KC DOG BLOG

A truth, two mistruths, an important factor and a telling quote

Yesterday, an article was published by the Associated Press about the "Softening" reputation on pit bulls.

The article was balanced -- but as with many cases with balanced reporting, the data actually is very heavily weighted to one side over the other - ie, just because two people disagree on something doesn't mean they're equally qualified to that opinion.

But as with any story, that tries to cover a large topic in a short story, there were some interesting "wow, if only you'd dug here a bit more" moments, so with that, and thus, a truth, two mistruths, an important factor and a telling quote from this AP story. 

The Truth

The headline to the story is an absolute thruth. Pit bull laws, and the reputation of pit bulls IS, indeed, softening.

We're not there yet -- but we are making great progress. 

Currently, there are 16 states that prohibit laws targeting specific breeds of dogs -- with four of those states (Rhode Island, Nevada, Connecticut and Massachussetts) passing their law just in the past 16 months. 

These state laws mirror what is happening on the local level -- where already 6 local communities that have repealed their breed-discriminatory laws -- this goes along with 22 local communities that repealed their laws in 2013.  Finally cities are beginning to look toward the experts in animal behavior and their opinions on breed specific laws in making their decisions. And universally, all reputable national organizations of professional in the field of animal welfare reject breed specific policies.

Meanwhile, pit bulls continue gain in popularity -- as ownership of pit bulls has increased 47% over the past 10 years and pit bulls are now among the top 10 most preferred breeds in the US. 

Media coverage is changing too, as evidenced by how the national media is now portraying pit bulls as what they are, family pets. 

Yes. The perception is changing for the better. Truth.

Two Mistruths

Unfortunately, in the effort to portray two sides to a story, they interviewed three people who supported breed restrictions -- and along with that, came some mis-represented information. One of the people quoted was Don Bauermeister (misidentified as "Burmeister" in the article). Bauermeister is the assistant city attorney in Council Bluffs -- and ends up doing a lot of media appearances as one of only, to my count 8, public figures who support breed-specific policies.  The mistruths then come out of this quote, not directly from Bauermeister himself, but by the writer of the article summing up what he was told by Bauermeister:

"After the Council Bluffs ban went into place, the number of pit bull attacks that resulted in hospitalization plummeted from 29 in 2004 to zero in the past few years - proof, Bauermeister said that breed-specific bans work."

Except, well, a little fact checking would show that the "facts" stated above are indeed, not true. However, according to information received by Animal Farm Foundation, the Iowa Health Department reports that in 2004 Pottawattamie County, IA (where Council Bluffs is located) had three or fewer hospitalizations due to dog bites in the entire county that year.

So, while the article states that 29 people were hospitalized from "pit bull attacks" in Council Bluffs in 2004, the actual statistical data indicates that  in the county (1/3 of the population of which is not in Council Bluffs) is was three or fewer. And that's not from pit bulls.  That's bites from ALL dogs in Pottawattamie County. Breed of dog involved in those incidents is unknown.

It's also specifically worth noting that total number of dog bites in Council Bluffs has also not decreased. Here are the total number of dog bites in Council Bluffs over the past 10 years:

2002 -- 97

2003 -- 85

2004 - 131

2005 - (the year the ban passed): 115

2006 - 132

2007 - 98

2008 - 98

2009 - 97

2010 - 97

2011 - 85

So, essentially, outside of three outlier years in 2004-2006 (one each before and after the ban year), the numbers have remained remarkably consistent over the past decade. So when actual data is analyzed, there is actually no evidence that the ban has made their community safer.

An Important Factor

The story also talked to Jeffery Borchardt. Borchardt too has become a voice for the anti-pit bull movement after his son was tragically killed by two dogs owned by his 14 month old son's baby sitter. The dogs were specifically brother and sister, although one was labeled as a "boxer mix" and the other a "pit bull mix".  I sympathize with Mr. Borchardt and the tragedy his family has endured. While, by all accounts  the dogs were well cared for (as is noted in this AP story) there is one important item that showed up on the police report that the media outlets have completely failed to ever mention. 

According to the full police report, the babysitter notes that she obtained the two dogs at 3 weeks of age. Apparently the mother for the puppies was not producing enough milk and thus, the dogs were removed from the litter at 3 weeks. 

Anyone who is a breeder, or a dog trainer, handler or has read any science, will tell you that this is a recipe for trouble. The science suggests that removing dogs from their litters too early can create a host of negative behaviors including high reactivity to noises, fearfulness, possessive tendencies, attention-seeking, and aggression. While this can be overcome, it is very challenging to do and takes someone with a very high level of skill and diligence to do. This would be especially true for pups that were removed at such an extremely young age.

It's just frustrating that this fact, which was likely a causal factor in the incident involving Mr. Borchardt's son has been virtually ignored and that the incident hasn't been used as a platform to provide more awareness of the importance of early socialization for young dogs and the importance of keeping litters in tact until at least 8 weeks of age. 

A quote

My final piece of this is going to be a quote -- this one specifically attributed to Mr. Bauermeister. Again, Bauermeister is one of only about 8 figures publically in favor of laws targeting breeds, and I think this quote gives you a little insight into one of the leaders of this movement. In the article, it says:

"The opposition to pit bulls bans, Bauermeister added, is a sign that many American pet owners have lost touch with reality. 'Fifty years ago, you could take a sick animal behind a barn and put it out of it's misery,' he said. "That's just the way it was done. Now they investigate you for doing that. The emotional irrationality of Americans and their dogs has never been worse than it is today."

Nothing will get people on your side faster than telling them about how irrational they are for not wanting people taking their dogs behind the barn and shooting them.

While the movement to oppose laws targeting specific breeds is being led by national organizations of dog trainers, and veterinarians, shelter workers, of animal control officers, etc, one of the leaders of the "ban them" movement is calling people "irrational" and "out of touch" for not wanting dogs to be shot behind the barn.

This should give a little insight to the two sides of the story. Is America listening?

 

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. 

 

Sioux City should repeal their breed ban; and celebrating decreases in public safety

A couple of weeks ago, at a mayoral breakfast, a Sioux City, IA couple brought up the conversation of repealing the city's 4 year old breed ban. The Sioux City Journal published an editorial encouraging the council to no "go there".  While the Journal opposed the ban back in 2008, and then again when it was discussed in 2010, but now says there has already been too much discussion over the subject and they should just move on.

There is little doubt that the city's ban has caused more than its share of embarrassing issues, including unconstitutional paperwork issues, targeting people who spoke out against the law, breed identification issues and civil suits about the arbitrary nature of the law and against the city councilman who pushed for the ban when his own Labrador Retreiver attacked a jogger and was later stolen from the shelter. The law has caused a lot of excess work for animal control and police officers who have even gone door to door looking for pit bulls. They even denied the licensing of a pit bull from a Navy Veteran who served 3 tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq who was 4 days late in registering his dog.

And to no surprise of anyone, the distraction of limited resources has had a negative affect on public safety as well. The city passed the ban in late 2008 (late October/early November) and began enforcing the law in March of 2009. 2006 and 2007 numbers come from this article, 2008-2011 numbers I obtained via FOI request this week (thanks to the helpful folks in Sioux City who were very nice in pulling the data together for me). I have no explanation for why the 2008, 2009 and 2010 data is different in the numbers I got from the city vs what is in the article.

Dog bites by year (numbers in parenths are those by "pit bulls" -- second parenths is "all other" dogs).

2006 - 88

2007 - 115

2008 - 102 (20) (82)

2009 - 107 (13) (94)

2010 - 134 (13) (121)

2011 - 117 (5) (112)

While it appears that 'pit bull' bites have gone down some since they enacted the ban (culling a huge amount of the population of one type of dog will do that).  However, the bites by all other breeds of dogs have increased pretty dramatically -- and some of the other breeds that have increased over that time are Boxers, American Bulldogs, German Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers -- all bigger dogs that "pit bulls' typically are.

So in other words, the Sioux City Journal is wrong. The city council SHOULD revisit the breed ban, and repeal it; because they  have an obligation to fixt the failures of the prior administration in the name of public safety. The law has failed. Fix it.

Meanwhile, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that while the law has been failing, there are a couple of folks who are celebrating the Sioux City Journal Editorial.

Pictured, to the left (you can click on it for a larger view) is the thread from dogsbite.org celebrating the Sioux City Journal Editorial. Dogsbite.org celebrating the "victory" should come as no surprise as public safety has never been their goal -- having once named now fired Dog Warden Tom Skeldon "Dog Warden of the Year" in 2008 after his jurisdiction had a 23% increase in dog bites. At this point, I think most people are catching onto the truth about dogsbite.org -- they are a hate group (and by group, I mean essentially one person), not a group promoting public safety.

But maybe even more telling are the comments by Council Bluffs Assistant City Attorney Don Bauermeiester who is taking credit for having talked to an Assistant City Attorney in Sioux City. According to Don:

"When contacted recently by former intern, now assistant city attorney, I directed him to dogsbite.org. Beleive me when I say that the asst city attorney in Sioux City understands pit bulls must be treated differently. lol".

Yes, I'm sure all of the the residents in Sioux City who are paying for the enforcement of the law while it decreases their public safety are laughing hysterically.

I should also note, the Bauermeister should be very familiar with the results of breed bans -- as the number of bites in his own city went up dramatically after enacting their breed ban in 2004.

So add Bauermeister to the small list of bozos who have no interest in promoting public safety - only in using his position to promote the slaughter of dogs that look like 'pit bulls' - and lol-ing while the animals die and public safety is compromised.