KC DOG BLOG

Very Good Sentences - Experts against breed-specific laws

A couple of weeks ago, Miami Veterinarian Ian Kupkee wrote a very nice column for channel 10 about BSL and fears surrounding pit bulls. It's compelling throughout, but had a really nice comment toward the end.

"So back to the original question. Why am I doing this?  Because I've studied the evidence, and I've reachd a verdict. Because I know the facts and therefore the truth. Becaue pit bulls are just dogs. Because in fifteen years of poking them, palpating them, sticking my fingers in their mouths, I've never met a pit that didn't lick my face or plonk its goody head in my lap. Most importantly, because it's the right thing to do."

Almost universally, people who have hands on, professional experience working with dogs have the same point of view and oppose laws targeting breeds of dogs. While the movement to have legislation targeting breeds is centered around a handful of people who got their information from Google.

It's not the same.

We need to let experts in the field of animal care and handling, like Dr. Kupkee, lead the way in determining the type of dangerous dog legislation in this country -- which should be targeting canines (and owners) based on behavior, and not body type.

 

Catching up on some dog bite related fatalities

As much as I hate covering these stories, I continue to remain on top of them. I would much prefer to spend time wrting about all of the good things dogs bring into our lives, and about the good a lot of shelters are doing to change the face of sheltering in this country. However, I feel like this is important as it seems that the only other people who report on these cases are doing so with an ignorance as to social and causal factors that lead up to dog attacks, and with an anti-dog agenda.

Dogs are very safe animals. We live in a society with more than 75 million dogs; and each year only around 30 are involved in fatal attacks. And when we look at the circumstances surround the attacks, we start to find the root causes of them that can help us prevent future attacks.

Breed isn't a primary causal factor. And even if it was proven to be a secondary factor, targeting breeds with legislation that is both over inclusive (including dogs that are not aggressive) and under inclusive (by not targeting dogs that have shown aggressive tendencies, has proven repeatedly to be an ineffective and costly 'solution'. 

So with that, here is a rundown of five fatal attacks that have occurred over about the last 6 weeks, and an update on a story from earlier this year that shows how once certain facts come out you start to see the root causes of how human behavior can cause severe incidents -- often without people understanding how or why. The incidents almost always follow a pattern of behavior including unsupervised child interactions with dogs, packs of free-roaming dogs, or dogs with a history of aggressive behavior.

If we want to stop these types of attacks, we need to move away from conversations about "Breeds" and move toward conversations about how dogs are kept, socialized and how toddler interactions with dogs should be supervised -- and how dog attacks such as this are actually more of a symptom of social issues than a stand-alone causal event.

Jordan Ryan - 5 years old - Baker City, OR

One morning, in late September, Jordan Ryan's mom dropped him off at a friend's house for the day. While the boy's mom and her friend were inside talking, Jordan wandered outside unattended into the back yard where a dog was kept. Tragically, the dog, described as a "pit bull" attacked and killed the young boy. By media accounts, the dog had been with the family for less that 6 weeks and it doesn't sound like the dog had ever interacted with the child before.

It's definitely a tragic incident, but we talk about this all the time about the importance of adults supervising children around dogs as unsupervised children are most at risk -- particularly because children aren't good at reading canine behavior. 

It's also important to note that Baker City, a community of about 10,000 people, has a poverty rate of over 26% -- which is significantly higher than the national average of about 16%. It is not uncommon for areas with high poverty rates to have myriad social problems -- of which dogs can often become a symptom of the larger social problem.

 Nge Woodhead -- 65 - Spanaway, WA

Sixty five year old Woodhead was out on her daily walk when two dogs that were roaming at large attacked her from behind. Bystanders came to Woodhead's aid and she was taken to the hospital where she seemed to make a recovery. Then, as she was about to be discharged from the hospital, suffered a heart attack related and died at the hospital.

The dogs implicated in the incident were described as "pit bulls". 

Adults who end up as part of fatal dog attacks are usually older (and thus more vulnerable) and are most often a victim of being attacked by multiple dogs at once. Which is the case for Ms. Woodhead.

Terry Douglass - 56 - Baltimore, MD

Douglass was apparently attacked and killed by her own dog. Douglass suffered from cerebral palsy and had been confined to a wheelchair for the past two years. 

The dog, described as a pit bull, had had previous run-ins with animal control -- having had bitten Douglass on four previous occassions. Two years ago, the dog bit Douglass in the face causing a severe bite. In April, the dog was impounded for biting both Douglass and her nephew. The incident seemed to have occurred in some guarding over some dropped food.

After the attack in April, Douglass's daughter Tamithia pleaded with animal control not to return the dog, Bootsie, back to Douglass but Animal Control did in spite of multiple previous dog bites.

Douglass's nephew said that she originally got the dog for protection and that while she thought she could handle the dog, but couldn't. A neighor described the dog as "vicious" and "scary". 

Douglass lived in the 21218 zip code of Baltimore -- a zip code where 24% of residents live below the poverty line (again, significantly higher than the national average and more than double the state average). It's also important to note that Baltimore has one of the highest crime rates in the nation -- so living in a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Baltimore probably game Douglass a legitimate reason to be worried for her safety. Unfortunately, in the process, she got a dog that she apparently wanted to be aggressive, and was, and became a vicitm to the dog's viciousness.

If you have a dog that is showing aggressive signs, please seek professional help from a dog trainer with how to deal with those signs. 

Katherine Atkins - 25 - Kernersville, NC

 There is frustratingly very little information about this incident -- but according to reports, the 25 year old Atkins went outside to feed two dogs owned by her boyfriend. Something obviously went terribly wrong and Atkins was found killed by the two dogs. No one witnessed the attack, so little information about the events leading up to it are available.

The dogs, described as pit bulls, appear to be outside dogs -- kept in a fenced in area in the back of their rural-ish property. The dogs were definitely not kept as indoor family pets....although they didn't seem necessarily neglected either. 

The article notes that the owner had owned the dogs since they were puppies. I'd love to know at what age the dogs were removed from their litter....

Levi Watson - 4 -White County, AR

Young Levi, and his mother were visiting a friend in Bradford, AR and the 4 year old toddler ventured outside unattended, and then entered an enclosed area where the dogs were kept.

The adults in the home heard a commotion outside and ran out to find the toddler inside the pen with the dogs being attacked. The dogs were described as "pit bulls".

Nearly identical to the Jordan Ryan case above, again it appears as an instance of the dogs being kept outside (vs as inside family pets) and again, an unsupervised toddler that wandered outside alone and into the fenced in area to dogs that were not socialized at all with the child.

 In the community of Bradford, 32% of the population lives below the poverty line -- more than double the rate of the national average.

Joan Kappen - 75 - Hot Springs Village, AR

Update:

More details have been released. Based on the report from THV11, the dog responsible for the attack, Patrone, had developed a pretty long history of biting people and would regularly bite out of fear. Bites include having bitten an intoxicated family member at a party, biting a neighbor in the face, and having bitten his owner 2 years ago after she came to work with bandages on her arms from an attack. 

On the day of the attack, Brande Coy, the owner's mother, sent Patrone and another dog out to go to the bathroom and went back inside. After hearing screams, Brande went out and secured Patrone and then went inside and called 911. Brande then remained in the home washing her own face, hair and changing clothes while the victim Kappan) remained in a ditch outside. Emergency response crewes arrived 16 minutes later.

Also, authorities were able to determine that Patrone was the littermate of the dog involved in fatally killing a 5 year old boy in Jessieville, AR in June of this year.

Both the owner, and Brande Coy have been arrested on charges of owning a vicious dog, misdemeanor offense of unlawful dog attack and felony manslaughter based on the premise that the owners should have known that Patrone was a public safety threat based on his previous behavior and that letting the dog out, unleashed and unsupervised was criminal negligence.

Original Story: The 75 year old Kappan was out on her morning walk and was tragically attacked by her neighbor's Bull Mastiff. The dog's owner was out of town on vacation and the dog was being cared for by a dog sitter.  The reports are generally pretty vague, but based on the reports, it appears the dog sitter may have just put the dog outside, not on a leash, and was inside at the the time of the attack and may have "gone out" to attempt to break up the fight. There has also been some concern by Hot Springs Village residents that the community apparently has no leash law. 

It's interesting to note here that Garland County (of which part of Hot Springs Village resides) recently spent months creating a law that targets "high risk" breeds. Bull Mastiffs were not targeted by the ordinance. It just shows that again, it's not "breeds" that are agressive, and targeting them is not effective legislation. Educating people about canine behavior and how to properly handle their dogs is important.

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And in a quick follow up story; earlier this year there was a story of an attack involving a  14 month old child, Daxton Borchard, in Wisconsin. Alldogsbite.org had an excellent follow up with additional information from the police report that wasn't fully reported by the media.

There is a lot of information there -- but one is an extremely interesting tidbit that notes that the owner of the dogs had actually gotten them when they were THREE WEEKS old -- the dogs were removed from their litter early apparently because the mother wasn't producing enough milk for the puppies. 

Academic research notes that dogs that are removed from their owners early (prior to 8 weeks) show dramatic increases in destructivenesss, fearfulness, noise reactivity, toy possessiveness, food possessiveness, attention seeking, aversion to strangers, stranger aggression, play biting and owner aggression. MOST of these behaviors were described in the police report.

This is why, so often, media reports are just the baseline of information and digging further (certainly beyond "breed") will help us uncover truths of canine behavior and public safety.

My deepest sympathies go out to the victims and the families of all of these cases and I do hope that society will begin asking the right question about circumstances to help eliminate these few cases of dog/human relationships gone wrong.

The results of breed-specific laws in Aurora, CO

Officials in Aurora, CO are once again considering a repeal of the city's law targeting 'pit bull'- like dogs as the law continues to show how ineffective the laws can be.

According to news reports, since the law took effect in 2006, 1,158 dogs of targeted breeds have been systematically killed in the city of Aurora (population 330,000).

Meanwhile, the same media reports that the number of dog bites in the community has remained steady at about 200 per year.

So that makes the score for the breed-targeted law:  Dead dogs 1,158, public safety - 0.

It's important to note here that Aurora passed the ban in January 2006. At the time, the city banned 10 different breeds of dogs that accounted for 15% of the total number of dog bites in the community in the previous 3 years. 

After passing the ordinance, the number of bites actually increased by about 67% over the next 3 years. Like other communities like Omaha have done, some city officials and the media have used some fuzzy math to try to justify the law, but it doesn't change the reality that the the true result has been that the city has used taxpayer funds in expensive court battles, more than 1100 dogs have been killed, and public safety has not increased. 

Due to all the complications, and the reality that the law was failing, in April 2011 the city of Aurora voted to repeal the ban on 7 of the 10 breeds -- but kept the ban on 3. Because that would fix it. 

But it hasn't. The lawsuits continue. Dogs continue to die (43 more so far this year) and public safety remains unchanged.

it is one thing to make a mistake in judgment and pass a bad law in the first place. It is quite another to stare at the failure of the law and stubbonly hang onto the notion that is working is spite of the clear evidence that it is no.

Admit it was a failure, repeal it, and move on. 

BSL Opposition Stays Winning

Earlier this week, Basehor, KS repealed its 10 year old law targeting certain types of dogs.

In 2003, Basehor passed a law that targeted 'pit bulls', rottweilers and wolf-hybrids with a host of regulations that were almost impossible to meet.

However, Monday at their city council meeting, the city council voted UNANIMOUSLY to amend the ordinance so that it didn't target specific breeds of dogs, and instead, focuses solely on the behavior of the animal. Breeds are no longer mentioned in the ordinance.

Police Chief Lloyd Martley noted that the change made the law more enforceable and that "any dog, no matter the breed, can become vicious if put in the right circumstances". 

Exactly. 

Meanwhile, in Bloomer, WI, the community has decided to replace its breed ban with restrictions.

Apparently, in 2012, the community decided on a partial lift of the ban by allowing dogs adopted from the local humane society to live in the city if "approved" by a veterinarian. 

The rules have now changed so that owners of restricted breeds can own the dogs, regardless of where they got the dogs from, as long as they have a sign off of approval from a veterinarian that the dog is of food temperament. 

It's a start.

The changes came when citizens continued to push for lightning up the laws after neighboring communities such as the Village of Waunakee and Watertown changed their ordinances that targeted certain breeds. In Waunakee, specificaly, they noted that the challenges with determining breed identification were very challenging.

Laws targeting specific breeds of dogs are continuing to fall out of favor and are being replaced by breed-neutral laws that target dogs and owners and based on behavior. It's great to see that logic and rational thinking are winning out over hysteria in creating dangerous dog laws. 

Very Good Sentences - why just preaching supervising dogs & children won't work

I confess that while I'm usually a very optimistic person, the skeptical side of me often greets headlines with cynicism. When I saw the headline of this post, I clicked through, prepared to be annoyed -- and instead, found a very thoughtful piece about "Why Supervising dogs and kids doesn't work".  As any regular reader knows, I often talk about the need FOR parental supervision of dogs/child interactions -- so you can understand why I was skeptical. Instead, I was greeted with a very good introductory paragraph:

"It's sound advice given frequently: Supervise your dogs and kids while they're together. Breeders warn parents, 'Don't leave the dog alone with children, no matter how friendly the breed.' Veterinarians advise, "Never leave a dog and a child in the same room together."  Dog trainers explain, "All dogs can bite so supervise your dog when you have children over.'  Everyone knows the drill. SO why doesn't it work? There are an estimated 800,000 Americans seeking medical attention for dog bites each year with over half of these injuries to children ages 5-9?

"The bites are not a result of negligent parents leaving Fido to care for the baby while mom does household chores, oblivious to the needs of her children. In fact, I've consulted with hundreds of dog bite cases and 95% of the time the parent is standing within 3 feet of the child watching both the child and dog when the child was bitten. Parents are supervising. The problem is not lack of supervision. The problem is no one has taught parents what they should be watching."

While I'm not sure I agree with the 95% number the author mentions (and this certainly isn't the case in the really major attacks that make headlines), there is certainly evidence to show that her overall thought is exactly right -- including even very disturbing videos of parents filming dangerous child/dog interactions without any awareness of the canine warning signals. 

She goes on to talk more about what parents should be looking for. This is great, as dog behavior is very predictable, while child behavior is what is  erratic. But I think it's a good reminder to all of us that "supervision" isn't really enough -- knowing what to look for is also required.

Equal time

On Monday, our local NPR station ran a little feature on their daily radio program "Central Standard" about Breed Specific Legislation entitled "Bully Breeds in the Kansas City Metro". It's about a 40 minute long segment.

As a part of the program, they brought on two 'experts' -- each representing a different side of the argument for and against pit bulls and breed bans.

For the "Pro ban" argument, they interviewed Don Bauermeister -- the Assistant City Attorney from Council Bluffs, IA who has been involved with dogsbite.org for quite some time. For the other side, they interviewed Anthony Barnett. I'm not going to begin to go over Anthony's resume, and in full disclosure, Anthony and I are good friends, but I will note that through a variety of Anthony's experiences in working with school kids on dog safety, with service dogs, shelter dogs, and doing police work with SWAT, I have found Anthony to be one of the more knowledgable people out there in terms of canine behavior.

One of the things that continued to strike me over the course of this segment was how annoying it is that the two sides on this conversation got equal time. One of the common misnomers of  journalism is that it should provide "equal time" to "both sides" of a debate. While it is true, Journalists should always seek different points of view, or angles of a story, it also has a moral obligation to seek truth. And sometimes the two "sides" are not equally represented. Thus is the case with Breed-Specific Laws.

I think we can start with this reality. On the "BSL is not the right approach" side, KCUR was able to find a local expert. There are a lot of folks here that could have done a very good job with this interview, and would have shared much of the same information that Anthony shared on the radio -- and all would have had a fairly similar point of view.

Meanwhile, for the ban pit bulls side, they had to go to Iowa to find someone to speak. Kansas City straddles a state line, you'd think somehow they'd find a leading "expert" in a two state area to speak on that side, but there weren't any. So they had to go to Iowa to find someone to speak on the matter. That should be your first clue. Bauermeister's arguments seemed indicative of someone who got their canine behavior knowledge off the internet instead of having actually worked with dogs. 

The interview took a lot of interesting turns. So in this post, I'm going to give a few highlights from the interview, clarify a few mistruths spoken by Mr. Bauermeister, and add onto a couple of the things I wish had gotten said.

Don Bauermeister

  - Bauermeister starts off by trying to articulate what a "bully breed" is. It's important that he notes that the definition of bully breeds varies from city to city and jurisdiction to jurisdiction based on whoever is writing it. This is part of the reason the laws are nearly impossible to enforce because the definition is very vague. He notes that in his own community it is a "majority of the characteristics" of being a pit bull as designated by 3 different sets of breed standards by the AKC and UKC. I think the ability to determine "majority" based on three different sets of breed standards is setting up virutally any type of dog to being included. Anthony did a nice job of pointing out that they seem to only recognize the breed standards based on appearances, but completely ignored the behavior standards which is contradictory.

- The host noted that according to the KC Police Department, the breed they most encounter in their bite reports were German Shepherds (actually the type of dog Bauermeister owns) and not pit bulls. Bauermeister then decided he'd "go out on a limb and guess" that it was because there were more German Shepherds in Kansas City, MO than pit bulls and that higher number of bites happen with breeds that are most common.  It's pretty clear from this statement that Bauermeister has never been to Kansas City. As someone who lives in KC, and helps manage the KC shelter, it is pretty obvious that Pit Bulls outnumber German Shepherds, based on what I see on the streets and in the shelter by at least 5 to 1. I mean, it's not close.  But Bauermeister ventures a completely uneducated guess to try to justify his position. This is what happens when you have to rely on out-of-state "experts" -- who seem completely content making up data to support their pre-conceived opinion.

I also think it's interesting that Bauermeister used the term "proportionality" in noting that certain types of dogs have higher number of bites than others because they're more popular, and yet completely dismisses how this plays a role in 'pit bulls' being attributed to bite incidents given that the popularity of pit bulls in the US has grown 47% over the past 10 years, and one of the top 3 breeds in 47 of the 50 US States (and this gets even larger if you cast a very wide definition of pit bull like Bauermeister does). In his statements, Bauermeister continued to cling to the myth that 'pit bulls' make up less than 5% of all dogs -- a statement that hasn't resembled truth for more than a decade.

-- Bauermeister also noted that a lot of cities were currently looking toward Mandatory Spay/Neuter laws for pit bulls. It's interesting that he'd mention that as Kansas City was one of the first places to pass Breed-specific Mandatory Spay/Neuter. The law has had zero impact on public safety in our community.

-- Then, in a truly bizarre exchange, Bauermeister went into considerable detail about how his German Shepherds would go about protecting his property and the series of warning signals they would give before they bite. Instead of using this as an opportunity to educate people on dog behavior, dog warning signals and reading behavior, Bauermeister then went on to say that 'pit bulls" don't exhibit these warnings signs and attack without warning noting that "this is second nature, everybody knows this. It's documented in the writings."

The quote here, to the best I can tell, is originally attributed to Randall Lockwood -- who made the statement in 1986 or 1987 during the height of the dog fighting controversy when he worked for HSUS. At the time, HSUS was trying to create additional fear about pit bulls and dog fighting in order to help them in their fundraising efforts to help combat dog fighting. The statement has been recirculated "in all the writings" of people like Bauermeister, Dogsbite.org and Kory Nelson for decades. However, the factual accuracy of the statement has been  debunked by virtually every dog traininer, handler and behaviorist in the nation in the 25 years since, and even Lockwood himself has noted that he wished he'd never said it because it was untrue and had been misused. 

- Then, in maybe the most bizarre part of the show, the host of the show goes on to ask Buaermeister why he thinks it is that 17 states have now PROHIBITED breed specific laws. Bauermeister then goes onto talk about what he calls "The pit bull propaganda machine" and about how this "well-oiled machine" which is "possibly funded by dog fighters" is responsible for this. He even specifically implicated the AKC as being funded by dogfighters. 

Um, ok. Hysterical much?

In Anthony's commentary, he notes the famous line by Menken "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong".

In this case, the 'solution' to combat the problem of dog bites by targeting specific breeds is simple-minded, and wrong.

 Breed specific laws are opposed by virtually every one involved in a professional field associated with canines. The National Animal Control Association, AVMA, multiple dog training groups, HSUS, ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society, No Kill Advocacy Center, American Kennel Club etc ALL oppose breed-specific laws. It's important to note that many of these organizations spend a fair amount of time disagreeing with each other, but the fact that they all agree that targeting breeds is ineffective is notable. And the idea that dog fighters are funding their efforts (particularly when several of the groups actively seek out opportunities to fight against dog fighting) is, well, just laughable. If you have to make up a conspiracy theory (based on absolutely zero evidence) to support your viewpoint, maybe you should change your opinion.

- Later in the show, the host asked Bauermeister if he thought breed bans created a false sense of security. Bauermeister of course disagreed and pointed to how his own community, Council Bluffs, IA had virtually eliminated pit bull bites. Yes, if you exterminate an entire type of dog in your community, you will be fairly successful in eliminating bites by that type of dog.

However, if Bauermeister were being honest, he would note that overall public safety has not improved in the communities he's impacted. In Council Bluffs, total dog bites increased when they passed their ban in 2004 -- what changed was the breeds involved and all of a sudden people were getting bitten more by "Labs" and "Boxers" than "pit bulls". In Omaha(a neighboring community to Council Bluffs), dog bites have also gone up considerably after passing their breed-specific restrictions -- and the flippant "but they're bites and not attacks" argument has also been exposed as severe bites have not declined. Bauermeister has also acknowledged online that he is in contact with city officials in Sioux City, IA (who also has a ban), and was even laughing "lol" when a story came out about Sioux City's bite numbers increasing when they passed a ban also.

Let's set the record straight. Breed bans are an ineffective means of trying to control dog bites. All three communities Bauermeister has been involved with have proven that. Behavior based laws CAN be proactive when they allow authorities to put restrictions on dogs (and dog owners) who show themselves (through behavior) to need these restrictions -- such as their dog acting aggressively, roaming at large consistently, etc. These are, in fact, the type of laws that all of the national organizations with expertise support. 

It is important for the media, and for politicians, to consider their sources. It only makes sense that when it comes to dog laws, that you would consult the experts in the canine training field, veterinary field, shelters, breeders, animal control officers etc. Why would you not?  And when it comes to the media, they have an obligation to seek truth -- which does not mean giving equal time to people who are pushing fringe agendas just beause they're the only ones out there supporting another side.