A lot of stories this week -- so I'm just going to dive right in to some of the bigger news stories and better blog postings from the week. Note, I'm a little behind on catching up on my RSS feeds, so some blog postings may get moved to next week.
Anyway, onto the roundup.
Cities/States and laws
City leaders in Yucaipa, CA listened to residents in their community this week about a discussion on whether or not to ban 'pit bulls' in their community. California has a state law that does not allow banning dogs based on breed.
The city council in Boaz, AL unanimously passed a proposed vicious dog ordinance this week. The bill had originally included breed-specific language, but all of that was removed from the ordinance before it passed and the new law now wisely focuses on aggressive dogs based on behavior.
Marshall County, WV has also passed a new dangerous dog ordinance -- it too focuses on their efforts on dogs with problematic behavior and not on what they look like.
In Beatrice, NE, a city council member has brought up the idea of banning 'pit bulls' from the community. The proposal has been met by skepticism by other council members. The man who proposed the idea of the ban has pointed to Toledo as a success story -- apparently unaware of all the issues that Toledo is facing right now with their ordinance.
St. Mary's Parish, LA passed a new bill that puts harsh restrictions on owners of 'pit bulls' in the community -- despite the evidence that such laws are ineffective and costly to enforce.
Dog bites and attacks
There were a lot of pretty significant attacks this week. Several involved chained animals. Several involved chained dogs, a couple involved dogs with previous signs of aggression. Anyway, take a read and note that a) most dogs, regardless of breed, are never going to be involved in a bite incident and b) there are a wide variety of different breeds of dogs implicated in these attacks -- showing why breed specific laws don't begin to address the issue -- and that laws and efforts should focus on education, aggresive dogs based on behavior and dealing with habitually neglegent owners.
A man shot a dog this week after the dog apparently bit an 18-month old girl and her grandmother. A man living in the home heard screams and went into the room and shot the dog. The family bought the dog six months ago and apparently had bitten family members on five different occassions. It appears that the dog is a Presa Canario -- however, initial media reports had a bit of a tough time nailing down the bred of dog as other reports called it a Boxer/Bullmastiff mix
In a tragedy in Pangnirtung, Canada, a four year old boy, Sabock Akpalialuk, was killed by three sled dogs that apparently broke loose from their main chain and attacked the young boy. Apparently the owner of the dogs was away on medical travel at the time of the attack.
In West Monroe, LA a woman is being charged for letting her dog loose so that it would attack a social services worker. Apparently the woman had been angry with the Social Services Officer and had been making threats. The woman went outside when th eofficer arrived and unhooked her dog from the chain it was on in the back yard and the dog ran out and attacked the officer. It's interesting, because there is no breed of dog mentioned in the article, which then allows the focus to be on the situation that led to the dog attack -- which in this case is a clearly neglegent and irresponsible owner (as it usually is).
A 2 year old West Hazleton, PA boy was attacked by a German Shepherd owned by the boy's family. This is the second time the dog had attacked the young boy.
In the UK, a young toddler had severe injuries to her jaw, nose and mouth after being attacked by a French Bullmastiff. Police believe the male dog became aggressive because there was also a female dog in the house thta was in heat. The UK has a 20 year old ban on 4 different breeds of dogs (French Bull Mastiffs are not part of the ban) and it has done nothing to decrease the number of dog bites and attacks in the country -- in fact, the number of attacks has increased significantly.
A Hawaii woman now has had dogs that have killed three other dogs in the past 5 years. Clearly this woman is an issue, as are her dogs, and the area needs to find a way to prevent this woman from owning pets in the future since she is clearly unable to train them appropriately.
A nine year old New Jersey girl was apparently attacked by a 'pit bull' that escaped from a back yard.
A young Kentucky toddler was attacked by a neighbor's Great Dane. Apparently the dog had been appropriately socialized with the toddler and no one is quite sure why the dog decided to bite the child.
In Hillsboro, OR, a 9 year old girl was hospitalized after being attacked by a neighbor's Rottweiler.
An Ingleside (TX) woman was apparently injured when she tried to intervene when her two dogs got in a fight with each other. The two dogs were "American Bullies" -- a hybrid type of dog that has been created by mixing American Pit Bull Terriers with other breeds of dogs.
Positive Press
A good story by an Examiner writer that focuses on two hero 'pit bulls' in the state of Washington. One was a service dog that helped its owner escape a house fire, and another that prevented a would-be robbery and car-jacking.
Neville, a dog that was forced from Ontario in 2005 because of the provencial breed ban, found his way to Washington state where he became a bomb-sniffing dog. This week, at the age of 8, Neville announced his retirement from law enforcement work. It's a great story.
Karen Delise, of the National Canine Research Council and author of two books: Fatal Dog Attacks and The Pit Bull Placebo was on the radio in Indianpolis this week -- you can scroll down and catch her interview which ran on 3/23.
Miscellaneous
A Boxer possibly saved its owner's life after it attacked a man that broke into the home, rummaged through the living room and stabbed the 26 year old woman. The dog attacked the man and he fled the home.
Abuse cases
A Utah-based animal control facility apparently is using guns and running over animals with cars as their means of killing animals that have been at the shelter for more than 72 hours.
The Humane Society of Missouri brought in a 'pit bull' with horribly bloody/cropped ears that look like quite a hatchet job from some deadbeat who wanted the dog's ears cropped, but didn't want to pay a veterinarian to do the job correctly.
Blog Posts
A great blog posting from Saving Pets: Three simple actions that will change people's perceptions of rescue dogs.
YesBiscuit! has a great post on Framing the Conversation about Pets. Word choice can be important.
Raised by Wolves has a good posting: Oh, Does that Matter? Talking about how media coverage of a Golden Retriever biting a child in Ontario would change if you just change the breed of dog involved.
The Utah shelter thing has me particularly horrified. Can that possibly be legal? Even Utah has to have some sort of animal cruelty laws, I would hope.
Posted by: Aimee | March 29, 2010 at 01:12 PM