KC DOG BLOG

The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior issues statement on BSL

Experts from around the nation continue to speak out against laws that fail to increase public safety by targeting dogs based on their appearance vs the behavior of the dogs and their owners.

Experts, including Veterinarians, Dog Trainers, Animal Control Officers, Breeders and Humane Organizations, all universally agree that targeted public safety measures for dogs based on behavior, not breed, is most effective. 

The latest official statement comes from the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) which just unveiled a new, official statement last week. 

You can read the entire 4-page report here (one full page is citations if you're looking for further reading). But here is a quick rundown:

"The AVSAB's position is that such legislation -- often called breed-specific legislation (BSL) - is ineffective, and can lead to a false sense of community safety as well as welfare concerns for dogs identified (often incorretly) as belonging to specific breeds.

The importance of reduction of dog bites is critical, however, the AVSAB's view is that matching pet dogs to appropriate households, adequate early socialization and appropriate training, and owner and community education are the most effective in preventing dog bites. Therefore, the AVSAB does support appropriate legislation regarding dangerous dogs, provideed that is education-based and not breed-specific."

The paper then goes into different sections, including facts about dog bite and laying out the scope of the problem with dog bites  -- that while the problem is small, the AVSAB does support efforts to reduce this number.

The article then defines breed-specific legislation - -calling out everything from breed bans to restrictions based on breed (of local interest, Kansas City, MO gets mentioned for it's breed-specific spay/neuter law).

The article then discusses: which breeds bites and many of the studies on breed-misidentification. 

Then, there is a great section discussing "Why do dogs bite?"  Because this comes from a group of behavior-focused vets, this part is particularly interesting. 

"Aggression is a context-dependent behavior as associated with many different motivations (ie defensive, learned, fearful or territorial). Most dogs that show aggression do so to eliminate a perceived threat, either to their safety or to the possession of a resource...

"An appropriate understanding of canine signaling, or body language, can help both owners and potential victims predict the immediate interaction of a dog and take action to prevent a bite. Responsible breeding and puppy-raising play an important role in preventing aggressive behaviors, irrespective of breed or mix. Appropriate socialization and managing early onset of fears in young puppies can minimize the risk for future undesired behaviors and fears...

"Family dogs develop positive associations with humans through daily interactions, socialization and training. Dogs restricted from such interactions may be termed 'resident dogs.' Resident dogs have an owner, but spend most of their lives isolated, even abused by modern American standards. These dogs may be fenced or chained away from peopel and normal interactions, or simply ignored and don't benefit from early training. As a result, resident dogs may be more likely to express aggressiong and also perhaps other anxietys since fear of people, fear of other animals and fear of novel situations are among the most common explanations for aggression in dogs...."

The article goes on to discuss failures of BSL -- including discussiong failure and eventual repeal in The Netherlands and Italy, BSL Failure in Denver, and in Manitoba, and Spain.

The article then goes on to explore successful models using ideas from Chicago, Nevada and Calgary.

Overall, it's a very well-researched report that again ads further depth to the group of experts that oppose laws targeting specific breeds of dogs and instead favor breed-neutral laws. The trend toward this is very evident throughout the US, and will no-doubt continue. 

The final reco in the paper invites readers to share the paper. Which I'm doing. I hope you will do the same. 

Why dangerous dog laws should be influenced by experts, not journalists

Back in June, a woman and her dog were unfortunately attacked by an unconstrained dog in Wausau, WI. Her dog, a chihuahua, unfortunatelyl was killed in the attack.

Because the dog was classified as a "pit bull", hysteria of the moment set in and the woman requested that the city of Wausau consider banning pit bulls from the community. 

Fortunately, Lisa Rasmussen, the chairwoman of the Wausau Public Health & Safety Committee said the city will not pursue breed-specific action.

Unfortunately, that hasn't kept Andy Davis of the Wausau Daily Herald from trying to stir the pot with a bit of made-up hysterics. 

On Sunday, Davis wrote an article for the Herald entitled "Pit-bull bans controversial, but they work" in what appears to either be a failed attempt at journalism, or a successful attempt at stirring up controversy, attention and page views to the newspaper. But from a journalistic standpoint, the article completely fails at the ability to understand basic math, statistics, or honesty or integrity. 

In the article, Davis compares Wausua (which has breed-neutral legislation) with neighboring communities such as Antigo and Greenwood -- which have bans on 'pit bulls'.

For both Antigo and Greenwood, both passed bans 20 years ago. In neither case was there any incident that sparked the ban, but both passed bans anyway. So, in the time they've had the ban they have gone from having no pit bull problem to continuing to have no pit bull problem.

But Davis says that the bans are successful because authorities in both communities say there have been no major incidents and thus, they feel the bans are working -- which compared to the one incident in Wausua, somehow makes Wausua's breed neutral approach (which is favored by all experts organizations) worse. Except, it's not.

There is one major thing that Davis completely failed to mention in his article: the size differential of the communities.

Greenwood: Population 1,000

Antigo: Population 8,000

Wausau: Population 39,000

Um, yeah, so based on size alone any type of incident is 4x more likely in Wausau than in the other two communities combined.

So, through the power of the interwebs, I filed a couple of freedom of Information Requests and gathered the following dog bite data for the three communities. Note that none of the communities track bite cases by severity.  Over the past 18+ months (Jan 1, 2013 - July 23, 2014) here are the number of dog bites in each community:

Greenwood: 1 (so exactly 1 bite per 1,000 people in the community)

Antigo: 31 ( 3.9 bites per 1,000 people)

Wausau: 64 (1.6 bites per 1,000 people)

So if you look at the "success" of the Antigo ordinance, you'll note that you are 2.5x more likely to be bitten by a dog in Antigo (per capita) than you are in Wausau. This is Mr. Davis' success story?

And yes, while I agree there is a difference between a "Bite" and an "attack", it's worth noting that the vast majority of bites are quite minor, with less than 20% of them requiring any medical attention at all and less than 1% being anything that would qualify as even close to "severe". And severity is often a measure of the size  (not breed) of the dog and the vulnerability of the victim -- whether that's an elderly adult, young child, or in Wausau's case, a tiny Chihuahua.

In this case it appears that Davis simply either ignored the actual statistics, and ignored the impact the dramatic community size difference would have in the likelihood of an attack, and tried to make a compelling story and headline to create controversy and sell newspapers. 

This is why the media should not be considered experts in dog bite prevention. Experts should be. And the community of experts: dog trainers, shelter workers, veterinarians, animal control officers, etc are universally opposed to laws targeting breeds of dogs. 

Breed-specific laws don't work. Behavior-based laws do. Don't let flashy headlines fool you.

 

Open adoption policies - redux

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about open adoption policies and that I was pleased that other mainstream organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States, Petsmart Charities, and the ASPCA, were becoming more accepting of open adoption policies.  If you are not terribly familiar with what I mean by "open adoptions", please read the link above, it will give you an idea.

Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that the adoption process is a free-for-all and everyone gets a pet. There are questions asked and a communication had. However, the process is more of a conversation than an interrogation, and  the desired result is to try to educate along the way in the hopes that we can build to a "yes" vs a "no" on the adoption.

It doesn't work for all adopters of course, and sometimes it's best to say "no", but for the most part, most people who come to your shelter (or rescue) will be quality people, who want to do right by their pet, and will be a more than adequate home for the adopted pet.  However, many of these potential adopters are not already experts in pet care. You are. And they may need and even want your help in doing better by their pet. Give them the advice and help. Don't punish them (by denying adoption) for not know the "right" answers.

Then, last week, Best Friends Animal Society wrote a blog entitled "scaring people away from rescue adoptions" in which they talked about a reporter who's editors were wanting him to do a story about "those kooky, nutty rescue folks. Why do they give yuppies such a hard time during the adoption process?"

Like it or not, the overly harsh criteria put out by many rescues and shelters has become a popular narrative in America -- and it's hurting all of us.

The comments onthe Best Friends blog post (and on their Facebook page) showed a varied spectrum. 

On one hand, there were people who complained aobut the reasons they were denied from adopting, which include some amazing stories like:

  -- A couple in their mid-60s who were not allowed to adopt because they were "too old" even though they go hiking daily with their other dog.

  -- A person who was denied because she had a job, and wouldn't be able to spend enough time with the pet (I also suspect that she would have been denied for NOT having a job, and not being able to afford the pet). 

  -- Another who was a teacher and the rescue denied her because they didn't think she could afford a pet on a teacher's salary (the average teacher's salary in the US is $56,000 which is above the national average for income).

  -- One person was denied because the rescue called her veterinarian reference who noted that she had not been in to see the vet in a couple of years -- which was true, as her pet had died a couple of years earlier and she had failed to inform her vet of her pet's death.

  -- One person was denied because they had a doggie door, and by a different resue because they chose to prepare their own cooked meals for their pets vs using commercial food.

  -- Another posted told a story of a shelter that wouldn't let her 12 year old son pet a cat because they didn't want him to get too attached to it in case they didn't pass the screening process.

  -- And many people who were denied because the did not have a fenced yard even though they wanted a dog to go on daily walks with them.

You get the idea. There was a lot of frustration shared by a lot of people who not only cared enough to want to adopt a pet, also care enough to keep up on animal welfare news from Best Friends.

Meanwhile, there were a vocal few people that were staunchly hanging on to old ideas about heavy adoption requirements, home checks, landlord checks, etc.  

There were two main reasons people seemed to think all of the requirements were a good idea:

1) Because it helps ensure that pets don't get returned

While it's true, that the best way to keep a pet from being returned to the shelter is to never adopt it out in the first place, it is also the surest way to be sure it never finds a home.

We've been doing open adoptions at KC Pet Project for nearly 3 years and our return rate is around 6% of adoptions, which is very, very good. While returns are always disappointing, it is impossible for anyone to know everything that will happen in the future. It's a sad reality that people lose jobs, lose homes, lose loved ones, etc, and are no longer able to care for them. This can happen to anyone, regardless of how hard you screen people. Meanwhile, it is no reason to keep a pet out of a home because you fear it may not be there forever. While it's regrettable, the pet at the shelter is already on its (at least) second home, and will have the same ability to adjust if he has to move to a third. Fear of a pet losing it's home is no reason to prevent it from ever getting one.

2) Fear of abuse/neglect

I do get people's concerns about abuse & neglect -- and this is exactly what simple screening standards should be designed to prevent and why some people should get denied from adoption. And (almost) no one is saying that people shouldn't weed out some people based on those concerns.

But just because someone doesn't have a fence, or has a doggie door, or lives in a particular neighborhood, has a job, or doesn't have a job or can't afford the worst case scenerio of what might happen  -- doesn't make them an abuser. We have to use common sense for this. 

Meanwhile, there is also a certain reality: we cannot predict the future, and thus, we cannot remove all risk. No matter what you do, there may still be a case that turns out less than ideal. But isolated cases should not be the rationale for blanket policies. 

Because here's the other reality: While the American shelter system is killing 4 million healthy dogs and cats every year, the single most dangerous place for a pet to be is in a shelter. If you're a rescue, that counts your dogs too, because each adoption you do frees up space for another dog to be pulled from the shelter. 

Processing adoptions isn't an exact science. Sometimes it's hard. But there are a lot of good homes out there. There are a lot of people who want to help our organizations. We just need to be sure we're not denying them the opportunity to help: to adopt our pets (vs sending them somewhere else). And we need to be sure we are not denying this pet from a loving home because of policies put in place to protect against the 1 in 1,000,0000 scenario. 

We need to change the narrative. We need the narrative to be about how great it is to adopt pets and how shelters work with people to help make that happen and to save lives.  We don't want it to be that rescues and shelters are hard to work with, they're impossible to adopt from, etc. That reputation and narrative hurts all of us.

Very Good Sentences -- Is Better Possible?

From the always enlightening Seth Godin, who never writes about animal sheltering, and yet often writes about animal sheltering:

"Is better possible?  The answer to this is so obvious to me that it took me a while to realize that many people are far more comfortable with 'no'.

"The easiest and safest thing to do is accept what you've been 'given', to assume that you are unchangable, and the cards you've been dealt are all that are available. When you assume this, all the responsibility for outcomes disappears, and you can relax".

I'm convinced that when high-kill shelters say they are doing the "best they can do", they are saying it because of two major reasons:

#1) Fear of failure -- if they make a commitment to saving lives, and don't succeed in ending the killing, then they will have "failed". It's a false premise. Even if a shelter doesn't achieve "no kill", maximizing the number of lives saved should continue to be the goal, and will mean a lot to those animals, and the community.

 When KC Pet Project took over the Kansas City, MO animal shelter in 2012, I wasn't sure if achieving a 90% Live Release Rate was possible. There were a whole lot of obstacles. But we knew we could save more lives than were currently being saved, and that was worth trying to do better for.

#2) Dealing with the past - If a shelter admits that it CAN do more to save more lives, it must also deal with the reality that there were saveable animals that it didn't do as much as it could have to save.  It's a hard thought to deal with. But isn't doing better worth it?

Regardless of the reason, better is possible, and we should always be striving for it.

The Changing Narrative of America's Dog -- Esquire Mag article on pit bulls

Within the pages of this blog, I've written a lot about the changing narrative of Pit Bulls over recent years.

It seems that while the mainstream media still likes to cover a pit bull attack story, they have also been far more inclined to also show 'pit bulls' in a positive light.

This, along with the growth in popularity of pit bulls among all segments of the population has really helped solidify pit bulls back in the position of truly being "America's Dog". 

In the August issue of Esquire, the trend continues in an article by Tom Junod entitled "The State of the American Dog" (my photo of the story lead above).

The article itself takes an interesting look at pit bulls as "America's Dog". It's not always positive. I don't always agree with it. But it did make me think about how in so many ways, what is happening, and has happened, with pit bulls in this country is very much a reflection of who we are as a people.

"You learn a lot about America when you own a pit bull. You learn not just who likes your dog, but you learn what KIND of person likes your dog -- and what kind of person fears him. You generalize. You profile.....You learn that the argument about pit bulls takes place along the lines of class and, to a lesser extent race. The opposition to pit bulls might not be racist; but it does, however, employ racial thinking...."

The article then goes on to talk about what the mass killing of dogs in our shelters, most of which are pit bulls, has to say about us as a country: 

"America is two countries now -- the country of its narrative and the country of its numbers, with the latter sitting in judgment of the former. In the stories we tell ourselves, we are nearly always too good, too soft on criminals, to easy on terrorists, too lenient with immigrants, too kind to animals. In the stories told by our numbers, we imprison, we drone, we deport and we euthanize with an easy conscience and avenging zeal. We have become schizophrenic in this way, and pit bulls hold up the same mirror as the 2.2 million souls in our prisons and jails and more than 350,000 people we deport every year....

"We are not a pure country, or one that values purity. We are a country of adoption, a country of rescues, a country of mutts. At least that's how we like to think of ourselves. But we are also a country that likes to create idylls of its own good intentions and then penalize what doesn't fit. Pit bulls don't fit."

It's a good piece - and I would encourage you to go check out the piece in the magazine (on newsstands now and show the folks at Esquire a little love for a thoughtful piece.

   

Very Good Sentences -- on False Equivalency and being entitled to your opinion

This is a great article from Australian Lecturer in Philosophy Patrick Stokes in which he lectures his philosophy students that they are not entitled to their opinion -- but only the opinions they can successfully argue for.

"The problem with 'I'm entitled to my opinion' is that all too often it's used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for "I can say or think whatever I like" -- and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And that attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature in our public discourse."

I've talked about this subject before -- and that somehow in the debate about laws targeting breeds, expert opinion -- which is overwhelmingly opposed to laws targeting breeds -- is somehow given the same credibility as the discourse led by a handful of individuals with no expertise in canine behavior. Pit Bulletin Legal News has a great article on "False Equivalency" as well. 

Back to the Stokes article:

"If 'entitled to their opinion' just means no one has the right to stop people from thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you from saying that vaccines cause autism no matter how many times that claim has been disproven.

"But if 'entitled to an opinion' means 'entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth', then it's pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred."

I do hope that the people without experience or expertise will quit getting equal time with those that have real expertise and experience on the subject of animal behavior. This isn't an equal debate, and needs to quit being treated as such.