as much as, even if there is an "aggression gene" (there's not), have the traits that these dogs were originally bred for predetermined the behavior of all American Pit Bull Terriers and American Staffordshire Terriers in the wold today?

The history of 'pit bulls' is fairly well documented (although there is a ton of really inaccurate stuff out there). If you aren't familiar, I think Diane Jessup's history stuff is about as good a read as any. And yes, there is history in there about the dogs being used for bull baiting and after bull baiting was made illegal, dog fighting.  I have no doubts that dogs that were good at these tasks were bred to produce offspring that would, hopefully, be good at said task.  The history is undeniable.

But that was almost 200 years ago. How relevant is this information to us now?

In 1835, the United Kingdom enacted the Cruelty to Animals Act that banned a lot of things -- including dog fighting. Meanwhile, across the pond, dog fighting became illegal in most US states in the 1860s, although enforcement was initially lax. Dog fighting was pretty far underground by the 1930s and 1940s in the U.S., as Humane Organizations fought against dog fighting and mainstream animal groups like the UKC pulled their support of the activity.

In 1936, the AKC established the breed of the American Staffordshire Terrier as non-fighitng dogs to differenentiate the dogs from the American Pit Bull Terriers.

So, since 1936, very few American Staffordshire Terriers have been used for dog fighting -- as they were created with the express purpose of NOT fighting.

And for at least the past 70 years, most of the American Pit Bull Terriers have been bred by people with the intention of NOT using them for fighting (not that all of them were BEFORE the 1930s, but certainly after that point) as the law, and canine organizations frowned on the activity.

So if there were genetic characteristics that made 'pit bulls' more prone toward aggression toward other dogs, how long would it take for such a gene to no longer exist through selective breeding.

Prior to around 1900, most dogs were bred with some purpose in mind. People needed dogs for tasks around the home - -often for protection, hunting, getting rid of rodents, etc. In fact, if you look at the breed history of most older breeds, almost all of them were initially bred for the express purpose to either chase, kill, herd or protect something.

However, over the past century as human kind has move from living on farms to living in cities, dogs have changed their role in our lives and moved from living in our barns, to living in our homes.   And over the past couple of decades, from living in our homes, to sleeping in our beds.

Over this time, the need to selectively breed dogs for traits that make them good at tasks has not been the main focus for most breeders -- vs breeding dogs based on things like looks and temperament.

Over this time, lines of dogs have split. While a few lines of dogs remain for their original working purpose, many lines have become much more focused on "pet quality" dogs.  And with that, most of these "pet" dogs have become virtually worthless at the original tasks they were originally bred to perform.

Ask any hunter whether they would be interested in buying a Beagle or Cocker Spaniel from a pet store and they may look at you like you are insane. The difference between the drive, endurance and tenacity of the working lines of these dogs and the "pet" lines of these dogs makes one very valuable as a hunter and the other virtually worthless at it.   In turn, a good hunting dog probably won't make a good pet for your average suburban family.

And over time, we have become really comfortable with most breeds of dogs becoming better "pets" than workers....because outside of a few people out there, most of us don't care if the dog is all that good of a "worker". 

Here is a list of just a few breeds, and some of the functions they were orginally bred for:

The Chinese Shar Pei:  Guarding, protecting, dog fighting

English Bulldogs: Bull baiting, dog fighting

Boxers: Dog fighting, holding down large game like wild boars and bison

Dachshunds:  Crawl into badger holes and fight and kill badgers

Poodles: Water retrievers

Miniature Poodles: Truffle hunting

Rhodesian Ridgebacks: Hunting lions

Weimaraner: Hunting wolves, deer and beer

Now when you look at the former tasks of these dogs, it is almost impossible to think of dogs of our friends and neighbors as fullfilling these tasks. But they used to.  And now the vast majority of the dogs in these groups, like most dogs, are just pets.

It's just really interesting to me that when it comes to the American Pit Bull Terrier, people assume that its history will instantly cause it to attack another dog or person.  Yet we never look at a Poodle and instantly think well, that dog is instantly going to retrieve birds in the water or would be excellent at finding truffles or that a Dachsund is going to instantly crawl down in a hole and kill the next badger it sees. 

It doesn't quite work that way. And science is helping us determine why.

In some new research that is being done -- in part by Scientist Dee Denver - - many scientists now believe that genetic mutation occurs at a rate of 10x what scientists previously thought. In "nature", even though many mutations can improve an organism's chance for survival, most mutations are detrimental to to long-term survival -- thus, within a few generations, the mutation would be eliminated due to natural selection.  In nature, if a dog's genes mutated in a way that would make them lesser of fighters, or hunters, they would likely die off because they would be unable to survive.

But our dogs don't live in nature. They live in homes. And as such, these changes can happen and not have a negative impact on the well-being of a dog because our dogs don't have to fight to survive.  In pet quality dogs, there is little "natural selection".  Behaviors are able to change very quickly.

So, how important of a role does history play in current temperaments of pit bull type dogs?

Changes in genetics can happen very quickly...and the VAST majority of these dogs have not been used for the purpose of dog fighting for at least 30 years, and most haven't been used for this purpose in 70+ years.   The fact that all of this "fighting" talk is ancient history (in dog years) for the majority of dogs is a major reason why 99.9% of them won't bite -- which wouldn't be the case if they were genetically predisposed to attack. 

So why are we still talking about breed history as if it is a predetermining factor in a dog's behavior?

HSUS Changes Policy on dogs seized from Fight Busts

Last week, members of several groups of animal welfare and animal rights member met in a summit in Las Vegas to discuss a potential change in HSUS policy for dogs that are seized from dog fighting busts.

In the past, HSUS policy was to recommend that all dogs that came from dog fighting operations, even puppies, would be systematically euthanized with no "need" for professional behavioral evaluations.

However, the success in the rehabiliation of the dogs confiscated from Mike Vick's Bad Newz Kennels (Hector, one of those dogs, is seen "viciously" snuggling with Missouri State Senator Jolie Justus), combined with the public outcry over HSUS' insistence that 127 dogs confiscated from Ed Faron's home be systematically killed, has finally led HSUS down a road to a change in policy.

No longer will HSUS insist that all dogs confiscated from fight busts be put down. 

Yay.  And it's about time.

While many dogs from these fighting operations may be put down in the future -- they will all be given professional behavioral evaluations before that happens. If a dog is decided to be too aggressive to ever have a public life, they will be euthanized. But if the prospects for a dog to be rehabilitated look good, the dog will be given that opportunity.

"The groups agree that all dogs should be treated as individuals, and they are the true victims of this organized crime," reads the Best Friends release.

Best Friends has the Press Release here.

Even Wayne Pacelle has issued the statement on his blog.

"In the past, animals seized from operations have been routinely euthanized. This may still be the outcome for the animal victims of dogfighters, but we agreed as a number of groups that all of us should do our best to evaluate dogs seized from these operations and adopt those dogs who can be saved."

That's progress.  It is still concerning that the nation's largest and richest animal advocacy group had to be pushed by the general public and other organizations to change a policy that declared that all of these dogs had to be killed even without an evaluation. But the good news is, the public demanded it to a point that HSUS DID change their policy. The public has charted a direction for how we treat animals in this country -- and that direction is no longer being led by HSUS. 

It's good to have HSUS along for the ride.  Saving these dogs is important. It should be our first notion.  If they cannot be saved, that is understandable, but "kill" should not be our first reaction when it comes to these victims. If the very people who are in a position to care about the welfare of these animals do not think their lives are worth saving, why would we ever think the people who fight these dogs would value their lives either?

Donna at Bad Rap, always the optimist, nicely put it:

"Welcome to the New World, bust dogs. From here on out, you will be counted among the many shelter animals who are also counting on humans to give them a second chance at a real life."

The news is being greeted with skepticism around the animal welfare world.

YesBiscuit is asking some tough questions.

Katie is wondering how an organization that only months ago encouraged Wilkes County, NC to kill 127 dogs, many of them young puppies -- some even born in the shelter - -can do a 180 on this topic in such a short amount of time.

Even Christie is a little skeptical (she has a great overview on everything that's well worth the read).

Who can blame them. HSUS hasn't always been the best of friends when it comes to 'pit bull' type dogs -- or any breeds of dogs for that matter. They've earned the skepticism.

I am surprisingly optimistic. Not because I trust HSUS . I don't. But because the animal welfare communities -- the people who are in the trenches every day saving the lives of animals -- has demanded change and gotten it. The people who truly care about saving the lives of animals and live their lives every day doing it, have charted a new course for animal welfare in this country.  Without HSUS's leadership - - in fact, in SPITE of HSUS's "leadership" - the animal welfare community has changed how they view the humane movement.

And that is very powerful indeed.

And in the end, it will be great for the animals....which is what it's all about.

The Irony of Timing

Yesterday was a crazy day.  In Wilksboro, NC, a judge ruled in favor of killing 127 pit bulls seized froma dog fighting operation in the area -- in spite of contacts from respected national and organizations that called for an opportunity to temperament test the dogs and see if any could be saved. In spite of that, all 127 dogs were killed, including about 40 or so puppies, many less than 2 months old.

Meanwhile, the world's wealthiest "humane" organization, applauded the decision.  I posted about that yesterday -- and have added several new blog links if you missed them.

Meanwhile,Yes Biscuit has posted the comments from HSUS's John Goodwin about the recommendation to kill the dogs:

"Those particular fighting dogs in Wilkes County, NC were very, very different than the Vick dogs. Whereas Michael Vick was a pro football player that fought dogs as a hobby, the breeder of these dogs was a globally recognized professional dogfighter. Vick was not a good breeder, and he lost most of his fights. His dogs were a poor representation of true fighting dogs."

The irony here, of course, is that this would be a somewhat believable claim if HSUS hadn't first raised money to care for the Vick Dogs -- and THEN, recommended they all be euthanized without an evaluation.  No, HSUS loses any credibility when they say "these dogs were different than the Vick dogs" -- when they recommended the exact same result for both groups of dogs. HSUS's policy continues to be, kill first, ask questions later.

As Winograd points out in his post over at the No Kill Nation:

"Every time HSUS defends killing, their antiquated, regressive viewpoints are not only harmful to animals, they make HSUS more and more irrelevant to animal sheltering and more and more despised by those who truly love animals. And they become more out of touch with public sentiment. "

Meanwhile on the same day that HSUS was ordering the killing of 127 'pit bulls' without evaluation, Roo Yori announced that former Vick dog Hector officially passed his test to become a Therapy Dog.  Apparently at least some dogs "bred to fight" can be trained for public benefit...in just a little over a year. And Hector isn't the first dog from Bad Newz Kennels to become a therapy dog.

But HSUS ignored the success of the rehabbing of the Vick dogs and decided somehow these dogs were "different" than the other dogs they recommended killing.

Meanwhile, just last week, Best Friends announced that the first of their dogs that was actually rescued from Bad Newz Kennels went to his forever home.

So at a time when many in the true animal welfare community is celebrating the successes of the rehabilitation of the dogs from Bad Newz Kennels, HSUS is still calling for the death of all dogs coming from these situations -- without evaluation. You'd have thought they'd notice.

Let's repeat after me:

In most cases, these dogs can be rehabilitated.

They are worth it.

Killing should be the last response, not the first.

HSUS has lost their grip on the animal welfare movement. It's time to move on without them...although I'd be happy if they'd get on board on their own.  But I'm not going to sit around waiting for them.

The answer is "kill", now what's the question?

You've probably heard, but yesterday, a Superior Court judge ordered that 127 pit bulls that were confiscated from a dog fighting operation in North Carolina should be euthanized.  The dogs belonged to Ed Faron, who plead guilty to 14 counts of felony dog fighting.  Faron was given 8-10 months in prison. His dogs got the death chamber.

I don't blame Judge Ed Wilson Jr. for the decision. According to North Carolina state statutes, it is mandatory that any dogs seized from dog fighting operations are automatically seen as dangerous and must be destroyed. I don't know that legally, he had a lot of options.

However, my problem is with the Humane Society of the United States being the cheerleader in their killing.  John Goodwin, the "dogfighting" kingpen at HSUS, has oft said that the dogs have been bred for fighting and it would be difficult and expensive to "retrain" the dogs. 

And yet, the folks at Best Friends were willing to do just that.  They had sent letters to the judge and prosecuting attorney hoping to be able to go in, and do evaluations on the dogs and see if any of them were non-aggressive and could be saved.

They were of course, denied. While HSUS stood on the sidelines applauding the decision.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to actually evalutate the animals first?  Let's keep in mind that HSUS did not go in and evaluate the animals individually. In fact, it's unlikely that Goodwin, who has been callling for the dogs' deaths, has even met a single one of the dogs. He's just grouping them into one big category, and universally calling for their deaths.

That's not much of a statement of humanity by the world's richest humane animal organization.

You might recall, these are the same antics that HSUS pulled when the dogs were confiscated from Mike Vick's bad news kennels -- all but one of which were deemed safe to enter into society -- and 18 or so of which are now in homes after rehabilitation. You'd think they would have learned.

I'm not saying all of the dogs would have been fine to move in homes. It is likely that some, a few, a lot, who knows? would not have been fine to pull and be sent to rehab. But I also think it is completely unlikely that none of the dogs would have been suited for rehab. And all I'm saying is that it would cost HSUS nothing to allow other respected organizations to come in and evaluate the dogs on their own individual merits and pull the ones they think they can rehab. Doesn't that make sense?  Why would a "Humane" organization OPPOSE such a response?

Not allowing (or encouraging) others to evaluate the dogs is costing HSUS infinitely in credibility. A "humane" organization's first response should not be to "kill" and then ask questions later. It should be to take the steps necessary to save as many lives as is feasible without putting dangerous dogs on the street.

But they didn't evaluate. They just cheered as the judge ruled to kill the dogs.

That's not "humane".  That's slaughter.

Let's get the law in North Carolina repealed that makes it a mandatory death sentence for all dogs confiscated from fighting rings so each dog can be evaluated on its own merits.  And let's stop pretending that HSUS's main goal is caring about animals.

For more on this case:

Help Fido: Why HSUS is Horrible

Lassie Get Help: The "H" in HSUS stands for Hypocrisy

Bad Rap: The High Cost of Being a Victim

YesBiscuit: HSUS and the Ongoing Campaign to Kill "Rescued" Bust Dogs

Winograd (via the No Kill Nation Blog): The Death of Hope as HSUS

Caveat: Time to take "Humane" out of HSUS"

Save a Pit Bull, Save the World: Of all the things I'm glad I'm not.

Meanwhile, Winograd has a similar, yet completely unrelated post over at his place. Apparently the Animal Humane Society in Minnesota "rescued" 120 cats from a hoarding situation. While several rescue organizations, including Animal Ark -- the largest no kill organization in Minnesota -- offered to help care for the animals, the AHS killed all of the cats that they had "rescued". More over at Winograd's blog.

We must demand more from our "humane" organizations....

UPDATE: Here is a press release from Best Friends on the suject.

Best Friends is urging citizens to contact their state legislators to change North Carolina law and delete the clause in the law that makes it possible for dogs harbored for fighting to automatically be deemed “dangerous”dogs.

 "It is consistent with public safety concerns to evaluate each dog as an individual to determine whether they can be placed in the community,” Rebecca Huss said. “It is my opinion that every dog should be evaluated on an individual basis. The Bad Newz Kennels case shows there is no reason for euthanizing dogs merely by their breed or location where it was seized.”

Hat tip,

BAD RAP Blog

 

Removing Psychological Barriers

Over the weekend I got an email from one of the regular readers of this blog with a little update on what was going on in her community in Ohio.

Not long ago, her community had a policy in place where they did not adopt 'pit bulls' out of the city shelter. Once a 'pit bull' entered the shelter, it was basically death row for that dog -- with the exception of the few dogs that made it into 'pit bull' rescue.  Like Indianapolis did last week, their shelter made the decision to adopt dogs directly into homes (just like they do all other breeds) -- assuming the dogs passed temperament tests.

The impact from the change has been pretty amazing.

-- More people are getting exposed to 'pit bulls' because they see them when they come to a shelter (when they would normally not have even thought to go to a breed-specific rescue).

-- Folks are getting the opportunity to interact with a 'pit bull', many for the first time in their lives.

-- Many people are starting to ask questions about them, and so they've been supplying literature about 'pit bulls' to people looking to adopt dogs.

Not all of the curious people will adopt one of the dogs -- but she reports many having changed attitudes and no longer have the same fears they did prior to meeting the dogs.  Some have even adopted one for themselves. She writes:

"In the past two weeks, we have had some great pit bull adoption stories where people have come in not looking for a pit bull, even showing some ill feelings toward the stereotypes, but have decided to adopt one after meeting it. This is even after they had choices of other breeds that are more easily owned in our pit bull-law-ridden state."

A couple of weeks ago I posted about undoing the problems we've created - and how so much of our situation of too many 'pit bulls' dying in our shelters is because of problems that we've created in attempts to help.  Some of the things that we need to do:

    -Undoing the laws that make it impossible to adopt these dogs to good owners.

    -Undoing the negative perceptions that exist about the 'breed'

    -Undoing shelter policies and adoption requirements that cause a back log of dogs in our shelters and lead to high euthanasia rates for the dogs.

We don't need more laws to do it, we need to remove the barriers.

One shelter in Ohio is making a difference. They're adopting out 'pit bulls'.  They're exposing more people to 'pit bulls' who may have a negative perception of the breeds who otherewise may never have taken the opportunity to meet a bully. They're finding homes for dogs.   They're ending the backlog. 

I want to make one other note on the negative public perceptions. 

Honestly, I can hardly blame people for having negative associations when people talk about 'pit bulls'.  For the past 2 decades, the media has done little but vilify the breeds. At some point, people just develop the perception as if its true without really doing much investigative work on the subject.

I once fit into that category.

When my wife first mentioned the idea of getting a 'pit bull', I thought she was nuts. But because it was important to her, I did some research. I went to a few shelters around town and met a few dogs -- and fell in love with one. I think it's amazing how easily a lot of the perceptions are overcome just by meeting a pit bull. They're not what people often think after years of only reading media reports. I often cringe at the thought of how many city council members vote in favor of a ban on a breed of dog they've never even met before. Think about that for a second -- voting to ban a breed of dog you've never even seen. (And let's face it, most of these cities that put in breeds like Cane Corsos, Dogos, Presa Canarios, and Japanese Tosas -- and likely 'pit bulls' -- have never met most of those breeds). Wow.

A little education can go a long way. Maybe that education will come from meeting a dog in the shelter. Maybe it will come from meeting one out in a city park, or at the local coffee shop. But if you can create the opportunity, you should do it.

Thanks for the email-- and a tip of the hat to a group of people who are getting it right.

Undoing the problem we created

There is nice little video that the Kansas City Star posted today about Baxter - a 'pit bull' mix that has been up for adoption at local rescue Wayside Waifs since April of last year and is still available for adoption. Baxter seems like a great dog -- and very laid back.  He was previously adopted out to a family, but apparently is fearful of men, and the family wasn't able to deal with the problem so he was returned. 

Go over and watch the video. It'll only take 3 minutes.  I'll wait.

The interesting piece of the video (other than the dog is gorgeous and seems very sweet) is that it mentions a lot of the reasons it has been so difficult for Baxter to find a home:

1) Cities in the metro that don't allow 'pit bulls' to live in the city (about 1/4 of the population of the Kansas City metro is unable to own pit bulls currently due to city ordinances)

2) Perception of 'pit bulls' being aggressive

3) Difficulty in having landlord approval of a 'pit bull' living in rental property.

Many cities, including Kansas City, MO, are having major shelter over-crowding problems with pit bulls. The problem is always mentioned that there are just more 'pit bulls' than there is demand for them. In 2005, 24% of the dogs killed in the KCMO shelter were pit bulls.  A high percentage.

To overcome this shelter overcrowding issue, KCMO created yet another law, mandating the spay/neuter of pit bulls.  Because 'pit bulls ' were confiscated from homes for not being altered, the number jumped to 39% in 2007 -- with nearly double the number of 'pit bulls' killed as in 2005.

The problem isn't necessarily that there are too many pit bulls than there is demand for them (there may be, we're not sure). The biggest problem is that as a society, we have now created so many barriers to owning them that we have made it too hard to adopt them.

Many people can't adopt them because their city bans them. Many can't adopt one because their landlord won't allow them (we see a TON of owner-surrenders for this reason also). We've also created a stigma abou the dogs that discourage some adopters, or even if they don't fear the dogs, they fear their city passing a law that will eventually cause them to have to give up their companion.

So what we've created is a situation where because we decided that 'pit bulls' needed to be treated differently, now they are stacking up in the shelter on us. Because of this, instead of stripping away the policies that are making them so hard to adopt out, we created MORE restrictions on the dogs.

The problem isn't that there are too many (although MAN it seems like there are).  The problem is that we have created so many barriers to adoption, that we have completely wiped out the demand side of the adoption process.

The answer isn't more laws and policies. The answer is removing so many of the ones currently in place that make adopting a sweet dog like Baxter so difficult.

It's time we step back and undo the problem we helped create, instead of creating even greater problems for these dogs. There are so many other dogs out there like Baxter who's lives depend on it.

John Garcia and Georgia on Ellen Yesterday

  John Garcia, one of the main trainers off of the show Dogtown from Best Friend's Animal Sanctuary in Utah, was a guest star on Ellen yesterday. With Garcia, was special guest Georgia, a breeding dog at Mike Vick's Bad Newz Kennels that, among other scars, had had all of the teeth yanked out of her mouth.

I thought the show went pretty well. I think Ellen asked a lot of the questions many of her viewers would have wanted to have asked -- and I think Garcia did a nice job of answering the questions and really dispelling a lot of the myths out there.  While this wasn't necessarily the hardest-hitting segment out there, I do think that a lot of the regular watchers of Ellen may never get more information than this about the topic of 'pit bulls'.

You can watch the segment with John, which is about 5 minutes long, on Ellen's website.

In the grand scheme of things, I think that a lot of casual observer's minds are being changed. Shows like the Dog Whisperer and Dogtown have really highlighted that these dogs are, truly, what they are trained to be. I think shows like Ellen, that give people an opportunity to hear from real experts about the breed, and hearing that they are just dogs, is slowly, and casually, changing  a lot of minds out there.  And these are minds that several years ago, would have only had access to the media reports, and the worst case scenerios, without getting the full story.

Watch the segment with John here.  Go there and leave your comments. For some reason, the segment with Georgia is not on Ellen's website, but you can catch the whole segment, including the part with Georgia via YouTube here.  That segment is about 8 minutes long, but worth the watch.

Why own one?

I've heard the question asked several times from people who only know about 'pit bull' type dogs from what they read in the newspaper.  The question is, why own one?

My friend Andrea put together a slide show that I think expresses it quite nicely and is worth sharing.

Enjoy.