Well said, Pam.  “Breed bans” should be converted into owner behavior restrictions.  (Deleted rant, since you said it better above.)

It’s especially irritating when a dog bites a small child and then is put down, without any conversation about how unsupervised small children and dogs do not mix.  We just had a case here last month.  Not only do owners need to take responsibility for their animals, but parents need pay attention to their kids, and teach them to leave strange animals alone.  Actually, the general public could stand a good PSA campaign around that.

I’ve also heard that Chows can be especially vicious toward anyone who is not in their “pack” but I don’t recall seeing a lot of laws passed against them.  There is one terrorizing my mom’s neighborhood right now—it’s constantly getting out of its yard and trapping people in their homes b/c it goes after them if they try leaving their houses.

I was also nearly mauled by a pair of black labs.  I was walking to my bus one morning on my way to work and it was still dark out.  There are very few lights on my street, and this woman was walking her two dogs further up the block.  I’d already crossed the street to avoid them (I like dogs but am generally afraid of those I don’t know), but unfortunately she also crossed without seeing me.  The dogs didn’t notice me until I was almost up to them and they completely flipped out, lunging and snapping at me.  The woman was so small she couldn’t keep them under control.  I almost had to climb onto a nearby parked car to keep away from them, because they were pulling her after me as I backed away.  The whole time the woman was almost laughingly whispering at them, “Don’t do that [so and so].”  So she was completely cowed by them which made them even more aggressive toward me.  Thankfully I wasn’t bitten and didn’t have to resort to picking up a stick and vainly trying to beat them with it (not that it would have saved me if they did manage to attack me).

It’s my opinion that many times, and animal’s aggression is the fault of the owner, and owners need training as much as dogs do.

I want to come play with Casey’s mooshy face! 

My own mutton-head is black Lab and Pittie - mostly Pittie.  Sweet as pie, loyal as the sun is hot.  And kinda dumb, but that’s the Lab.  He pines for my husband when he’s away, loves all over anyone who is welcomed into the house (he has a special fondness for the pizza girl), snuggles with the cats when he’s feeling mopey, lets the rabbit boss him around, drags me off for a nap in the afternoons, and practically does backflips when the Monsters get home from school.  When my FIL comes over, he does the “Yay, Grandpa’s here!” dance, and licks him from top to toe, and when my friend who is terrified of dogs comes over, he gently nuzzles her and licks her hand to reassure her.

Yeah, he’s a vicious best, that one.

The pictures just hurt my heart.  I don’t understand people who favor this sort of horror.  These pups aren’t born mean, you have to train them to be mean - and by train, I mean abuse and neglect.  They’re loving and sweet and real members of the family, and I wouldn’t give up my Jack for anything.  I’m in total agreement with the Dad in the vid (which vid sent me sobbing and scurrying to go snuggle my dog).

In my experience of working in grooming salons and vet clinics, I was always way more concerned about the small breeds biting me than the large ones.  They were more likely to bite as a fear response and while it was highly unlikely that they could kill anyone, they could certainly inflict serious, painful and disfiguring bites.  I learned to be especially cautious around Scotties, Lhasa Apsos and Cocker Spaniels, which are all small, cute “family” breeds.

My own dogs are small and feel very threatened around loud, active children.  As Karinna said, unsupervised dogs and children are a bad combination.  A dog, no matter how sweet natured, is going to defend itself against a toddler who doesn’t know better than to pull fur and ears, not to mention an older kid who has been teasing and/or torturing it.  I wish we could outlaw poor parenting.

I was bitten by a big dog (german shepherd) when I was young. It was fightening because the dog jumped out from behind a fence that I was running past. I actually think that it bit me because I scared her. She had never bitten anyone and I knew her quite well (we lived 3 houses down the street). My parents didn’t sue the owner, the dog wasn’t put to sleep, there were no calls for all german shepherds to be killed. Thank god I don’t live in Denver.

Breed specific lesislation like this is WRONG. Thanks for posting this, Pam.

Yeah.  It’s not like the irresponsible owners are being banned from owning other dogs.

I think it’s kinda ironic that the sweetest dogs are in the breeds most capable of doing harm.  One of the reasons I like rural areas is because when you come across a dog, they might not be well socialized with people, but they’re much less stressed and likely to go off half cocked like a small dog in the city.

Just one quibble to an otherwise great post: I wouldn’t say that “the majority of people of Denver” endorsed the ban. It was passed by the City Council; if it ever went to the ballot, I like to think it would have a different outcome. (Though, I didn’t live here when it was first passed, so I can’t speak for what the public mood was like then.) We just had another highly-publicized incident of escaped dogs attacking a grandmother, who is in critical condition. They were mixed-breeds with an irresponsible owner. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I’m not a dog person at all and I wouldn’t have one.  But my family are all dog people and we had a pit when I was a kid.  Hank was seriously the sweetest dog ever (and he looked almost exactly like your Casey with that sad face).  We got him as a tiny puppy—I was probably 7 or 8 when we got him and I remember that he fit in my dad’s cupped hands the day they brought him home and he was great with all the kids in the area.  The only person I ever remember Hank not liking was my aunt’s abusive asshole husband.  And he did chase him out of our yard once, but even then he didn’t try to bite.

But our neighbor’s tiny, yippy, chihuahua was just awful.  She was the most foul tempered little thing ever and would bite anybody who came into their house.

I realize anecdote isn’t data and all that, but it really is the owners who make bad dogs, not the dogs themselves.

My neighbor has two pit bulls (urban single-family homes type neighborhood). Every day when I take my little terrier for a walk, they bark and scratch at the gate and sound pretty terrifying.  Of course my little dude takes the opportunity to act all tough back at them, since they are safely behind the fence.

One day, the gate was open, and when we walked by the dogs came bounding out.  I pulled my dog’s leash short and stood still.  The two monsters came charging up and…. sniffed and licked and wagged their tails.  Yep, real threatening.  Proved what I always suspected - all that barking and scratching at the fence really meant, “We wanna go on a walk, too!  Take us with you!”

I recently found out another neighbor has a couple of pit bulls.  The fact that we’ve been living on the same street for 15+ years and I didn’t know they were even around says a lot.  He’s a big, burly, tough looking longshoreman type - who is also an amazing Dad to his kids and the gentle center of his large extended family.  And guess what? The dogs are the same - big, burly, tough looking and sweet as pie.  And much better behaved than my lovable little delinquent.

Restrictions on breeds make no sense.  More sensible would be requiring owners to be educated on how to handle big dogs before they can obtain one, but that would require people to take responsibility so it’s probably a non-starter.

Different breeds have different temperaments, and some individual dogs are meaner than others. But the problem to be addressed by wide-ranging legislation should be more concerned with the temperament of the human owner than that of the dog or the breed.

If an owner has raised a vicious pit, they’d probably raise a vicious golden retriever. I do think people inclined to raise vicious dogs are attracted to “manly” breeds like pits and rottweilers.

I’ll second ks, having also been terrorized by my great aunt’s horror of a chihuahua as a child.

Also, Karinna A. was completely right about kids and dogs. My dog is insanely gentle with kids, and lets our son do whatever he wants to her. It’s a constant battle to remind him (he’s two) that not all dogs are like his dog, and he can’t go up to strange dogs and he should never touch another dog’s food. But it’s a battle we fight because we love our kid and would hate for a dog to bite him because he reached into their food dish. I’m appalled that Emaloo has neighbors who would let their kids pet a strange dog through a fence. I can’t imagine being that cavalier about my son’s safety.

Far more convenient to kill dogs and say that you are doing something.  Much harder to crack down on puppy mills, negligent owners, and people who run dog fights.

If there were a breed to ban, I’d pick German Shepards.  Too many are inbred, stupid and violently psychotic - and owned by people with no business having them and no ability to properly control them.

I’d rather require special licensing for dog owners.  Want a dog bigger than a cat?  Show papers that say you have the skills and the dog has been through training.

I am torn between two approaches: the one bite rule and the one free bite rule.

The one bite rule would put down a dog who bites a human just once.  This seems a little too harsh on otherwise innocent dogs who are startled or scared.

The one free bite rule would put the owner on notice that he or she must be very careful, and that if the dog ever bites anyone again the owner can be sued or even jailed.  This could be a tough to explain to the parents of a child bitten by a usually docile Great Dane.

Perhaps the answer is to have the one free bite rule generally, and the one bite rule for specific breeds?

Chet, I’m surprised that you are so quick to conflate a class with an individual, particularly when there are huge variations within that class and known sources of that variation which are class independent.

Seriously.  We can classify guns very specifically and very clearly control the individual variation within that class.  A breed of dog is a very poor definition of a “class” when it comes to behavioral issues, yet you choose to ignore that.

I have never been so glad to be behind a firewall as I was while reading this post.  I can guess what’s in the pictures; if I had accidentally seen them, I would have been a wreck all day.  As it is, my imagination is working overtime and I’m nauseated and upset.

My partner and I have done dog rescue for 20 years.  We’ve rescued three pits, including one we found running loose last December, half-starved and frostbitten, and who now cuddles with me on the couch every evening in front of the TV.  I would sooner trust a toddler with a pit than with a dachsund, a chow, or any kind of spitz breed.  I adore pits.

Breed bans are like every other kind of “zero tolerance” legislation—an excuse to avoid the hard wor of thinking.

BABH, I don’t like either of those.  I’d prefer a “one bite means evaluation and intervention” rule.

In some cases, the dog is okay, the owner and the dog need some training at owner expense, and future issues are prevented.  In other cases, the dog could be moved to another more responsible owner and intensively socialized.  In extreme situations it would be apparent that the dog is poorly socialized, not trained, not trainable, and too dangerous to live in human society.

Too much of this is looking for the quick fix rather than the solution to a problem.

Ms Kate:  There is no such breed as the German Shepard.  There are dogs known as German Shepherd Dogs, and as you can probably guess by the name, they are highly intelligent, gentle, and exceptionally trainable.

I’m sorry to be a snot, but you’re speaking from ignorance here.  German Shepherd Dogs (GSDs for short) are no more likely to be “inbred, stupid, and violently psychotic” than any other breed, and in fact considerably less so.  They’re widely used as service animals, therapy dogs, and search and rescue dogs.  Inbred, stupid, and violently psychotic dogs don’t do well at those tasks.

I’d rather require special licensing for dog owners.  Want a dog bigger than a cat?  Show papers that say you have the skills and the dog has been through training.

I see no reason not to apply this right across the board.  All dogs have the potential to bite and severely injure, so all dog owners should be held responsible for the proper training of their pets.

Just because it’s a little fucker, doesn’t mean it can’t badly hurt you.

Elmo, I was seventeen when I first met the dachsund that my now husband grew up with.  He was in the habit of being cooly wary to adults and growling at the grandchildren.  He got really confused by me.

Nasty little killers of little things, those wiener dogs!  Tubes o’ tude!

Ms Kate:  I totally 100% agree with yours of 2:26.  Exactly right.

Elmo, I’m not totally disagreeing with you.  My point is that my experience of nasty large dog things known as “german shepards” is highly negative and I’d chuck them and the untrained husky belonging to that thorazined dimwit down the street on that pile before I’d go after the pitties.

But there isnt’ really a clearly defined breed known as pit bull, either.  And, yes, the larger point is that BREED BANS are categorically stupid and historically ineffective.

http://www.kittyconnection.org

I wantz dogs .. but needs dogz thats friendly wit da kitteh.

Oopses: http://www.kittyconnection.net/adopting/adoptabledogs.html

Emaloo, check out the adoption application.

...

Chet, you aren’t actually making that comparison, are you?  Seriously? 

Pit Bulls = Living creatures with emotions and the ability to feel pain, who breed if left to their own devices and so must be killed if you don’t want them around.  And have been killed, by the thousands, because there was a panic about them back in the Eighties (other breeds bite more, and at least one other breed that nobody wants to ban bites harder).

Guns = Weapons. 

Seriously.  In your conscience, now.  False equivalencies that false are supposed to be the province of Wingnuts.

Ms Kate:

Fair enough, and I think we are in agreement.  You just found my exposed nerve on the subject of GSDs.    I’ve had several; they are “my breed,” so to speak, and my partner (former professional dog trainer, now disabled) is on her third GSD service dog.

I lurve me some German Shepherd Dogs.

I’d much rather see criminal penalties enforced against owners of dogs that cause serious injury or death.  Civil liability isn’t worth shit when many of the worst pit owners are poor or otherwise on the fringes of society.

That said, any and all unneutered dogs should be banned from public parks, especially dog parks.

The same reasoning applied to dogs doesn’t seem out of place. Chet
Offense completly taken. Bad ownership, and breeding unstable bitches and dogs are what cause dogs to snap, with bad ownership the main problem. Too many backyard breeders will mate entirely unsuitable animals together also, possibly resulting in a sketchy temperment. This applies to every breed, hell any animal, including humans! Mental illness is most certainly passed on down to people as well as dogs.

My rottweiler mix, Nyx, is an absolute angel-well, okay, she’s a bit of a princessy spoiled brat, but she’s extremely friendly and gentle.  Tries to play with my chickens, for god’s sake!

My lab mix, on the other hand, it quite fearful, possessive of my husband and doesn’t like other dogs (except for my other two dogs, and he still can’t play nice with them-always ends up barking too loud, spoiling the fun and playing with a toy off on his own.) Oh, and did I mention he is terrified of kids he doesn’t know?

Breed bans suck…and those pictures made my want to punch someone.

At least one of the local humane societies out here in the LA area takes a different tack—they offer free microchipping and spaying/neutering of any pit bull or pit bull mix within their service area.  Everyone else pays on a scale depending on the size of the dog.  Since unaltered dogs are much more likely to be aggressive, that seems like a pretty sensible plan to me.

Wow Chet! Way to have some compassion!! Damn! You do know that dogs are living, breathing creatures, and are often someone’s loved family member?

Guns are made to kill.  Dogs are animals, like you and I. Dogs kill when they aren’t properly trained or are abused or trained to kill. If you treat your dogs right, they can be life-saving. Can you train a gun to save lives instead of take them?? Do you think a gun feels pain when you dispose of it? Do you think a gun can love?

Jeez how can you even think they are comparable???

That said, any and all unneutered dogs should be banned from public parks, especially dog parks.

Do you count a dog with a vasectomy as unneutered?

I’ve been bitten—twice—by a German Shepherd tied up at a gas station by the owner there, for God knows what reason, and by some little mutt owned by a neighbor.

But not by a friend’s pit bull, Mr. Patton—who only showed aggression once, when someone tried to mug his owner in Central Park.

“Get him, Mr. Patton!” she screamed as she let her dog off leash, and he chased the thief away, to come back wagging his tail.

No offense, but I suspect if we were talking about bans on different types of guns this conversation would be a whole lot different. None of you would think twice about the wisdom of type-specific gun bans, recognizing that there’s a demonstrable difference in lethality, danger, and potential for abuse between a bolt-action .22 and a 30-round semiauto assault rifle.

And I suspect that the people who would show up to defend gun ownership, even ownership of assault rifles and handguns, would make most of the arguments you’re making, now. Why, I bet we’d even be treated to heart-rending images of guns being destroyed at foundries. And I bet they’d sound as tone-deaf and blinkered, by their own enthusiasm for the item under discussion, as you all do, now.

Should “all pits be put to death”? That doesn’t sound like well-reasoned policy, just like “ban all guns” doesn’t, either. But we do restrict the different kinds of guns that people can own, because some are more dangerous than others. The same reasoning applied to dogs doesn’t seem out of place.

The stupid in this post burns.

Did you seriously just compare inanimate objects built by humans solely for the purpose of destroying things with living, breathing creatures who are capable of feeling pain and suffering?

Did you really just compare a gun destruction foundry with an animal euthanasia facility?

You’re kind of an asshole.

Do you count a dog with a vasectomy as unneutered?

If there is such a thing, yes, it counts as unneutered.

It’s like a concentration camp picture from the Holocaust.  And I guess that’s exactly what it is.

There is no such breed as the German Shepard.

For most people, German Shepherd = “Alsatian.”  Therefore, there IS such a breed.  Besides, there’s a Wikipedia entry for it.  Case closed.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with big and little dogs, so I can’t really see the efficacy of a breed ban (all dogs MAY bite, but you can’t ban all breeds; and you can’t really point to one breed and say “this one’s bad”).  I guess the concept of breed bans is somewhat like gun bans, in the sense that if people won’t be or can’t be made to be responsible in their ownership of something potentially dangerous, you have to try something else.  I don’t know what that might be, but engaging in mass slaughter is just inhuman.  That’s certainly not the right way to go.  As has been said many times in the aftermath of Michael Vick, we are a nation of dog lovers.

Do you think people will accept being made to take a training course before being allowed to own a dog?

I am of the opinion that the law should allow people to keep whatever animals they want.  BUT—and this is a big “but”—the law should also impose strict liability upon owners for injuries caused by the animals and require owners to either maintain a sufficient insurance policy or post a bond (with some exceptions, of course, such as in the case of seeing eye dogs).  The “one free bite rule” should definitely be eliminated.

As a personal injury lawyer, I’ve seen what horrible injuries strong but poorly trained and/or abused dogs can inflict, especially on children.  I realize this is not the animals’ fault, but their owners—they should really have their feet held to the fire.  Every time.

Do you count a dog with a vasectomy as unneutered?

Yes.

A vasectomized dog will not know that he isn’t fertile, and will continue to exhibit all of the behavioral patterns of an unneutered dog.  Won’t father puppies, but will display the aggressive characteristics of an unneutered dog.

Can I put down your child if it tortures my innocent dog?  I can’t count the number of times unsupervised, unparented children will try to pull my dogs’ ears, fur, tails, ride on them… Here’s a hint - I’d bite the sh*t out of you too if you did that to me.

Redisca, what about cases where a dog is tormented or frightened and then attacks?  Or the owner is under threat?  Or someone climbs a fence?

That’s why I think it should be a case-by-case review with a list of standard criteria for evaluation.  It isn’t always the dog’s owner that is the human at fault.

“It’s the owner’s responsibility to train a dog; they are the ones who allow a dog to become emotionally unstable and unsocialized. They are the people who do not spay or neuter their dogs and leave these highly social creatures chained outside to go mad. Monsters are created not born. Innate traits in dogs can be cultivated for good or evil purposes. “

I’m sure I’ll be accused of malicious misreading here, but this sounds like a “dogs don’t kill people; people kill people” argument.

And I actually agree with that line of thought to some extent.  There should be licensing that includes mandatory education and training for people who want to own guns—and for people who want to own animals large enough to easily kill a human.

***No, guns are not exactly the same as animals,*** as pointed out in some posts above, but when either is mishandled by the humans who are responsible for them the results can be fatal.  In that respect, for the purpose of crafting some common sense regulation to protect both the individual (and their pets) and the community at large, I think the comparison is fair one.

A vasectomized dog will not know that he isn’t fertile, and will continue to exhibit all of the behavioral patterns of an unneutered dog.

I just don’t agree all unneutered dogs have behavior problems or aggressive characteristics. They are trainable, just like neutered ones. Sure, neutering can calm them down, but isn’t it kind of an “easy way out”? It’s really no guarantee that they’ll be any better. Sometimes if you wait too long to neuter them, there is hardly any change in behavior at all! And I’ve been bitten by a (small) spayed female dog.

My mom was a dog breeder and we had many unaltered dogs around, and only two dogs caused problems: a neutered German Shepard slaughtered one of our goats, and a Collie bitch liked to eat our (and our neighbors’) chickens!

For the record, I’m all for neutering, and do recommend it. I just don’t think we should pass laws banning non-neutered dogs from the dog park.

***No, guns are not exactly the same as animals,*** as pointed out in some posts above, but when either is mishandled by the humans who are responsible for them the results can be fatal.

When guns are handled correctly they are fatal.

Put simply (that is, without all the needlessly inflammatory gun analogies): demonstrably irresponsible people should not be allowed to take on large, potentially dangerous animals as pets.  It’s not only abusive to the animals, it’s dangerous for the community.  Instead of outright banning of breeds, we should regulate who is allowed to own certain breeds.

I just don’t think we should pass laws banning non-neutered dogs from the dog park.

Most serious attacks involve an unneutered male of any breed, and no one has an inherent right to bring a dangerous animal to a public area, especially if there are other small animals or children around.  Until there are consequences for irresponsible behavior, irresponsible people will not change.  In short, “encouraging” neutering is bogus.  It will result in no net benefit.

Why, I bet we’d even be treated to heart-rending images of guns being destroyed at foundries. And I bet they’d sound as tone-deaf and blinkered, by their own enthusiasm for the item under discussion, as you all do, now.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously? My God, what a massive fail.

Belleabsente:  If parents are expected to train and supervise their children, it is only logical that pet owners should be expected to train and supervise their pets.  You can’t put down my child if he tortures your dog—but you should be able to get money out of me.  Similarly, if your dog tortures my child, by all means, I don’t want to put down your dog—but you should definitely pay.  Every time your dog mauls someone, you should pay.  If he mauls people a lot, I guess you’ll pay a lot.  That would give you some incentive to make sure your dog doesn’t actually do that.  As I said—which would have been clear to you had you actually read my post—I am for allowing people to keep whatever animals they want, even wild, vicious and poorly trained animals; but the owners should PAY for any damage that these animals cause.  Clear enough now?

Ms. Kate:  Most states have no-fault automobile statutes, where people who are injured in an accident are reimbursed for their medical expenses and lost wages regardless of fault.  Same rules should apply to animal attacks.  So yes, though I recognize that a dog may be frightened or tormented into biting, strict liability should still apply.  In fact, the argument for no-fault is even stronger in the case of animals than in the case of cars.  For, though people who get bitten by dogs are sometimes partially at fault, the dog owner always has much greater control over and knowledge of the dog’s behavior, training and propensities.  Allowing for exceptions that you propose would open the door (as it is open now) for people like Belleabsente having knee-jerk reactions that holding a dog OWNER liable for injuries inflicted by the dog somehow amounts to an unfair condemnation of the dog.

I have to pause, however, over your example of climbing over a fence.  I suppose (correct me if I misunderstood) that what you mean is if someone trespasses on another’s property and gets bitten by the owners’ dog, he should not be compensated because it’s his fault.  Right?  Okay.  (What if the person climbs over your fence because he is trying to escape a psychopathic killer?  Or a rapist?  Do they then deserve to have their face ripped off, too?  This is beside the point, however.)  You do realize that training and keeping a vicious dog to defend your property from intruders isn’t any different than booby-trapping your hose with bombs, guns or blow-torches? Look, we might just have fundamentally different views here.  If you believe that turning one’s house into a death trap—by any means necessary—to punish intruders is acceptable, then I got no further argument.  I happen to disagree, but this is just a difference of opinion.  If, however, you think that shooting an intruder would be wrong, but letting him get mauled by a dog is okay, I’d like to know where you see the difference.

Liberalrob, you missed the point entire.  Of course there is such a breed as the German ShepHERD.  There is no breed called a German ShepARD.  I was making a point that the dog is called that because it HERDS.  And as a herding dog, it is generally highly intelligent, protective, and trainable.

Ms Kate and I have ironed out our differences, but I just wanted to make the point clear.

Do you think people will accept being made to take a training course before being allowed to own a dog?

There are already many unlicensed pets in this country and there’s little to no ability to enforce the licensing laws that exist.  Requiring a training course before allowing a person to own a dog would be equally as unenforceable.  The already responsible pet owners out there will comply, but all the irresponsible people buying dogs from puppy mills or getting free dogs from friends won’t bother.

“Denver has had a ban on “pit bulls” (or anything that looks like one or mistaken for one)”

Mistaken for one? Well, that does it.

I was walking my family’s dog in a rest area in Nebraska once when a woman about 30 feet away gathered her 5 or 6 children close around her, glared death at me, and said, “That’s a pit bull!”

That was better than the guy who asked me with a straight face if the dog was a pointer. Chester, God rest his soul, was a pug.

So would they seriously have put my dear pug to sleep because some ignorant yahoo took a look at his uselessly weak jaw and his snaggled teeth and concluded that he must be a pit bull? Seriously?

That’s not even breed-specific. It’s mind-numbingly stupid.

Redisca, you weren’t talking to me, but if you don’t mind I’d like to join in.  The difference between shooting and a dog bite is that gunshot wounds are very often fatal.  Dog bites hardly ever are.  Hardly EVER.  They are painful and unpleasant, but the vast, vast, overwhelmingly vast majority of dogs would not kill or even maul an intruder—they might bite once, on the leg or buttock or arm, but it is extraordinarily rare for a dog to even hospitalize a person, let alone kill them.

That’s why it makes big news when it happens.

James, that’s hilarious.  Sad, but hilarious.

It’s also why I don’t correct people when they see my white pit bull with liver-colored spots and exclaim, “Oh what a cute Dalmatian mix!”

Redisca, you don’t know much about dogs, do you?

Even my neighbor’s geriatric labrador would take exception to an intruder.  This dog played with my sons from their baby days and trained them in being gentle - she is very gentle with babies, including my neighbor’s niece and nephews, but dogs are territorial and they generally know who does not belong on their property.  I’m not talking a dog bred to attack or guard - I’m talking just about any dog, including my brother’s well socialized, usually gentle BICHONS might bite the shit out of an intruder.

I don’t think a “owner must pay” law should ever include such a situation.  For someone who has reportedly handled these cases, you sure haven’t spoken to any vets or dog handlers - or listened to them - if you don’t know this.

<quote>I shouldn’t be responsible for an injury that was at least equally caused by non-thinking parents. </quote>  So if you are 50% at fault, you shouldn’t be held liable at all?  Is that what you are saying?

Every time your dog mauls someone, you should pay.  If he mauls people a lot, I guess you’ll pay a lot.  That would give you some incentive to make sure your dog doesn’t actually do that.

And if you have no money or insurance, what then?  There’s no incentive for destitute people not to own and mistreat dangerous dogs.

Most states have no-fault automobile statutes, where people who are injured in an accident are reimbursed for their medical expenses and lost wages regardless of fault.  Same rules should apply to animal attacks.

If strict liability is the only thing that applies here, there is ZERO incentive for insured, irresponsible owners to change.  Sure, their insurance premiums will go up, but that punishment is not adequate in the event of someone being mauled or killed by an unprovoked dog attack.  Speaking of no-fault auto insurance, nothing short of throwing dangerous drivers in jail seems to get them to change their behavior*.  Their high premiums (and the lives they put in danger, including their own) often don’t seem to be enough.

*Several years ago, a driver in Seattle hit and killed a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk.  He got off with no jail time and he’s since been caught running red lights.  He’s already KILLED someone.

Ms. Kate:  I am not arguing with you about how dogs ARE.  My concern is what responsibilities people who own dogs owe to the general public.  I got no beef with how dogs behave when they are being territorial.  But if a dog’s propensities—however natural they may be—result in a severe injury, the owner should be the one to bear the cost, not the victim.  Let that be just one of the costs of dog-ownership.  Most people own pets for companionship; in other words, for pleasure.  Which is fine and good, but that pleasure should not come at the expense of someone’s extreme suffering or disfigurement.

good grief, my wife and i are obviously poor parents! we taught our children to NEVER try to pet an unknown animal, no matter how cute or cuddly it seemed, for the very reason many of you have pointed out. they are to ask the owner’s permission first. oddly enough, neither has ever been bitten by a dog. clearly, we failed somewhere.

myself, i’m not really a dog person, cats own me. that said, it’s been my personal experience that poor owners make for unfortunate dogs. a dog (or cat) will, absent proper training, do what dogs and cats naturally do, it’s there job. it’s up to the owner to train the animal, so it can live a nice life.

maybe denver should consider banning bad owners.

For the record, I’m all for neutering, and do recommend it. I just don’t think we should pass laws banning non-neutered dogs from the dog park.

I’m picturing what might happen in a park full of unneutered dogs when some idiot brings his unspayed dog there while she’s in heat.

Redisca, and if that “victim” was taunting or hurting the dog?  Is the dog owner still liable because some asshead decided to kick their dog or hit it?  Really?  Or because someone broke into their home?

Redisca, you don’t let your child stick his/her hand through a fence at a dog.  If you don’t understand that, you will learn the hard way and the dog owner has no responsibility for your neglect of your children.  Similarly, you don’t trespass or break into a house without assuming the risks of doing so. The world is not fucking disneyland for kids and intruders.

And if you have no money or insurance, what then?  There’s no incentive for destitute people not to own and mistreat dangerous dogs.

People who have no money and cannot afford insurance should not be allowed to own dogs (again, unless they are blind and need guide dogs).  I realize this will provoke a lot of outrage.  But what if the dog bites someone who also has no money and no medical insurance?  Who will pay for that person’s treatment?  Moreover, if the dog disfigures the victim, whether or not the victim has medical insurance is irrelevant; since most insurance carriers don’t pay for cosmetic and reconstructive surgery.

If strict liability is the only thing that applies here, there is ZERO incentive for insured, irresponsible owners to change.  Sure, their insurance premiums will go up, but that punishment is not adequate in the event of someone being mauled or killed by an unprovoked dog attack.  Speaking of no-fault auto insurance, nothing short of throwing dangerous drivers in jail seems to get them to change their behavior*.  Their high premiums (and the lives they put in danger, including their own) often don’t seem to be enough.

That may be so, but at least those who have been injured will be compensated.  Under the laws as they are now, there is no incentive for irresponsible owners to change AND no compensation for victims.

I’m picturing what might happen in a park full of unneutered dogs when some idiot brings his unspayed dog there while she’s in heat.

Rule 34 of the Internets means you probably don’t even have to waste the energy to imagine it.

When guns are handled correctly they are fatal.

I’m not a gun owner or even particularly pro-gun (I support assault weapons bans), but that statement isn’t precisely true.

I’ve fired a gun precisely twice in my entire life.  In both cases, I handled the weapon correctly.  In neither case was any person or animal killed.  And it wasn’t for lack of marksmanship… I was shooting at a target range and at bottles at my friend’s cabin in the woods.  And it was in those two experiences that I decided I really didn’t want much to do with the gun culture.

My point is that it’s more accurate to say that a gun handled correctly is meant to destroy, but not necessarily to kill.  I have a friend who likes to go skeet shooting, but doesn’t hunt, and doesn’t keep any firearms in his house.  He handles the guns he owns correctly, but he has yet to ever kill anyone or anything, nor does he plan to.  But he does make a mess of some clay pigeons.

Oh I get it - Redisca wants a system that maximizes the compensation for personal injury lawyers.  Not a system that is just and apportions risk appropriately and respects animals.

Redisca, you don’t let your child stick his/her hand through a fence at a dog.  If you don’t understand that, you will learn the hard way and the dog owner has no responsibility for your neglect of your children.

I don’t let my child do a lot of things.  That is not the point.  In any event, you’ll be please to know that the dog owner presently has no responsibility for his own neglect of his dog.  Your dog can jump onto a school bus and kill my child, and more likely than not, you won’t be held responsible.  So rejoice.

Similarly, you don’t trespass or break into a house without assuming the risks of doing so. The world is not fucking disneyland for kids and intruders.

  The world is not a fucking disneyland—period.  (Or are you saying it should be a fucking disneyland for pet-lovers?) You don’t exist without assuming the risks of doing so—ALL the risks.  You’ve just made a argument to abolish all forms of responsibility.

“Far more convenient to kill dogs and say that you are doing something.  Much harder to crack down on puppy mills, negligent owners, and people who run dog fights. ” This! I hate that there’s so many diseased, inbred, abused animals. We had a dog from a garage breeder once who looked beautiful but was clearly not all there mentally. Sweet, but utterly unteachable and prone to hurting himself, until one day he ran in front of a car.

I will admit, I am terrified of big dogs. I was badly bitten to the point of needing stitches/still having a numb spot in my leg when I was 6 or 7, by a dog who I had often petted and played with before. I don’t necessarily fault him; his owners were kind of sketchy, he may have been abused or just scared/trigged by something I did.

But my casual attitude towards dogs took a severe hit, and I just can’t relax around them anymore. They are pack animals and hunters that we’ve domesticated and put under a lot of non-natural stress, and sometimes they snap, and I won’t be around any dog too big or strong for me to take down, if necessary.

Actually the older I get the less comfortable I get with breeding/having pets, not re danger but because it seems like it just might not be ethical to do so. I’m still thinking this over, though.

Oh I get it - Redisca wants a system that maximizes the compensation for personal injury lawyers.  Not a system that is just and apportions risk appropriately and respects animals.

Ah yes, attack me personally, why don’t you.  Incidentally, I work in insurance defense—I don’t represent plaintiffs.  Even if we adapt a system which “respects animals” by never holding dog owners responsible for the injuries that dogs inflict, it won’t make a dent in my income—there will always be plenty of doctors fucking up patients and home owners suing for damaged grass.  Incidentally, what are you, trying to maximize the income of doctors?  Somehow I don’t think lawyers are the only ones who don’t work for free.

Emaloo, I have a sweet black lab mix who’s the most patient, well-socialized dog I’ve ever had. If a kid pulled his ears or tail, or tried to ride him like a pony, he’d sit there smiling until the kid was finished. However, he’s a large dog, and I’ve been shocked by the number of parents who, when I take him out for a walk, encourage their small kids (whose faces are right at dog-mouth-level) to walk up and pet the doggy without so much as a by-your-leave from me.

Actually—Ms. Kate—adopting a no-fault system would REDUCE the profits of personal injury lawyers, since it would reduce litigation.  But naturally, being a lawyer and a Jew, I only think about money.  [/end sarcasm]

I’d prefer a “one bite means evaluation and intervention” rule.

But then what sanctions for an owner whose dog bites again?

The more I think about it, I really don’t see how to get around the fact that an owner is responsible for a dog’s actions.  If your kid taunts and teases me, I don’t get to punch her in the face for free.  Why should I be allowed to let my dog bite her?

“Your dog can jump onto a school bus and kill my child, and more likely than not, you won’t be held responsible.”

Ok, Redisca, if you don’t know that this is utter bullshit, I don’t think you’re reachable. 

I also note how you ignore when everyone asks you what about animals that are being hurt or taunted by someone? 

Look, if a fenced yard and a sign saying “DO NOT PET THE DOGS” is not enough, what the hell is?  I think we’re all done making the mistake of thinking you’re arguing in good faith.

BABH:  Yes, but if someone punches you, you get to punch back, yes?  I believe it’s called self defense?

no one has an inherent right to bring a dangerous animal to a public area, especially if there are other small animals or children around

I agree. But “unneutered” doesn’t automatically mean “dangerous”, just like “neutered” doesn’t automatically mean “safe”.

I’m picturing what might happen in a park full of unneutered dogs when some idiot brings his unspayed dog there while she’s in heat.

Lol, yeah that doesn’t sound good. I don’t know how you could enforce a law though to prevent that from happening, though. Free/cheap neutering and spaying might work better than a law.

The only trouble I’ve had with unneutered dogs is when I’m on my period and they want to jump all over me. You CAN train them to behave though, like I said before, I’ve lived with unaltered dogs my whole life and they are trainable. I’ve had aggressive neutered dogs try to bite my little dog when we’re on a dog walk though, and that pisses me off. Neutering is not a sure way to have a good dog!! They need to be trained!

Do you think people will accept being made to take a training course before being allowed to own a dog?

I’d be ok with it, especially if it was free or inexpensive, and as long as I didn’t have to start all over again when I got a second dog. But I agree with what keshmeshi said, only responsible owners (the ones that probably wouldn’t be a problem in the first place) would take it… which wouldn’t really solve anything.

I also think if you are an irresponsible owner and your dog causes harm unprovoked, you shouldn’t be allowed to own dogs anymore. Maybe this is actually the case, I don’t know, but again, problem with enforcement, since it’s easy to get a dog without any agency knowing about it. That’s how dog abusers, who aren’t allowed to own dogs, still own and abuse dogs after paying their fine.

So I just looked up the law in my state, and it appears that there’s no free bite *unless* the victim was trespassing, or teasing/tormenting the dog.  If it’s a kid under 7 years old, the burden of proof is on the owner.  Seems reasonably fair, except that if I can let my dog attack trespassers, I’m not sure why I can’t just set bear-traps.

BABH, bear traps don’t know the difference between your leg and an intruder’s leg.

Look, if a fenced yard and a sign saying “DO NOT PET THE DOGS” is not enough, what the hell is?  I think we’re all done making the mistake of thinking you’re arguing in good faith.

This is actually not enough to relieve an owner of liability in Connecticut:

The Connecticut courts have clarified that merely entering another person’s property does not constitute trespass under this statute. “Trespass or tort” means more than mere entry; the statute bars recovery only where plaintiff is committing or intends to commit an injurious act. (133 C. 509: 140 C. 358.)

Redisca, you’re not seriously arguing that if someone hopped over my fence and injured him/herself on, say, a stake holding up my tomato plants, that that person could then sue me for injuries sustained while trespassing?  A burglar in my house could break their leg falling down my staircase, and they’d get to sue because they were injured in my house?  An owner having to pay liability because their dog bite an intruder is every bit as ridiculous.

Yes, owners must take responsibility for their dogs.  But people around dogs also must take responsibility for their own actions.  Like, say, don’t stick your hands through a fence that says “Beware Of Dog.”

Karinna A.: Yes, a property owner could be held liable for some (or possibly all) those scenarios.  Tort law is weird, and often very strict.

BABH:  Yes, but if someone punches you, you get to punch back, yes?  I believe it’s called self defense?

What if a kid punches you?

And, yes, our laywer friend is not arguing in good faith.  A “no fault” system would be litigation galore, just like it was when MA went to no fault insurance.  A system where a bite launched a systematic evaluation and investigation which would find a hand stuck through a fence to be an intrusion and thus not the dog owners fault, or a need for training and victim compensation, or a dog to be irredemably dangerous, would deal with the actual problem.

Actual problem not being “who pays and who sues” but “dogs biting”.

Karinna A, actually I think criminals have actually sued for reasons like that.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/zapped_amtrak_trespasser_sues_2eHR5cMdaOLvkLvJs34zgI
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-134702476/mo-supreme-court-rules.html

Usually, though, you are safe if your dog attacks a trespasser. Your allowed to have guard dogs.

I have to pause, however, over your example of climbing over a fence.  I suppose (correct me if I misunderstood) that what you mean is if someone trespasses on another’s property and gets bitten by the owners’ dog, he should not be compensated because it’s his fault.  Right?  Okay.  (What if the person climbs over your fence because he is trying to escape a psychopathic killer?  Or a rapist?  Do they then deserve to have their face ripped off, too?  This is beside the point, however.) You do realize that training and keeping a vicious dog to defend your property from intruders isn’t any different than booby-trapping your hose with bombs, guns or blow-torches? Look, we might just have fundamentally different views here.  If you believe that turning one’s house into a death trap—by any means necessary—to punish intruders is acceptable, then I got no further argument.  I happen to disagree, but this is just a difference of opinion.  If, however, you think that shooting an intruder would be wrong, but letting him get mauled by a dog is okay, I’d like to know where you see the difference.

OK, let me get this straight.  I have a dog, a beautiful black German Shepherd-Labrador-Chow mutt.  Very gentle, very playful.  I didn’t train her to be vicious, and to my knowledge, she has never bitten anyone, ever.  I don’t have her for protection of property, but I do know that she will bark extremely loud if someone unfamiliar approaches the door late at night.  To my knowledge, her bark is far worse than her bite, which so far has been nonexistent.

Are you seriously saying that if someone breaks into my apartment in the middle of the night and my dog bites the intruder, I should have to pay damages to this asshole that was trying to rob me?  My dog isn’t really the biting type, but if she did bite an intruder, I don’t see how I should have to be responsible for the asshole’s pain and suffering.

Fuck that.  And fuck any scumbag who would try to sue me in such an instance.

I don’t hate all trial lawyers, and the tort reform screamers can go jump off a cliff as far as I’m concerned.  But lawyers who take clients filing suits against their victims because they were injured while they were committing a crime?

Fuck them.

If people wonder why we on the left so often have to struggle against the constant stereotypes about frivolous lawsuits that come from the right, it’s because of lawyers who would sue a homeowner or renter whose dog attacked an intruder committing a fucking crime.  That is a fucking frivolous lawsuit epitomized.  Don’t want my dog to bite you when you break into my apartment?  Here’s a suggestion… DON’T BREAK INTO MY FUCKING APARTMENT, ASSHOLE!!!  Hell, why stop at defending burglars in these cases?  How about if the serial rapist breaks into your apartment and your dog bites him?  Does Mr. Rapist have a right to a healthy chunk of his would-be victim’s money for his pain and suffering caused by the dog bite as he was preparing to rape his victim?

I think banning dog breeds is both horribly impractical and inhumane, but I do think that certain breeds, especially pit bulls, rottweilers, and presa canarios, should be heavily regulated, with the first step being mandatory fixing. These three breeds are responsible for the vast majority of hospital visits, deaths, and maulings as a result of dog attacks, and it’s not clear that it’s always a result of poor handling/training (the fact that they were chained says nothing about whether they’re family pets, as many cities require chaining). The data is pretty muddy, except on one fact: those three dog breeds do the majority of the damage. That’s cause, in my book, for heavy regulation, but not banning.

I live next door to a pit bull, named Dante, who is neutered and sweet as could be. He plays with my 11-year old son all the time, and we occasionally watch him when my neighbor’s out of town. However, my anecdote does not a basis for policy make. Neither does anyone else’s.

Also, the pictures are manipulative, in the same way that pictures of aborted fetuses are manipulative. I’d like to think you folks are above that sort of bullshit.

@90: People are more important than property.  If I am trespassing on your land - even if it’s in order to steal your stuff - you don’t magically get the right to maim me, and nor does your dog. 

A case like that is not going to become a lawsuit unless the damage to the thief is really bad.  And really, if you cripple a man in the defense of mere possessions, that’s just wrong.

Similarly, people are more important than animals.  Sometimes - as even Ms. Kate acknowledged @19 - it’s appropriate to put them down for hurting humans.  The questions is where and how do we draw the line.

I have no dog in this fight, as it were - I’m just trying to think through a social problem I haven’t thought much about before.  But I just read back through all of Redisca’s posts, and I don’t see where she makes a “bad faith” argument anywhere.  Certainly she didn’t make the first ad hominem argument.

Because I think that people’s passions for their dogs might be clouding their judgment, I feel compelled to disclose that I have owned several dogs, some of whom I loved more than family members.

Karinna A.: Yes, a property owner could be held liable for some (or possibly all) those scenarios.  Tort law is weird, and often very strict.

*boggles*  I don’t think I actually know what to say.  That’s insane.

BABH:  Yes, but if someone punches you, you get to punch back, yes?  I believe it’s called self defense?
What if a kid punches you?

Well, the problem is that a dog doesn’t have the capacity to reason the way an adult does.  Sure, it’s ridiculous for an adult to punch a child—because the adult has the reasoning capacity and self-restraint to avoid reacting in self defense.  I don’t think it’s ridiculous for a dog to bite a child that’s poking it with a stick.  A dog does not have the same sense of reasoning or restraint as a human adult does—they’re rather like permanently having around a toddler.

A child over the age of six or seven is fully capable of understanding that hitting, poking, prodding or pulling a dog hurts the dog.  They’re also capable of understanding that when you hurt someone, you run the risk of getting hurt back.  Ergo, they terrorize a dog, I’m likely to have more sympathy for the dog than the kid who gets bitten.

Ergo, they terrorize a dog, I’m likely to have more sympathy for the dog than the kid who gets bitten.

Me, too, but the law does not agree with us. If your dog bites a kid and injures it, it’s very likely to be put down, even if the kid terrorized it first.

Dogs don’t have to be trained to kill to do so. This beloved family pet Rottweiler, used to being around the children in question, attacked and killed a toddler without warning: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7167438.stm

I don’t trust dog owners I don’t know any more than I trust gun owners. Many are responsible – many are not. Many are responsible up until something goes suddenly wrong.  There does seem to be some question as to whether banning dog breeds (as opposed to guns) is the answer (just as there is with lots of things that are not socially desirable). But just as I might be unsure about banning cannabis but not want to get into a car with a driver who’s been smoking it, I also don’t want to be around dogs of breeds that are known to be potentially lethal.

I like dogs. A friendly dog is a delight. I’m not scared of dogs. But frankly, until dog owners can be relied upon not to let their golden retrievers charge up to me barking and get their paws all over my clothes in a friendly way, I’m certainly not going to trust them that their ball of muscle and teeth will never, ever attack “unprovoked”. I don’t think children ought to poke dogs with sticks - but I don’t think that being bitten and seriously injured is fair punishment.

Let me join the parade of people with gentle pits. Otto is an AmStaff, about 90 pounds, loves to meet new people, gentle with kids, will beg for belly rubs from anyone. He is well socialized, gets a lot of exercise, etc. He is also movie-star gorgeous. Part of his behavior is endemic to his breed (as Pam knows with her lovely pooch) and part is due to his treatment. A dog of any breed can be broken through bad treatment/neglect. 
A breed-specific ban is stupid.  Fuck you, Denver. Fuck you for the ban in the first place, fuck you for never measuring its effectiveness, fuck you for never repealing it, just fuck you.  Fuck you, Denver.

Ninevah, I get your point about not trusting owners you don’t know - that’s why it boggles my mind that some parents tell their kids it’s ok to pet a strange dog.

And I agree that not all dog aggression comes from poor training. That said, I’m not sure how much I believe stories about dogs that suddenly snap either. I’ve had aggressive dogs and I’ve had gentle dogs, and I’ve always known the difference. My current dog has some abuse in her past and 98% of the time she’s a sweet and gentle creature. Put certain triggers in front of her and she’ll bite a strange adult without hesitation. The fact that she almost always appears harmless doesn’t mean there weren’t signs and evidence that she had aggression problems. Whenever I see a story about a family pet suddenly turning on its family, I wonder how many signs were ignored.

One of the best dogs I ever owned was half wolf. People thought my parents were crazy, and I don’t know what would have happened if she ever felt I was threatened. But she was completely safe around us kids, and my parents made sure she was never exposed to too many non-pack people. And while I do think she might have killed someone who threatened me, and I don’t think I would choose to own a wolf mix, I find it hard to muster much sympathy for the hypothetical victim who threatened a child in front of her dog.

Kat-

Then I think that laws need to be changed a bit.  We don’t charge a small child with a crime, even a serious one.  Dogs aren’t kids, but they’re more like small kids than, say, a wind-up toy programmed to act a certain way, or a tool like a gun.  It makes sense to me to have an evaluation done of the dog, its owners, and the situation before demanding that a dog who bit someone be put down.  It also makes sense to me to have some form of criminal penalty given to the owners—and the type of charge would also depend upon the outcome of the evaluation.  Your dog bit a kid who tried to pet it through a fence?  Community service and you must amend or replace your fence so that kids can’t stick their arms through.  Your dog mauled a passing pedestrian without any apparent provocation?  You do time for some form of assault and your pets get taken away.  Your dog kills someone, you do time for some sort of manslaughter.

That picture is sad, sad, sad. The problem is that too many pits are owned by jerks who don’t know anything about dogs. You shouldn’t own a pit, a Rottie, a Dobie, a chow, an Akita, etc. etc.—any dominant, powerful dog, unless you have it trained and under your control.

The neighbor’s pit—kept in their backyard 24/7—used to climb their tree and growl at my wife while she was working in the back yard. Scary. They didn’t know anything about dogs—they even brought a male home to mate with it. Later both would climb the fence and wander around the neighborhood.

Although pit fans seem to have a collective amnesia about this, pits were bred in part to fight: the first APBT registry was set up by the United Kennel Club to keep track of fighting dogs—although they have scrubbed this bit from their history. Yet you can have pits who are not dog aggressive, just like you can have collies that don’t herd or goldens that don’t retrieve. But you’re better off expecting the worst and making plans to prevent it.

I have owned 2 pitbull/german shepard mixes. I loved them and the pictures here make me cry. But I do have to respond to all the liability comments. Redisca is right, that is how tort law works. Some of you are attacking her, but she was just relaying the law. And the law does make some sense. Life and limb is more important than property. Unless your life is threatened you do not have the right to kill or maim someone to protect your possessions. You just don’t. The typical case in law school is a spring action shotgun set up to go off when an intruder enters an empty house. The owner’s were liable for the extreme injuries caused to the trespasser. One reason for this is that children or municipal workers (police, firefighters, etc.) could be harmed.  I adored my dogs, but when one of them bit a child by mistake (loved children, HATED dogs, little girl was trying to get in the middle of a dog fight in our backyard) we would have been liable if she had medical bills. Why should her family be responsible?

I think the civil system is most able to handle this. I would not want the criminal courts involved. Except of course if an investigation turned up animal abuse. Then fry the assholes.

I have a couple of questions: If the ban (like it or not) has been in effect for 20 years, how can they still be putting down Pit Bulls? Surely at this point Denver must be a Pit-free city, unless people are bringing their pets to a jurisdiction where they know they will be destroyed if discovered - which to me is the very definition of an irresponsible pet owner.

Secondly, and I ask this as someone who grew up with cats and is not a “dog person”, what’s the big deal with Pit Bulls? There are hundreds (thousands?) of breeds out there, why would someone looking for canine companionship select a type which was bred to kill large animals and - as Pam’s chart in the OP shows - kills as many people as the next two deadliest breeds combined? At the risk of sounding flip, why not just get a dog without all this genetic and legal baggage?

No offense, but I suspect if we were talking about bans on different types of guns this conversation would be a whole lot different.

Guns are not breathing and feeling and beloved.  Good lord.

As a personal injury lawyer, I’ve seen what horrible injuries strong but poorly trained and/or abused dogs can inflict, especially on children.  I realize this is not the animals’ fault, but their owners—they should really have their feet held to the fire.  Every time.

Comment #42: Redisca on 10/08 at 03:38 PM

FUCK YOU. Have you ever considered that maybe the dog was being tormented by the sweet little kid? Oh but that doesn’t matter does it? This is EXACTLY why I don’t want kids in my house.
I wouldn’t to lose it because of some ambulance chaser and their client. I can’t believe some of the comments here. It’s worse then the Daily Kos.

I have a sweet black lab mix who’s the most patient, well-socialized dog I’ve ever had. If a kid pulled his ears or tail, or tried to ride him like a pony, he’d sit there smiling until the kid was finished. However, he’s a large dog, and I’ve been shocked by the number of parents who, when I take him out for a walk, encourage their small kids (whose faces are right at dog-mouth-level) to walk up and pet the doggy without so much as a by-your-leave from me.

I could have written this, word for word.

It is flat out astonishing to me how many parents will let squealing toddlers run at breakneck speed right up to my 90-lb lab. She *loves* babies and toddlers, but how the hell are they to know that?

Of course, the meanest dogs I’ve ever personally known were a pair of Dachsies, so obviously it’s not a real bright idea to let your kids run up to any dog of any size. But seeing a toddler’s face practically right up in my dog’s jaws gives me a visceral chill, even knowing her disposition. I don’t know why it doesn’t inspire respect in those parents.

pits were bred in part to fight

To fight *other dogs*. Not humans.

People who have no money and cannot afford insurance should not be allowed to own dogs (again, unless they are blind and need guide dogs).
Redisca

What sort of classist bullshit is this? I was a min.wage slave for years and my dogs were and are my children. What a nasty person you must be. and I see you have a kid. I’m sure it’s a Perfect Snowflake too right?  Jesus christ

Long before Pit Bulls were the Terrible Very Bad Evil Breed, others held that distinction, including German Shepherds (Alsatians), English Bulldogs, Dobermans, Rottweilers, and—I think I have forgotten a couple of breeds. 

Pit Bulls and English Bulldogs were originally bred to be able to control a bull (hence the name) so they do have the strength to inflict terrible injuries.  However, cattle dogs are also among the smartest breeds.  Like all dogs, they want to please their pack leader, and in the case of dogs living with people, the pack leader is typically the main person in the dog’s life. 

A dog typically wants to obey its person’s orders, so it’s up to that person to see to the training and the rules.  That way, the dog can live a happy life and so can the people it comes in contact with. 

As a process server, I see a lot of dogs (more people keep dogs in their homes than I had ever imagined).  The pit bulls are usually very well behaved.  I met one a few days ago who came rushing out of the house and proceeded to kiss me all over, or as far as he could reach.  I said to the owners that either he was not much of a guard dog, or he could tell at a glance that I meant no harm.  They assured me that it was the latter case.  “Why, just last week, he bit a would-be thief in the butt while he was trying to take stuff out of their truck, and held him until I got there.”

I realize this is anecdata, but it does make the point that they can be trained to know the difference between an innocuous person and one who presents some kind of threat.  Before I was a process server, I was a mail carrier, and boy, I could tell you some dog stories.  None of which would involve pit bulls.

Redisca:
You might be getting static because you are advocating strict liability when presumptive liability might be a better tool to achieve the goal(s) that you discuss.

There is no way around the fact that most biting dogs are made that way through one of three main causes:
* the negligence of their owners;
* the deliberate actions of their owners;
* mental disturbance caused by excessive purity in the bloodline.  (Purity, of course, being a sweet euphemism for “enough inbreeding to satisfy Egyptian royalty”.)

You can’t eliminate nasty, biting dogs because you can’t eliminate nasty, sh-4-brains, semi-psychopathic dog owners.

Seeker6079:  You forgot the bite-ee fucking with them. 

Also with small dogs with good reason to fear being hurt by much larger creatures, fear of harm.

What sort of classist bullshit is this?

No kidding. Not to mention that those of us with tight finances who take in animals often do it because the animals need homes.

By all means let’s round up and confiscate all the dogs belonging to people who struggle to get by (but manage to provide decent care). Then what? Where are they going to go? They’d all have to be euthanized. What a heartbreaking slaughter. Yeah, that’s not a fucked up idea AT ALL.

I live in the SF Bay Area where apartment complexes and other non-corporate landlords either ban any pets or ban specific breeds. Which I think is ridiculous. It’s always about the owner. I do, however, support a mandatory neuter/spay law for all pets with only specific permit based exceptions. There is no reason not to get a pet altered especially since it can be cheap or free in most areas.

Older,
I could be wrong, but I believe Pit Bulls were bred not to control bulls but to KILL bulls in 18th- and 19th-century bull-baiting contests.

I don’t know how much of a given breed’s or individual dog’s behaviour is due to nurture or nature, but I have to assume that at least some is nature, or else no-one would bother creating new breeds for specific purposes.

I’ve been bitten twice in my life, each time by a Chihuahua.  Fortunately they’re not strong enough to do serious damage, but it left me with a cordial dislike of the breed.

OTOH, the friendliest, happiest, nicest puppy I ever met was a twelve week old pit bull who wanted to love me (and everyone else in the laundromat) to death.  He was going to be a really big, tough looking dog, but personality-wise he was lovely.

My Pit, Molly, I am told was rescued from a dog-fighting ring.  She is the sweetest dog I know.  Many people come up to me saying how sweet she is.  Some people say that they aren’t bred for fighting and they are surprised when I tell them that Molly actually was.  However, fighting is not instinctive, its taught.
I tell people who compliment me on my ownership that she was like this the day I met her.  The I point out that of Michael Vick’s 49 rescued dogs, only 1 was put down due to aggression, and some of them are now therapy dogs.
When a fighting pit shows aggression towards humans they do not breed that dog-they need the dogs to be submissive to humans in the ring.  Smokey the Bear used to say that matches don’t start forest fires, people do.  People don’t make pits vivious- criminals do.
Molly can be seen at www.mollynyc.com- there are no ads on her site.

I’ve gone back and forth on this issue. The arguments of Pam and the other dog lovers on this post are certainly logical. But the thing I can’t shake loose is, How would I feel and what would I try to do if my kid were mauled or killed by one of those dogs?

A few years ago, a Girl Scout selling cookies in a town near mine was killed by a pit bull just for walking up to the front door. She didn’t try to pet the dog or interact with it in any way—it just leaped through a crack in the door and attacked her. I’d sure hate to have to defend pit bulls to her parents.

Well, Bitter Scribe, if a *human* assaulted or brutalized my daughter, I would probably want him torn limb from limb, but my wishes wouldn’t inform what actually happened to the perpetrator because that’s not how the legal system works. As far as I’m concerned that’s the reason the legal system works, because personal, grief-filled, emotional desires for revenge shouldn’t be what determines a criminal’s punishment.

I think the concept is just about the same applied to dogs.

Er, for clarification, I don’t mean the concept of what should happen to an individual vicious/dangerous dog. I don’t think that was what you were talking about either. I mean if you stretch the idea of human justice a bit, I think it should be applied in much the same way in order to determine general policy such as breed specific legislation. It shouldn’t be determined by the grief of a parent whose kid has been attacked or killed, as much as I sympathize with their grief; it should be determined by rational factors.

When it comes to big dogs, even the word “bite” is misleading. I grew up with a husky and then a shepherd, and with both of them if you made them turn their heads suddenly and your hand was in the wrong place you might end up with blood. (Which was one reason we were very quiet when the cat kept putting his head in the dog’s mouth to see what was going on.)

And what distinguishes dogs from mechanical traps is that dogs, in addition to being territorial, are also pack animals, which means they have at least a rudimentary understanding of emotional state and intention. (The only time that shepherd attacked anyone was when a family member who had drunk too much lifted a sledge hammer to test a guest’s knee reflex; one punctured sleeve later the family member put down the hammer.)

I’m trying to think of a neutral nonsentient analogy here. If someone broke into my shop and cut their hand off with a sawzall, I doubt I would be liable; ditto if they came up behind me while I was limbing a tree and stuck fingers into the saw chain.

Bitter Scribe:

The thing is, a breed ban wouldn’t necessarily have saved that poor girl’s life.  The dog’s owners likely would have bought a different kind of “macho” breed—say, a Rottweiler—treated it the same way, and the Rottweiler would probably have ended up as aggressive and nasty.  No guarantees, since dogs are as different as people, but I hope you see what I’m trying to say.

I don’t know what to do, really, about irresponsible dog owners who purchase animals to enhance their own masculinity, train the dogs to be highly aggressive, neglect them, etc, at least not before their mistreatment of their animals causes irreparable harm.  But a breed ban isn’t the answer.

What sort of classist bullshit is this?

The same sort of classist bullshit that would deny diamond tiaras to those who cannot afford them, I suspect.  I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ask a dog owner to have an insurance policy that would cover the cost of treatment if their dog bit another person.  I’ve read that most homeowner’s and renter’s insurance policies do.

And if the owner can’t afford the policy then the owner can’t afford the dog.

Really, if the state can require that a car owner buy car insurance - which really is classist, because the state has more or less made car ownership a necessity by virtue of its planning decisions - then it can certainly require that a dog owner, who is under absolutely no obligation to own a dog, buy insurance, too.

I’m ambivalent toward breed-specific bans.  I don’t want to see a dog put to sleep merely because it resembles a breed, but at the same time, if a few breeds - Pit Bull-types, Rottweilers, and German Shepherd Dogs - are responsible for so many dog bite deaths, I don’t care to dismiss breed-specific laws, either.

I wish we could outlaw poor parenting.

I wish I could outlaw the kind of dog owner who thinks that if their dog misbehaves, or is aggressive toward another human, it’s never the dog’s fault. (And by that, I don’t mean, people who understand that a badly-trained dog is the result of a bad owner; I mean people who think Precious Snwoogums can do no wrong.)

I don’t have a hate for pit bulls more than any other breed, because I’ve run into plenty of bad dog owners who thought it was fine for their unleashed dog to run up or jump on my kids out of nowhere, or who think it’s perfectly OK behavior if their dog growls and lunges on its leash at my children who are doing nothing more than walking on a public sidewalk - and none of them were owners of pit bulls.

It took me a long time to teach my oldest kid that some dogs are OK, because when she was little, we lived in a nice liberal urban area full of asshole dog owners. Forget “don’t pet strange dogs”, it was more like “if you see a dog, stand behind me so it doesn’t see you and I can protect you”.

Breed legislation doesn’t eliminate the assholes who fail to do right by their dogs.

I ask this as someone who grew up with cats and is not a “dog person”, what’s the big deal with Pit Bulls? There are hundreds (thousands?) of breeds out there, why would someone looking for canine companionship select a type which was bred to kill large animals and - as Pam’s chart in the OP shows - kills as many people as the next two deadliest breeds combined? At the risk of sounding flip, why not just get a dog without all this genetic and legal baggage?
Comment #102: smokescreen on 10/08 at 07:00 PM

Exactly.  It eventually comes down to saying pit bulls are bred to be friendly to people and aggressive to other dogs. 

Well, great.  But why would you want a dog that’s supposed to be aggressive to other dogs?  If you love dogs, why would you want an animal that is bred to kill someone else’s sweet doggy?

And, yes, sometimes kids do torture animals.  But sometimes they don’t know what they’re doing.  In either case, it’s usually because children are not the same moral actors adults are, and don’t understand all the fine points of dog psychology (neither do many adults).

For example, a child trying to ride a dog isn’t trying to hurt it or be mean to it—the child thinks this is a fun thing to do, having seen something like it in cartoons, and blunders into a possible violent encounter. 

The dog can’t help its reaction.  That doesn’t make the reaction *right*.  That doesn’t make mauling an appropriate punishment for the child’s error.

The responsibility is on the dog owner to keep that encounter from ever happening, because this is a society of humans, not dogs.  If you want to keep a dog around you, you must make sure that it doesn’t hurt humans.  Ever.

The tyranny of ‘don’t do anything my dog won’t like’ is ridiculous on its face.  It basically assigns a dog to be the owner’s id, to perform the owner’s hostility (or sexuality) for her or him, blamelessly, because the dog can’t reason.Police know that a dog is a terroristic weapon when used against a person. 

Watch COPS and see how universal the response is to a police dog by a pursued suspect—he begs them to call off the dog, often crying or screaming.  I think some dog owners relish this kind of power.

Mark @6, when I was little we lived in a rural area where people had dogs, including Shepherds. If a dog jumped a fence and bit a child who was doing nothing but “running past”, it would have been put down, and not because panicky urbanite were afraid of the breed. That kind of territorial, unprovoked aggression towards humans is not something you make excuses for. Ever.

The tyranny of ‘don’t do anything my dog won’t like’ is ridiculous on its face.

True, this. 

Hate to break it to the dog owner, but this is a society by and for humans.  It’s up to the doggie to adapt to us (within limits, natch ... that doesn’t include people acting like provocative fools to the dog) or Fido must go.  If you can’t walk your dog down the sidewalk without the need for everybody to pussyfoot around it lest it attack then it’s time to sell the dog to a farmer, gas the nervous little darling and fine you until your wallet bleeds.

Given how many people have asked me about my “wiener dog” or “dachshund” over the years (He’s a <em>very<em> big basset - a good 6” over breed standard.), or have asked about our “Doberman” when talking about our actual dachshund - I have a big problem with breed specific legislation. If people can’t tell a dachshund from a Doberman, why do we think they’ll be able to discern a pit or a GSD? And I don’t just mean the general public - the people writing the laws and the people enforcing them can be just as ill-informed.

And as if that would stop the people who think having a pit is a Macho Thing; they’ll just breed mixes. “What, Pit Bull? Oh no, she’s half Lab.”

there should be an “or” after “farmer,”

I wish I could outlaw the kind of dog owner who thinks that if their dog misbehaves, or is aggressive toward another human, it’s never the dog’s fault.

Exactly.  Owners like these are almost the walking definition of an ignorant, irresponsible owner.  And the type who, if their dog does eventually lash out without provocation, will hold up their hands and swear that their precious pookums pug (or whatever) had never done anything like that before.  They’re almost as bad as parents who think that their children never do anything wrong.

Tapetum:
A lover of mine, a woman with no taste for a sheath on the cutting edge of her tongue, once saw a woman with one of the tiny breeds.  In the voice of an excited tourist she loudly called out, “seeker, look!  A stewing dog!”

Mythago at 122 and Karinna A at 129:

Word.  I will carry a deep scar until I die from a beautiful dog, peaceful whose attack on me was ENTIRELY the owner’s fault.  The moron kept the dog around a place with high-pitched squealing, hydraulic hisses and air pressure whistles until it went bonkers and attacked the nearest thing to hand: me.

They’re almost as bad as parents who think that their children never do anything wrong.

Perhaps worse, because children will generally have other influences in their life, and can learn from teachers and peers that there are consequences and that there are better ways to behave. Dogs rarely get an intervening owner who teaches them that, no, it’s not okay to bite people to get them to drop that hot dog they’re eating.

The same sort of classist bullshit that would deny diamond tiaras to those who cannot afford them, I suspect.

Diamond tiaras don’t need homes. Diamond tiaras don’t suffer when they’re not cared for. Diamond tiaras are not ever, ever considered part of someone’s family. Diamond tiaras do not provide a reason for anyone to get out of bed in the morning.

I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ask a dog owner to have an insurance policy that would cover the cost of treatment if their dog bit another person.

So you have no problem with the butchery of hundreds of thousands of healthy, loving, beloved pets currently belonging to people who can afford to care for them but cannot afford the additional cost of an insurance policy? Interesting. I bet that says something about you, but I won’t venture to specify what.

But why would you want a dog that’s supposed to be aggressive to other dogs?  If you love dogs, why would you want an animal that is bred to kill someone else’s sweet doggy?

Poodles and Labrador retrievers were originally bred for hunting including waterbirds. Why would anyone have a poodle or Lab if they don’t want to kill sweet duckies?

Terriers were originally bred for avidly killing rats, weasels and other small animals (and are still known for having a high prey drive for small animals that are not necessarily vermin). Why would anyone have a terrier breed if they don’t want to kill cute bunnies?

Greyhounds were originally bred for coursing deer and also are known for having high prey drives. Other types of hounds are for hunting coons and other game. Why would, et cetera, et cetera?

The fact is that what a breed was originally bred for can have little to no bearing on the actual disposition of an individual dog. (My Lab has webbed feet, but she wouldn’t go in the water to save her life.)

Plus, no matter what they were bred for, they are living beings who need care. What would your solution be, wipe out the entire breed? I oppose breeding pitbulls, but I oppose breeding dogs and cats, period, because of all the already existing dogs and cats that have to be euthanized each day.

The law, however, treats animals the same as inanimate objects.

So it isn’t as mendacious of an argument as has been blamed here.

The law, however, treats animals the same as inanimate objects.

Which is a flaw to be remedied, not a basis to build on. The law also treats human women the same as children or chattel, and a new law based on that assumption would be unacceptable.

Sorry, should be “the law also treats human women the same as children or chattel in many ways”.

Diamond tiaras don’t need homes.

They share one aspect: they exist in a supply and demand world.  If people who shouldn’t have or can’t afford dogs don’t buy them then there is smaller demand for dogs, and so fewer dogs who need homes.

I am all in favour of the insurance requirement, but for one specific class of dog-owner who I worry would be caught by the law more often and more aggressively: the homeless.  Many homeless folks have dogs for self-protection, to bark if approached when sleeping rough and to serve as a deterrent to theft, common assault, rape or murder (in addition to the obvious emotional benefits to those who live so unhappily).  I’m all for making the tiny-dicked, swaggering asshole down the metaphorical block pay through the nose for his insurance.  I am VERY reluctant to take a dog away from a homeless man or woman.  Class-based policing being what it is, though, I’m sure that a homeless woman will be ticketed and her dog confiscated long before a more dangerous animal is removed from some “respectable” home.

In any event, the way that American police are getting trigger happy around dogs there may not be any left to argue about!
http://www.google.ca/search?q=puppycide&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rlz=1R1GGGL_enCA340CA341&client=firefox-a

And, truth be told, I’m also worried that an insurance requirement would also result in the working poor and lower middle class losing their dogs.

Perhaps we could just force insurance on the top 20 biting dogs.  Want a dog?  You can have one without insurance as long it is not shown to be empirically dangerous.

Poodles and Labrador retrievers were originally bred for hunting including waterbirds. Why would anyone have a poodle or Lab if they don’t want to kill sweet duckies?

Terriers were originally bred for avidly killing rats, weasels and other small animals (and are still known for having a high prey drive for small animals that are not necessarily vermin). Why would anyone have a terrier breed if they don’t want to kill cute bunnies?

Greyhounds were originally bred for coursing deer and also are known for having high prey drives. Other types of hounds are for hunting coons and other game. Why would, et cetera, et cetera?

When we have waterbirds, weasels, rats, bunnies, deer and raccoons as treasured companion animals that interact daily on walks with dogs, that will be an issue.  And when dogs are allowed to roam free and attack such animals, it is an issue. 

The fact is that what a breed was originally bred for can have little to no bearing on the actual disposition of an individual dog. (My Lab has webbed feet, but she wouldn’t go in the water to save her life.)

Plus, no matter what they were bred for, they are living beings who need care. What would your solution be, wipe out the entire breed? I oppose breeding pitbulls, but I oppose breeding dogs and cats, period, because of all the already existing dogs and cats that have to be euthanized each day.
Comment #134: kristin on 10/08 at 10:17 PM

Genetics isn’t everything, no.  But since the breed is bred for it, most of the animals in that breed have it. 

It may be possible to breed it out of them, but that would require the dog breeder machinery to go against the AKC.  And lots of careful breeding counter to what some subhuman types are hell-bent on.  Good luck on that one.

So…yes, wipe out the entire breed.  Stop breeding them.  Spay and neuter those that are still here.  I do not condone killing the ones still here.  The ones in the horrible death pictures should have been rehomed if at all possible.  We must treat them with love and respect, as we should all fellow animals. 

But continuing a breed that has within it this particular killing instinct that gets them into trouble, that can easily wreak havoc on the lives of fellow loved companion animals of their own kind, is not doing them or anyone else a favor, no matter how cuddly and sweet your dog is with you and your family.

I have a couple of questions: If the ban (like it or not) has been in effect for 20 years, how can they still be putting down Pit Bulls? Surely at this point Denver must be a Pit-free city, unless people are bringing their pets to a jurisdiction where they know they will be destroyed if discovered - which to me is the very definition of an irresponsible pet owner.

It seems you didn’t read the full article:  The point is made that Denver’s classification of “pit bulls” does not match the AKC’s definition, so much so that they’ve sometimes classified dogs like French Bulldogs as Pits.

If people who shouldn’t have or can’t afford dogs don’t buy them then there is smaller demand for dogs, and so fewer dogs who need homes.

Nooooo. It really doesn’t work that way, because it’s not exactly a supply and demand issue with dogs and other animals. Diamond tiaras and other consumer goods don’t reproduce litters of baby tiaras unless they’re neutered. And no morons decide it’s a good idea to breed their two, dented, unstylish diamond tiaras in their backyard so they can sell the resulting ugly, ill-designed tiara offspring.

The fact is that despite the supposed “demand” for dogs there are millions euthanized in the US every year, because they are produced at a rate that outstrips demand.

So…yes, wipe out the entire breed.  Stop breeding them.  Spay and neuter those that are still here.  I do not condone killing the ones still here.  The ones in the horrible death pictures should have been rehomed if at all possible.  We must treat them with love and respect, as we should all fellow animals.

Yeah, I think we agree more than we disagree. I’m strongly opposed to the continued breeding and sale of most companion animals, since there are already more than we can care for. And I think that continuing to breed animals for a certain coat color or for tasks that no one needs done anymore is an arrogant human conceit, so I would be just as happy if I could wave a magic wand and freeze all animal reproduction until there actually is a demand for dogs or cats, and then know they would be bred for robust health and delightful personalities.

Or, if anyone is getting their shorts in a knot over their “right” to breed animals that are aesthetically pleasing to humans and discard those that are not, eliminate the breed another way: change it from within. Keep the visual breed standard, but tightly regulate breeding and select for sweet, non-aggressive temperament. We don’t need dogs that can kill bulls anymore.

Diamond tiaras don’t need homes.

Nice try, but while dogs may need people, people don’t need dogs.  If a person can’t afford a dog, the person shouldn’t have one.

So you have no problem with the butchery of hundreds of thousands of healthy, loving, beloved pets currently belonging to people who can afford to care for them but cannot afford the additional cost of an insurance policy?

If the owner can’t afford to cover the damage they cause, then they can’t afford to care for them.  And if the dog must be euthanized because of that, it’s the owner’s fault for having placed their own desire to have a dog over the dog’s well-being.

If people who shouldn’t have or can’t afford dogs don’t buy them

OK, I am serially commenting now and I apologize, but I want to address this framing and I forgot before.

First, people like my family CAN afford a dog. What we can’t afford is the care of a dog plus an insurance policy for a dog.

Second, many people don’t *buy* dogs. I went out and got the dog I have now on purpose (I still didn’t buy her, though), but past dogs have found me and my family because they desperately needed someone to care for them and there was no one else to step up. Again, dogs are not consumable goods, even if the law regards them as such. Consumable goods don’t suffer from remaining on the shelf.

OK Drew, you’re a monster, I get it.

past dogs have found me and my family because they desperately needed someone to care for them and there was no one else to step up

Exactly.  My parents have a mini-Schnauser because his owner didn’t find any way to keep him from running, and apparently didn’t care much about feeding him, either.  My mom found Harley running down the middle of the road, and took him in on Memorial Day.  She called the police and vets.  Two and a half weeks later, the owner got in contact with my mom, to claim the mini-Schnauser.  On 4th of July weekend, guess what dog was sitting on their deck, begging to be let in?  Okay, so they didn’t *need* to buy the mutt puppy from the pet shop/shelter thing, but Walker had been found running loose on the reservation, and no one claimed him. 

And with the current economic crisis, the local shelter has been having a lot of drop-offs by owners who used to be able to afford their pets, but who can’t anymore.  If someone can afford to feed and care for and train a dropped off dog who otherwise is going to be destroyed, why add the extra burden of an insurance policy?  Though I could get behind requiring owners of certain breeds or mixes to carry insurance.

(Sorry for the massive amount of posting.  Feminism I love reading about, but don’t feel comfortable posting about.  Dogs are different.)

First, people like my family CAN afford a dog. What we can’t afford is the care of a dog plus an insurance policy for a dog.

Then no, actually, you can’t afford a dog.  But you don’t care, because you’d rather feel like a savior. 

I suggest you reconsider your motives before your next dog “finds” you.

Fuck off, Drew. It takes a sick sick person to think that abandoning animals to suffer and die instead of caring for them is the morally pure thing to do. I got no time for sickos like you.

Drew’s not being extra super polite, but he’s not entirely wrong either: you aren’t just getting a dog, you are getting a dog + food + shelter + medical bills + toys + training responsibilities + daily mandatory walks and, yes, the expectation that you are financially/legally liable for that dog’s behavior.

When I had 2 pet rats as a kid I didn’t have to just save up enough to buy the rats themselves, I had to save up enough to buy all their supplies and to pay to get them spayed, and eventually I had to get an after-school job to pay for antibiotics when one of them got a lung infection. And if rats were prone to wandering around the neighborhood biting children in the face I also would have been expected to plan for that possibility as well. Humans really *don’t* have some inalienable right to own cute fuzzy dangerous creatures. Seriously. It’s a commitment. And if you can’t make that commitment then you shouldn’t buy or adopt that animal, even if it is totally super cute and it followed you home and everything.

(Also, pitbullgirl, you kinda need to calm down. The lawyer isn’t trying to kill your puppy. Really.)

Yes, a gun is a weapon. A dog is an animal that has weapons. I perceive only a small difference - guns don’t turn themselves on defenseless children for no reason, but some dogs do.

Personally, I’ll take the breed bans more seriously when some kid takes a pitbull into his university and kills 32 people with it. Until then, I think the gun-specific legislation makes sense but breed-specific legislation doesn’t. A dog just *can’t* do the kind of large-scale damage many types of guns can. A dog is more like a sword, if you insist on a weapon analogy; you have to go right up to a person and put some effort into it if you want to kill them, while a gun can take out a classroom in a minute (something not even the pitbulliest pitbull could brag about.)

First, people like my family CAN afford a dog. What we can’t afford is the care of a dog plus an insurance policy for a dog.

That’s like saying you CAN afford another baby, you just can’t afford to insure it. And yes, in that case you really *do* have an inalienable right to have that kid if you want, but don’t expect everyone to think that’s a good idea.

Sizzle at #101 - good comment about tort law and the importance of life and limb vs. property

Mythago at #124: “Mark @6, when I was little we lived in a rural area where people had dogs, including Shepherds. If a dog jumped a fence and bit a child who was doing nothing but “running past”, it would have been put down, and not because panicky urbanite were afraid of the breed. That kind of territorial, unprovoked aggression towards humans is not something you make excuses for. Ever.”  As much as it might break my heart, this is probably the only response to a dog who’s injured a person out of “territorial, unprovoked aggression”. 

As Ms. Kate has said, this stuff has to be assessed on a case by case basis.  Many bites cannot be attributed to territorial, unprovoked aggression.  A child goes to pet the familiar neighborhood dog, and inadvertently squeezes the dog right on a very sore “hot spot”, and all of a sudden you have a youngster who’s terrified, hurt and crying, and who may need plastic surgery to fix the wound.  I would not automatically assume that the dog has to be put down, but I would know for a fact that the dog should not be allowed into the neighborhood off-leash any more.  And if it were my dog, I would expect to pay most if not all of the medical expenses.

A situation like that involves neither a negligent owner, an aggressive dog, nor a misbehaving child.  But the child comes first.  Sometimes it’s just a sad deal all around.

As for people without much money who love their pets: jeebus, Drew, you have a heart of stone.  I get what you’re saying, and I agree that no one is entitled to a pet as some kind of inalienable right.  But damn.  Speaking of that scenario, though, has anyone seen that fairly recent indie film starring Michelle Williams called Wendy and Lucy?  It’s poignant.  Wendy had her dog Lucy before she ran into a spell of misfortune that knocked her off the very last rung of the lower middle class.  She didn’t start out not being able to afford a dog.  And Lucy is her companion and most beloved friend, her solace.  So maybe Wendy’s food stamps should only be issued upon surrendering her dog?  Or maybe she should only get food stamps after she’s eaten her dog?  Come on, Drew.

Fuck off, kristin.  If you can’t pay for the vet needs or altering your pet or whatever, you can’t afford your pet.  Just buying food isn’t enough.

Stop treating the need beyond your definition as being a dick as though your saintly treatment of animals is the end-all be-all.  It’s the same attitude owners who cause these problems have:  They think they’ve done enough, but they haven’t.

Yes, people who don’t have alot of money shouldn’t have expensive pets.  I don’t see you arguing that they should have ponies and chimps in their houses, either.  It’s a specious argument to say that placing requirements on pet owners is more onerous than death orders on a breed.

Dog ownership, if the dog is to be properly cared for, is expensive. Ensuring that your dog is trained and socialized means classes and doggie day care. That costs money. All those dogs in the shelter you feel so bad about? They are there because original owners weren’t able to deal with having a pet emotionally and, yes, financially. Now, we can talk about pet ownership being a marker of class priviledge, but in the very real-world, practical terms, it costs money. 

I don’t know if I would argue that all dog owners need to carry insurance to cover potential damage caused by their dogs. It might make sense in cases where animals have shown aggression. I haven’t thought about that enough to make an argument one way or another. But to argue that pet ownership should be cost-free is idiotic. You are not entitled to a dog or a cat.

That’s like saying you CAN afford another baby, you just can’t afford to insure it.

... against the possibility that it might crash somebody’s car when it’s 5 or break somebody’s nose when it’s 10.

If you can’t pay for the vet needs or altering your pet or whatever, you can’t afford your pet.

Where did I ever say I can’t pay for my animal’s vet needs? Where did I say my pets aren’t altered and trained? I said INSURANCE. I cannot afford to care for my animals (including appropriate training so they are not a nuisance or a danger) *and* pay an INSURANCE PREMIUM every month.

And where should they go, then, if it’s wrong for me and people like me to have them? You tell me. We’re talking about an animal in the street, starving. An animal in an filthy dog kennel at someone’s yard sale, in the sun, covered in fleas, belly full of worms. An animal someone has dumped in a parking lot like garbage. There is no “someone else” to take care of these animals. It’s me or death for the animals I take in, I’m not sure people are grasping that. I don’t have a right to them: they have a right not to be left to suffer, or be killed in a miserable pound because I don’t meet someone’s arbitrary income requirements.

How is it anything but monstrous to suggest that a well-cared-for animal that has never posed any risk to anyone should be destroyed because its owners can’t pay for a breed-specific or blanket mandatory insurance policy? And that is exactly what Drew was suggesting, because you saw his pish-tosh “well that wouldn’t be MY problem” response when I pointed out that in practical terms, it’s exactly what would happen. Do you hear what he is saying? He is saying that if someone cannot afford to pad an insurance agency’s pockets, they deserve to have their pets die, and their pets would be better off dead.

It’s a specious argument to say that placing requirements on pet owners is more onerous than death orders on a breed.

Good thing I never made that argument, then. Good thing I argued against both of them. On an objective scale of badness, requiring insurance would be less bad and stupid than a death order, but it would still be bad and stupid.

What the fuck?

How did arguing againist mandatory insurance for dogs get me eleventyfour condescending fucking lectures on the responsibility of owning a pet and the assumption that I have neglected animals I just sling a bowl of kibble at in my muddy back yard once every couple of days?

Jesus CHRIST.

Personally, I’ll take the breed bans more seriously when some kid takes a pitbull into his university and kills 32 people with it.

I would think that the problem is more the assholes who breed and train their dogs to be killers, not necessarily the dogs themselves.

And really, insurance? Look, I’m working for my local Blue Cross affiliate right now. Those people, in particular and specifically the senior executives, are exactly as horrible as you’d expect from a business that’s, morally, slightly below a mob bookie. Any reason to not contribute to insurance executive’s million dollar salaries is a plus to me.

(Also, pitbullgirl, you kinda need to calm down. The lawyer isn’t trying to kill your puppy. Really.)  Bagelsan

Patronize much? That lawyer is in the insurance industry, which has also denied me home owners insurance because of my dogs being Am.Staffordshire terriors. I suspect if people like her (and others on this board) would have my pets euthanized. Animals ARE a part of many peoples families,(including shock! families with pet loving children) and how arrogant for people to wave that off.

And really, insurance? Look, I’m working for my local Blue Cross affiliate right now. Those people, in particular and specifically the senior executives, are exactly as horrible as you’d expect from a business that’s, morally, slightly below a mob bookie. Any reason to not contribute to insurance executive’s million dollar salaries is a plus to me.

Oh HELL YES. What’s her name the lawyer up there sounds like a lobbiest for the insurance industry imho. The whole poor people shouldn’t own dogs unless they have insurance is classist crap. Poor people shouldn’t have kids, is a common battle cry of the right wing. For many people, including poor folk, their kids and pets are their family. As long as someone is a decent pet owner/parent it is no ones business to force them to carry insurance. FWIW, I have a warm spot for animal loving kids. Also the Bully Breeds used to be known as The Nanny Dog.

Sorry, but I look at this as a problem to solve.  That problem is dog bites and attacks.

Insurance would not solve the problem - and might lead to more problems with feral pets in packs.

Strict liability is ridiculous.  Dogs are living creatures, not property.  People who provoke, intrude on property uninvited, and attack or taunt animals shouldn’t get a free pass because “its a doogggg=property”.  Killing a dog doesn’t make parents do their jobs, nor does it solve issues of animal cruelty by humans.  Moral panic in this? Oh yeah.

Breed bans and restrictions are stupid, and clearly don’t solve the problem.  More moral panic here, left and right.

The real solution is to evaluate incidents and hold owners responsible when they are responsible, remove dogs that are unsuited to life with humans, require education and training and minimum property security measures at owner expense where needed, and crack down hard on puppy mills and unlicensed breeding operations and other high-risk situations (the chained unfixed dog, above - Heck, make certain visible features of poor dog care a health code violation.). 

Otherwise, it’s just a territorial pissing match.  Problem not solved.

Yeah, but Ms Kate, that sounds like a lot of work. Surely you can’t imagine that being preferable to a simple, generalized solution that makes everybody who counts happy, and fits easily into a fifteen-second soundbite for the nightly news!

@elena- No, I’m sorry, doggie day care is not a necessity of responsible dog ownership. Training and socialization is, yes, doggie day care is not. 

That’s even worse/more expensive than requiring insurance!

One county in MA is looking at charging a “breeding license” fee for unfixed dogs.  You can get your dog fixed, or submit to breeder license requirements and fees.  It is a start.

“As a personal injury lawyer, I’ve seen what horrible injuries strong but poorly trained and/or abused dogs can inflict, especially on children.  I realize this is not the animals’ fault, but their owners—they should really have their feet held to the fire.”

FUCK YOU. ...This is EXACTLY why I don’t want kids in my house. I wouldn’t to lose it because of some ambulance chaser and their client. I can’t believe some of the comments here. It’s worse then the Daily Kos.

This isn’t a little disproportionate? I love my dog too, but it doesn’t mean I now hate being near children and think any lawyer who takes the side of an injured child is an “ambulance chaser” whose only purpose in life is to kill my family.

Some dog owners are taking these discussions way, way too personally. If it’s not about you (bad training, no care, no control on a leash) it’s not about you, yeah? And I’m pretty sure most people on this board would have a problem with Animal Control just wandering around killing people beloved pets. At most people seem to be saying that killing pitbulls automatically is wrong but that *something* still needs to happen to protect the humans that are around dogs.

“And I’m pretty sure most people on this board would have a problem with Animal Control just wandering around killing people beloved pets.”

Fox wouldn’t.  That series is probably in development as we speak.

If I had to guess I would say that a lot of the vitriol thrown thus far has its origins in two very big but very different buttons being pushed very hard, whether accidentally or deliberately:

* People who have a deep emotional attachment to animals deeply resent arguments which are of seem to be of the “its just a furry toaster” school.

* People who aren’t animal people deeply resent the view found amongst many dog owners that it’s everybody’s business to adapt to their sweet little darling.

kristen: “How did arguing againist mandatory insurance for dogs get me eleventyfour condescending fucking lectures ...?”

I’m reasonably sure that things like calling somebody who advocated a policy position that you disagreed with a “monster” who has “no problem with the butchery of hundreds of thousands of healthy, loving, beloved pets” didn’t help.  Just a thought.

People who aren’t animal people deeply resent the view found amongst many dog owners that it’s everybody’s business to adapt to their sweet little darling.

To be more accurate, a lot of people who ARE animal people are nonetheless not people who believe “my animal is more important than any other living thing on the planet”. And there’s not a lot of point, I think, in trying to have a reasonable discussion with somebody who believes that if an aggressive, untrained dog makes an unprovoked attack on a child, the real problem is there are too many fucking brats in the world anyway and they have these goddamned lawyers.

It’s not fair to blame an entire breed like “pit bull” for the existence of such people. There’s be a lot more of them among cat owners if cats were bigger and more dangerous, I’m sure.

Again, though, this is exactly the sort of dog-owner tunnel vision I was talking about.

Never mind, Chet, that your remarks demonstrate an opposite pole of ignorance that implies that dogs are property objects with personalities/behavioral exhibitions entirely specified by a summary classification or, alternately, entirely attributable to human programming.

mythago:
Given that pitbullgirl’s response to a concern about children being attacked by dogs was to yell “FUCK YOU” I think that you have a valid point.

Mythago, the essential word being “unprovoked”.  There should be no expectation by parents that “doggy on a leash” = “another important experience for MY baby”, or that it is ever okay to stick your hand through a fence to pet a dog.  There should also be an expectation that any dog brought into an area with people, children, other dogs, etc. won’t suddenly lunge at, say, a cyclist and bite his leg because he is there (as happened to my husband while waiting for a stoplight when some ditz with a huge dog that she could not control walked up).

In other words, “unprovoked attack” does not mean “my kid should be able to climb your fence to chase your dog” or even “all dogs have to be ready to play with my kid”.  It means humans have to behave, too.

These are VERY important distinctions.

Mythago, the essential word being “unprovoked”.

Yes, that’s why I used it. My problem is with the people who assume that their dog would never do anything threatening to humans unless “provoked”.

Of course parents have a responsibility to teach their children how to behave towards animals; older children who know better have a moral responsibility not to deliberately provoke an animal into reacting. (There’s a big difference between a two-year-old who pulls a dog’s floppy ears and a twelve-year-old doing the same.) At the same time, dog owners have a responsibility to teach their dogs how to get along in a world full of humans, including humans who do not behave perfectly and with the dog’s possible reaction first in mind at all times.

I do teach my kids how to behave appropriately around animals, and always have; but unfortunately part of what I’ve had to teach them is that a lot of dog owners are fucking selfish assholes who don’t like people (especially children) all that well.  And by “fucking selfish assholes” I’m not talking about people who object if a three-year-old wants to ride their dog.

Ms. Kate:
I think it’s a pretty damned incompetent parent who doesn’t train their child ASAP that one never approaches a strange dog without (a) the owner’s permission; (b) the parent’s permission and (c) using their own good sense, as in “if you’re nervous or scared, don’t deal with the dog”.

Seeker, I hate to say it, but I am continually shocked and no longer surprised at what I have seen - and I don’t have a dog.  Some people think the world is entirely about what their kid gets to experience and should be made safe for that.  Unfortunate, but true.

My SIL had an ill behaved dog that could do no wrong.  She also had an ill-behaved teen who had been raised with the “world is my playground and I can’t be expected to do anything I don’t want to” philosophy who dropped out of school and sat in the basement and couldn’t be expected to care for the ill-behaved dog while she was away.  I don’t think this was a coincidence.

May I also add, seeker, that the real fun starts when a parent with a hellspawn terror child that he can’t be arsed to watch or discipline in any given venue goes to an area that “The Dog People” have illegally taken over as THEIR SPECIAL PLACE for letting dogs go off leash (meaning: everybody should just accept that it’s an offleash dog park without a fence now) and an off-leash dog out of control bites the hellspawn.

And I didn’t even have to pay for tickets to that!

Ms Kate at #163 and Aaron at #164: exactly.  Society is a lot of work, day after day.  Some things don’t get solved, because they can’t get solved: we have to do the hard work of managing stuff, evaluating, re-evaluating, and thinking about stuff every single damn day.  It’s like house-keeping.  Who imagines that because you scrubbed the kitchen floor today, that solves the problem and you never have to think about the kitchen floor again?  You can put mats down, ask that everyone remove shoes before entering the house, assign the scrubbing chore so that no one person has to do it all the time, buy a Swiffer, get rid of the Swiffer, whatever.  There are things you can do, tactics you can employ, but the kitchen floor will always need to be scrubbed again at some point.  It’s just how things work.  Eventually, we have to evaluate things on a case-by-case basis.  Why torment ourselves and each other with the supposition that one of us is going to figure out how to take care of something once and for all?  Sure, if you have appendicitis, that can be solved once and for all.  But existing within a society, getting along with each other, make things work every day - that’s house-keeping writ large.  We have to roll up our sleeves and work the problem.  Every day.

Wow - I never read comment threads! Not long ones, that’s for sure!

Insurance has been around since what - the 1600s? The relationship of dogs and humans has been, uhhh, a little longer than that. I think that people who are saying that insurance against attack MUST BE part of the cost of owning a dog are silly. And classist.

Dogs can be dangerous, fists can be registered as weapons, cars can run you down. Heavy sculptures in the den are often used as murder weapons; I’ve seen it on TV.

Down the street we had a process server jump a fence and get mauled by two pit-mix dogs. Dogs were killed afterward, no charge on the owner.

*sigh*  Look, I’m not talking about kids who are just walking down the street.  I’m not talking about kids running around the backyards of a neighborhood.  I’m talking about kids who throw things at dogs, who hit them, kick them, etc. precisely because those actions provoke a response from the dog.  And no, I refuse to have much sympathy when these same kids end up getting bitten because they’re acting like bullying assholes.  I also don’t get worked up when bullies get hit by their human victims.

Let me be explicit:  Owners need to be responsible for their animals.  They must train their animals and socialize them.  They must take precautions so that their animals don’t wander free in the streets or have easy access to attack anyone coming to the front door.  They *must* be aware of their dog’s temperament and personality and take responsibility for any extra training/supervision/precautions that are indicated.  I’m with Ms. Kate’s idea to investigate dog bites and assess what should happen to the dog and owner as indicated by the incident.

However, people also need to be aware that they share their space with dogs, and they need to treat dogs with circumspection.  I’m not entirely sure how that makes me crazy, but okay.

California Fish and Game is trying to sneak in a ‘we don’t have to prove anything’ provision that can effect thousands of dogs.  A new spin on BSL. 

Sing the Petition!  http://capetban.com/

I’m a little puzzled about “dog insurance” - I’ve never heard of special insurance just for dogs. Normally that’s part of the same liability (renter’s or homeowner’s) insurance that you would have for any other kind of damage.

And it wouldn’t be as necessary if we had universal health coverage. Family A sustains thousands of dollars in medical bills because Family B’s untrained, abused dog jumped a fence and bit somebody? Insurance would pay those bills, but if Family B has no money to pay them either, I guess it’s classist to say anything to Family A other than “suck it up”.

I think the whole problem would solve itself over time if we required people to spay and neuter their pets. It’s pretty obvious that there’s a certain type of macho dickhead who is attracted to pitbulls, rottweilers, Dobermans, and other “macho” breeds, and that’s part of the reason they get such a bad rap. These are probably also the same type of idiot who refuse to neuter their dogs because they’re so invested in keeping their dogs as aggressive and territorial as possible.

I think we should require all dogs to be spayed and neutered and that breeders should be much more regulated than they currently are. I don’t think just anybody should be able to generate a few grand a couple times a year by breeding pitbulls and selling the puppies to their stupid friends.

I like my cat because I don’t have to worry that if I look at him wrong he’ll tear my fucking throat out.

I’m talking about kids who throw things at dogs, who hit them, kick them, etc. precisely because those actions provoke a response from the dog.

And has *anybody* suggested that people of any age who intentionally and knowingly torture animals ought to be surprised, or recipients of sympathy, if the animal tries to protect itself?

Larkspur @179 has it right: this is not a problem that will be solved, but one that needs to be managed.  Ms. Kate has proposed a possible solution, but implementing it would be outrageously expensive.  Outrageous because it would be grossly immoral for society to spend that kind of money on dog evaluation, training, veterinary care and readoption before every human American has housing, food and healthcare.

BABH, explain why this would be outrageously expensive - particularly when it would not be applied to every dog owner, only those who had an incident?  Those incidents already require investigation, and the owner would be held responsible for the costs of training and changes in housing to keep a dog.

You just want things simple and easy.  Simple and easy does not solve the problem.  Dogs have been a part of human life for eons, possibly before we were even human ourslves, so just banning all dogs doesn’t cut it.

I never had renter’s insurance when I lived in apartments, because my junk wasn’t worth that much. But, I didn’t have a dog back then either.

The dog I have was bred to be good with children, we’ve seen it tolerate a certain amount of children’s abuse without protest, and further, we trained it as a pup to inhibit its bite.

No chet, you have once again entrenched yourself in language that you subsequently disown when called out on it.

You do this time and again.  It isn’t my reading, dear.  It is your writing.

Mr. Google says that State Farm insurance is supposedly pit bull friendly:

http://www.pitbulllovers.com/pitbull-articles/pit-bull-friendly-insurance-companies.html

Mythago-

I kind of lost my temper at being labeled a blinkered, selfish dog owner because I don’t think that bullies deserve sympathy when they get what’s coming to them.  (#150)  Though upon reflection, no, no one’s really argued that point.  Which means it must be time for lunch to restore both temper and reading comprehension. 

And has *anybody* suggested that people of any age who intentionally and knowingly torture animals ought to be surprised, or recipients of sympathy, if the animal tries to protect itself?

Here’s an example:

I don’t think children ought to poke dogs with sticks - but I don’t think that being bitten and seriously injured is fair punishment.

A sentiment I will disagree with as saying this essentially privileges the human child’s…or any human’s “right” to provoke/bully dogs/pets while penalizing the dog and his/her owner for doing what is not only natural…but legally appropriate when applied to humans who are attacked with weapons…..self-defense….especially considering the dog concerned has the estimated intellectual/reasoning capacity of a young child.  Dogs are living beings who should not reasonably be expected to be molested by unthinking/malicious human beings with good humor…even young ones. 

Moreover, one has to be a remarkably oblivious parent/child to not realize that poking any living being with a stick will likely result in an appropriately nasty reactive response.  In cases like this, the responsibility for injuries resulting from such provocations should be wholly borne by the human instigator concerned and/or his/her parents if s(he) is a child. 

And I say this as someone who has been bitten by a dog without provocation as an adolescent and who has never owned a pet in his life.

I am also a bit disturbed at how people are talking past each other, especially when the arguments essentially compare apples to oranges.  For instance:

Don’t want my dog to bite you when you break into my apartment?  Here’s a suggestion… DON’T BREAK INTO MY FUCKING APARTMENT, ASSHOLE!!! Hell, why stop at defending burglars in these cases?  How about if the serial rapist breaks into your apartment and your dog bites him?  Does Mr. Rapist have a right to a healthy chunk of his would-be victim’s money for his pain and suffering caused by the dog bite as he was preparing to rape his victim?

is followed by this:

@90: People are more important than property.  If I am trespassing on your land - even if it’s in order to steal your stuff - you don’t magically get the right to maim me, and nor does your dog.

A case like that is not going to become a lawsuit unless the damage to the thief is really bad.  And really, if you cripple a man in the defense of mere possessions, that’s just wrong.

The former is discussing more the possibility of someone breaking in to attack, assault, rape, or even murder the inhabitant of said domicile.  The latter is totally focused on theft while ignoring the emphasis of the preceding comment. 

Moreover, it presumes the homeowner has the clairvoyance to discern the motives of someone coming onto his/her property, an expectation I feel is unreasonable especially if it happens at night.  How in the world is the homeowner supposed to discern whether someone breaking into the house/apartment is just there to steal stuff and not also to do worse harm up to and including murder?

So if I follow you, exholt, we excuse a dog because it has the reasoning power of a young child, but we don’t excuse a young child….who, uh, has the reasoning power of a young child?

Nineveh’s quote, which you excised somewhat out of context, nowhere said that it’s A-OK to torture animals. S/he said that it’s a poor idea to regard a vicious mauling as just punishment for anyone who ever bothers a dog. And I’m a little surprised that you can’t distinguish between dog-bothering done by a young child (who, frankly, probably doesn’t understand “that hurts doggie” unless she’s flat-out told) vs. a teenager or adult who is deliberately baiting and harming an animal.

By the way, should you ever wish to own a pet, I assure you that you would not want the pet to do “what is only natural”. I doubt I have to elaborate on this.

Oh, and p.s.: the issue about a dog biting a burglar is half-clueful about the idea of “deadly force” and when it’s appropriate to use it.

Outside of places like Texas, where I understand it’s OK to shoot people who touch your stuff as long as they aren’t white, you aren’t allowed to use deadly force to protect property. So if you have a vicious dog that attacks anyone who sets foot on your property, and that dog harms or kills somebody who broke into your back yard to steal your barbecue grill while you were away, yes, you are going to have a problem. Just as you would if you wired an AK-47 to blow away anybody who moved the grill in your absence.

If your dog harms or kills somebody who breaks into your house to harm you, or who you reasonably think is going to harm you, if that dog did what was needed to protect you then you are legally in the right , just as you would be if you shot and killed somebody who broke into your house to try and rape you.

The idea that hordes of lawyers are filling civil lawsuits on behalf of dead or wounded serial rapists is right-wing horseshit. It’s the kind of thing they drag out so the McDonald’s coffee bullshit doesn’t get worn out.

Thank you Mythago. If a would be rapist breaks into your house and threatens you, absolutely you or your dog can use deadly force. If a person is rooting around in your garage to steal lawn equipment, no you cannot shoot them nor can you be excused if your dog maims them. I see people do not like this, but it is how the law works. It just is.

So if I follow you, exholt, we excuse a dog because it has the reasoning power of a young child, but we don’t excuse a young child….who, uh, has the reasoning power of a young child?

No….I am arguing that if the dog is being attacked by a stick by any human…including a young child that the human/young child and his/her parents be held responsible for provoking the attack and the dog and his/her owner should not be penalizing for reacting defensively to said attack. 

The young child reasoning point is mainly to attack the idea that dogs should be held to far higher restraint/good humor standards than human adults…or children.  Moreover, dogs are not US courts where one has the right to expect punishments to not be “unreasonable” or “cruel and unusual” and to expect them to have the reasoning and capabilities of a US court/Judge is the height of absurdity. 

The idea that hordes of lawyers are filling civil lawsuits on behalf of dead or wounded serial rapists is right-wing horseshit.

Though the right-wing tends to wildly over exaggerate the frequency, this has some legs because many are of the opinion that anyone who commits a crime should not benefit financially or otherwise from its commission…or its consequences…especially at the expense of the crime victim in question in the case of a civil lawsuit.

I don’t trust dog owners I don’t know any more than I trust gun owners. ...
I like dogs. A friendly dog is a delight. I’m not scared of dogs. But frankly, until dog owners can be relied upon not to let their golden retrievers charge up to me barking and get their paws all over my clothes in a friendly way, I’m certainly not going to trust them that their ball of muscle and teeth will never, ever attack “unprovoked”.

This.  I so agree.  And I’m speaking as someone who’s been owned by dogs all my life.

If I have a dollar for every time some yahoo with an unleashed dog (in a situation where leash laws apply) has cheerfully yelled, “Don’t worry, he’s friendly,” two seconds before Mr. Friendly attacked my lawfully leashed dog, jumped on me, frightened my horse, or knocked me off my bicycle, I’d….well, I’d have enough for a nice dinner out.

Too often dog owners believe that Fido is a human in dog clothing.  That Fido thinks and reacts just like a human being.

The truth is Fido is a dog, an animal that doesn’t think or react like a human being.  Yes, dogs can be trained to behave in an appropriate manner.  But good training takes months and sometimes years and requires tremendous consistency and commitment on the part of the owner.

Dogs don’t come out the box knowing that it is inappropriate to rush up to strangers (dogs, horses, people).  And even the most “friendly” dog can react badly when faced with someone or something that is fearful or aggressive.  And behaviors that you think are “cute,” like barking and lunging hysterically at people, aren’t cute and are a sign, as Cesar Milan would say, of an unbalanced animal.

Train your dog.  Train your dog.  Train your dog.

By the way, should you ever wish to own a pet, I assure you that you would not want the pet to do “what is only natural”. I doubt I have to elaborate on this.

And no, you don’t get to write off bad behavior by saying that the dog is just doing what is “natural.”  Yeah, roaming the neighborhood is natural, but it is inappropriate and likely illegal.  Chasing cars may be natural, but it is a dangerous behavior and again, in most municipalities illegal (i.e., the dog should be under your control, leashed or in a fenced yard).

In my experience, most instances of bad dog behavior are also not “one-time only.”  I.e., ye olde, “Well, gosh, Fido’s never done that before,” utterance which often follows some stunning or dangerous act of misbehavior.  Chances are the owner is a) lying or b) deluded.  Even if Fido hasn’t bitten anyone before, he’s probably demonstrated behaviors that indicate a propensity to bite.

As Pam has asserted above, the problem is not the breed or type of dog, but the owners.  Breed bans may reduce the number of fatal attacks, but they do little to address the issue of dog bites.  If local officials put more effort into enforcing existing laws, we’d see a reduction in dog bites and other misbehavior.

Similarly, you don’t trespass or break into a house without assuming the risks of doing so. The world is not fucking disneyland for ... intruders.

My dog is a timid greyhound and my job is to protect him.  If, however, he chose to act aggressively when faced with unlawful intruder, I’d buy him a big fat steak if he bit the asshole.  You bust into my house with the intent to commit crime, you pay the consequences.

By the way, should you ever wish to own a pet, I assure you that you would not want the pet to do “what is only natural”. I doubt I have to elaborate on this.

I see you missed my comment about the dog reacting to being effectively attacked by a stick as also “legally appropriate” when applied to humans in a legally accepted concept known as self-defense. 

In that context, I fail to understand why dogs should be effectively held up to far higher standards of restraint/good humor than human beings in the face of provocation…..

I fail to understand why dogs should be effectively held up to far higher standards of restraint/good humor than human beings in the face of provocation…..

I’m pretty sure that if I bite a child in the face so as to cause disfigurement when she has merely put her hand on me, that I’m not going to be getting off with a note to my parents.

My dog is a timid greyhound and my job is to protect him.  If, however, he chose to act aggressively when faced with unlawful intruder, I’d buy him a big fat steak if he bit the asshole.  You bust into my house with the intent to commit crime, you pay the consequences.

That’s an interesting point. Some people use dogs as sentry weapons. What place do attack dogs have in this? And can you realistically expect a dog to know the difference between a burgler and your neighbor? Plenty of people expect their dog to eat intruders, but also take said dogs on walks, to the park, etc.

Ms. Kate, thanks for being calm and a voice of reason here.

Banisteriopsis, actually yes, you can. I think a lot of the problem lies in that dogs are smarter than a lot of people give them credit for, but not always in ways that we understand as intelligence. 

We had a sweetheart of a yellow lab, who we used to joke if there was an intruder, she would show them to the silver.  One day while I was alone in the house, cleaning my room, a friend came over who had never been to my place before (which I hadn’t really thought about, my fault).  As I was stuck behind a pile of crap, I just yelled out that the door was open come on in.  I heard the door open, and then, “Um, help?”

The lab had cornered him behind the door.  She wasn’t attacking, but she wasn’t letting him out either.  Once I came out and touched his arm and her at the same time, the growling stopped and she started wagging her tail and wanted kissies.  From that day out, if he came over she knew he was ok and didn’t have a problem with him just walking in.  Granted, he was always a bit shy about it. 

People who own dogs just have to remember how they think.  You, as the person, should always be the pack leader.  Pack leader dictates who and what is ok.  Dogs are incredibly social animals and respond well to structure.  The problem with a lot of owners is they don’t really understand how to take advantage of that wiring.

Voice of reason?!

Ms. Kate @189:

You just want things simple and easy.  Simple and easy does not solve the problem.  Dogs have been a part of human life for eons, possibly before we were even human ourselves, so just banning all dogs doesn’t cut it.

No one wants to ban dogs.  No one - not even Chet - has argued for a breed-specific ban. (“That doesn’t sound like well-reasoned policy, just like “ban all guns” doesn’t, either.” - Chet @10).

As for the expense Ms. Kate’s solution, animal shelters are already straining to provide the services they do.  More services would require more resources.  The right place to debate whether resources should go to animal shelters or homeless shelters is the Legislature, not Pandagon.

OK, I’m done.

things like calling somebody who advocated a policy position that you disagreed with a “monster” who has “no problem with the butchery of hundreds of thousands of healthy, loving, beloved pets”

Seeker. Come on. Go back and read his replies to me if you need to.

I pointed out that if only people who could afford insurance could keep their dogs it would result in thousands and thousands of dogs being confiscated. We know what would happen then. There are not facilities to currently house the millions of homeless pets in the country. The only thing that could be done with a flood of confiscated animals would be to kill them. There is no word for that other than butchery.

Drew’s response was to essentially shrug and say, well, it wouldn’t be HIS fault, so too bad. There is no word for that other than monstrous.

Let’s call a spade a spade. People can’t necessarily be faulted for supporting an idea with hideous consequences if they’re not aware of what those consequences would be, but when they have the consequences pointed out to them and their response is that they don’t give a damn? That’s just failing at humanity, OK?

Yeah, Chet, imagine that, I’m discussing dog insurance and not car insurance in a thread that’s about dogs and not cars! What’s up with that crazy shit, huh?

If you think that premiums would stay under $10 if there were legislation making them mandatory you’re either on crack, or working for an insurance company. We have all seen what happens to insurance premiums when insurance is something you can’t opt out of, either because it’s mandatory (car insurance) or people can’t take the risk of not having it (health insurance).

I responsibly manage the risk my dog could pose to others by being a responsible pet owner, by selecting a dog that’s fit for my environment and lifestyle, by being familiar with and not sentimental about her temperament, by training her appropriately, by watching her and managing her surroundings intelligently, by making sure she’s healthy, fixed and vaccinated and generally by not being an irresponsible dumbass.

You want to find someone to yell at for not being responsible for their dogs? Find the people who chain them outside 24/7, ditch them on the side of the road pregnant or with health problems, breed them in the yard and advertise the puppies with cardboard signs, let them off leash in public areas and go “Oh he’s FRIENDLY” when they charge up to me and freak out my leashed, supervised dog. While you’re at it, if you could cover the people who won’t stop their dogs from barking nonstop, pick up their dog shit on the sidewalk, leave their dogs alone in cars or think a puppy is a good gift, that would be just great. Thanks.

But leave me and dog owners like me alone. We don’t need to finance a new industry to prove to people like you that we’re responsible enough to have our pets. Why should I put even $10 a month into an insurance company’s pocket instead of into my savings account in case my dog needs emergency surgery or something? You want to argue that $10 won’t break the bank? Fine, but I argue that $10 won’t turn an irresponsible jerk into a responsible owner. And a lack of $10 won’t turn a responsible dog owner into an irresponsible jerk.

Children hurt people and destroy things, too. Children are a liability! You never know when Junior is going to smash the neighbor’s window with a baseball or kick some other kid’s teeth out accidentally playing a rough game or flood the bathroom overfilling the tub. And of course there are the kids who do things like steal and crash cars, set houses on fire and even kill people. Obviously, those things are problems, but if you suggested that the difference between a responsible parent and an irresponsible parent is the willingness to take out an insurance policy in case Junior crashes a car and sets an orphanage on fire, people would laugh you out of the room.

I know this is wasted typing as far as you’re concerned, because I have never once seen you bend to rationality once you’ve picked your turf, particularly when animals are concerned. But, you know, there are slightly more reality-based people here and I’m interested in having a discussion with them.

The young child reasoning point is mainly to attack the idea that dogs should be held to far higher restraint/good humor standards than human adults…or children.

When you’re annoyed by a kid do you beat the shit out of him? That’s why dogs are held to a higher standard - because they can’t tell the kid to knock it off, they just attack.

Entomologista, in the main I agree with you, but you know, dogs *do* commnicate knock it off. It’s just in Dog.

Which is not to say that I think it’s the obligation of every human in the world to learn fluent Dog, or that someone who doesn’t have fluent Dog deserves to be attacked. But since we do live in a world with dogs, and not every dog is under the control of a responsible person, one way to make sure we stay safer is to learn some basic Dog. I wish more people would teach their kids to tell when a dog is irritated or frightened, for example.

Go back and read his replies to me if you need to.

Yes, do go back and read my replies.

kristin, it isn’t my fault that we have millions more dogs than we have homes, and if the reasonable requirement that a dog owner be responsible for the damage caused by their dog were to add to that number, it still wouldn’t be my fault. 

It’s the fault of those who believe that they deserve a dog, whether they can be responsible for it or not.  Which seems to include you.  Not that you care, because clearly, your desire to cast yourself in the role of dog savior is more important than the well-being of any dog - or person.

I don’t like that we euthanize dogs, but I don’t think I’d be responsible for their deaths if I refused to give every lunatic with a perverse need to be needed as many dogs as they like.

No, Drew. I’m not engaging with you and I’m not discussing with you because anyone who can read my posts as “hur hur i wanna collect dogs and keep them in the basement how dare you try to stop me” is clearly not discussing in good faith.

When you’re annoyed by a kid do you beat the shit out of him? That’s why dogs are held to a higher standard - because they can’t tell the kid to knock it off, they just attack.

If said kid is attacking me with a stick without stopping, sometimes I would need to defend myself from further injury/harm. 

And yes, I speak from experience of being mobbed by vicious gangs of kids who thought it was the height of fun to beat up random subway/bus passengers in 1980’s NYC….with fists and with sticks/baseball bats.

I fail to understand why dogs should be effectively held up to far higher standards of restraint/good humor than human beings in the face of provocation…..
I’m pretty sure that if I bite a child in the face so as to cause disfigurement when she has merely put her hand on me, that I’m not going to be getting off with a note to my parents.

Because you’re an adult.  You can reason like an adult.  You have the self-restraint of an adult.  You are capable of thinking through your actions and the ramifications of them.  A dog doesn’t have the same sense of reason and restraint that an adult human does.  (Neither do cats, for that matter, but cats usually don’t grow large enough to do the same type of damage that some dogs can do.)

Kid throws rocks at dog.  Dog bites kid in the arm; kid gets stitches.  I don’t see why that dog has to be put down.  Kid throws rocks at dog, dog mauls kid’s face off is a different, more aggressive reaction and should be treated as such.

And I beg to differ, Entomologista.  Dogs “tell” attackers to back off by growling or barking, baring their teeth, lowering their tails, etc.  Just because some kids don’t understand it (or find it funny) doesn’t mean that dogs aren’t communicating.

I see. It’s not just a dog, it’s a four-legged furry instrument of justice!

Oh yes, which is why I think every bully should be forced to torment a dog until the dog snaps, as a lesson about the consequences of pushing things too far!  /sarcasm

I don’t pretend to be full of the milk of human kindness and mercy.  When someone’s abusive behavior causes push back, I don’t really feel sorry for him/her.  Give us universal healthcare, give the bully stitches and maybe some good pain meds, and then give him a lecture about how humans do not have impunity to treat animals or people anyway they want to and not expect any consequences.

I have tears in my eyes from looking at those pictures. (and the pictures of your it, Pam are just TOO cute)
How depressing that humans still can’t be humane. But then that’s in our nature I suppose.
I’m sure there are some sci-fi stories out there about humans being put down like this for reasons very similar to this horrible breed ban.

Wow, Drew, do you actually think this shit through before you post?

As far as Kristin’s described, she’s an incredibly responsible dog owner who spays, neuters, vaccinates and trains her critters, including the rescued ones. 

It would be great if “those who believe they deserve a dog, whether they can be responsible for it or not” (a large list of which Kristin herself posted above as people who piss her off) but we don’t live in that world, that lovely fairyland where shit doesn’t happen, or if it does then ignoring it makes it go away.

It’s pretty obvious you’ve never done animal rescue work.  Trust me, most of us wouldn’t do it if there weren’t a need for it.  We want there to not be a need for it.  But if we don’t do it, who will?  If everyone shrugged everything off as “not my fault, not my problem” nothing would get solved, and we’d have streets full of sick and dying critters.  So some of us with our “perverse need to be needed” (smell that sarcasm) step in and take care of the problem that includes trying to socialize abused animals, vet bills, and sometimes, holding a sick or injured abused and abandoned animal while the vet puts them to sleep because some asshead couldn’t be bothered to take care of it and now nothing else can be done.

It would be nice if every dog or cat had someone to take care of them who acted responsibly all the time, and everyone who wasn’t a licensed breeder spayed and neutered their critters, and there were no puppy mills and all that, but that’s not the way it is.  People like Kristin and I pick up the pieces after the irresponsible ones fuck it all up, but it’s so much easier to be snotty to us than to get off your ass and do anything about it, isn’t it?

I repeat, if we don’t do it, who will?  Are we supposed to keep passing the buck because it isn’t our fault?  Like you, apparently, are doing?  If everyone does that, who’s gonna fix anything?

I don’t pretend to be full of the milk of human kindness and mercy.

I <u>so</u> want this on a t-shirt.

No, Drew. I’m not engaging with you

Except, of course, to slam me, so as to better illustrate your commitment to an honest debate.

Wow, Drew, do you actually think this shit through before you post?

As far as Kristin’s described, she’s an incredibly responsible dog owner who spays, neuters, vaccinates and trains her critters, including the rescued ones.

Actually, as far as kristin’s described, if her dog were to injure another person, that person might well be bankrupted by the medical cost, because she’s not capable of shouldering it.  Which doesn’t strike me as responsible.  Further, she seems to believe that the argument that a dog owner should be responsible for the damage done by the dog is tantamount to advocacy of slaughter.  Which doesn’t strike me as sane.

I repeat, if we don’t do it, who will?

Hopefully, a person who is capable of taking responsibility for the damage done by their dog, not those who would shift that responsibility elsewhere.

However, people also need to be aware that they share their space with dogs, and they need to treat dogs with circumspection.  I’m not entirely sure how that makes me crazy, but okay.
Comment #181: Karinna A.  on 10/09 at 12:46 PM

Humans should treat the dog like we would any other living being, that is, don’t touch it without permission, don’t yell at it or taunt it or crowd it or try to scare or hurt it. 

If that means don’t look at the dog?  Cross the street if it’s approaching?  Don’t laugh or wave at a friend when a dog is ten feet away because it might freak the dog out?  Those are things the dog owner has to protect the dog from.  Human social behaviors are the norm in public places and aren’t beholden to the special needs of some other species that we didn’t all choose to make our companion.

I think the problem comes up when someone assumes we should all be dog-socialized.  That’s ridiculous.  While dog-specific social behaviors are very useful, a dog owner is foolish to think everyone should have them, and anyone who doesn’t deserves to be bitten.

Dogs are in human society as our guests.  Treat them any way you want in your own home, but don’t expect me to do anything more than benevolently ignore dogs in public. 

I recognize that dogs sometimes get upset, and I realize it often happens for what humans consider irrational reasons.  But if your dog is barking or growling at me, or trying to bite me, and won’t stop quickly, you need to control it and remove it from the area. 

If children acting like children upset your dog, take it somewhere there are no children acting like children.

$10 won’t turn an irresponsible jerk into a responsible owner. And a lack of $10 won’t turn a responsible dog owner into an irresponsible jerk.

No, but it will make it possible for someone to try to recoup losses caused by someone else’s jerkiness.

Sometimes car accidents happen and no one is at fault and someone needs a lot of medical care.  Similarly, if you don’t have such insurance and your dog has a hot spot and a kid touches it without malice and gets mauled, the kid’s medical bills won’t get paid.  No one’s fault, or only minorly the kid’s, and yet someone’s screwed.

Insurance could be cheaper if you get a dog training certificate, just like it is when you’re a new driver and you take driver’s ed.  Might encourage more training.  Lower rates for spayed and neutered dogs.  Lower rates for owners who have never had a dog bite someone else.  Stuff like that.

Word, oldfeminist. Even the legal right of people with assistance dogs to have those dogs in public is contingent on the dog’s appropriate behavior. If an assistance dog barks, growls or behaves threateningly it can legally be kicked out of a public establishment.

Yeah, but I still think it makes more sense to provide universal health care and have *that* take care of the worries of someone who might be mauled.

Like, say I have an insurance policy. But it’s a shitty insurance policy and the company does what so many other companies do and yanks a loophole out of its butt to avoid paying up. So I did the right thing as far as you’re concerned, but the kid who got mauled still doesn’t have their medical bills paid. What then?

Or say the kid is mauled by a dog running loose with no tags. Even if it has an owner, if no one can prove who owns it, the mauled kid is still SOL.

Bottom line, I’m definitely all for people mauled by dogs being able to get medical care, just like I’m for anyone who gets injured in any capacity being able to get medical care. But to put the blame on a dog owner because medical care is unavailable in a civilized fashion in our country seems to add an unproductive layer.

kristin:

I still think it makes more sense to provide universal health care and have *that* take care of the worries of someone who might be mauled.

I agree, that would be ideal. 

<happy smiles all around>

Entomologista, my cat (rather, spouse’s cat) has flipped out and injured me to the poitn I’ve been sent to the hospital.

Apparently she’s seriously territorial, had some bad interactions with a dog (who had no malice, but was also broken) so when she gets scared, she gets… Stupid. 

So I’ve caught (as in, grabbed while falling) her as she fell out a window, got mauled; she’s gotten stapled to the screen once and I had to rescue her while she was flipped out, and another time she didn’t like the vet (actually, she’s gotten bad kitty stickers at three vets now).

But normally, she’s a totally sweet kitty that lets you pick her up, loves hugs - to the point of asking or demanding them by standing on you - and is willing to let people zerbert her tummy or toss her as a you’re allowed to speak now item when we’re sitting on the pillows in the living room.  Totally valium kitty.  Unless she thinks some strange cat or dog is going to break into the house.

One of my cats was claustrophobic. I discovered this fact the first time I tried to put her into a carrier. She freakin’ savaged my hand.

The thing with a $10 rider to an insurance policy is that you have to have an insurance policy to attach a rider to.  Listen: I don’t have pets because I can’t afford to take care of them if they were to need major medical care.  And I don’t have pets because the little apartment I live in has a no-pets requirement.  And like Kristin, it’s important to me that I adhere to the rules of my community.

I also don’t watch television because I cannot afford the cable TV subscription, and where I live, you don’t get reception without cable.  I don’t go out to restaurants because I can’t afford it.  I go to the library because I don’t have the money to buy books.  None of this makes me feel oppressed.  I am a single adult who makes her own choices and accepts her own consequences.  But boy howdy does it piss me off when people rag on people who buy a nice TV for their family even though they can’t afford to send their kids to college.  Because, you know?  Bread and roses. 

And it makes me sad to think that poor people would be expected to give up their beloved pets because they might not be able to afford an insurance policy upon which a pet-liability rider could be attached.  It also makes me sad to know that there are dedicated breed-specific associations whose members are willing to offer modest financial assistance to dog-owners who have fallen on hard times, but that those dog-owners are unlikely to have the time, the internet access, or the general wherewithal to access that help.

I am veering terribly off-topic here.  I think that this thread’s returns are diminishing.  But I wanted to say this because we all know that responsible pet ownership is not simply a function of the pet owner’s wealth.  It’s a matter of values and judgment, neither of which quality is determined solely by one’s net worth.  So maybe some of y’all could have a little mercy or empathy.

My cat put me in the hospital, too, but that was mostly my fault.  Always wash out cat bites right after they occur, and you are less likely to be used as a Bad Example to other ER patients.

Some dog owners are taking these discussions way, way too personally. If it’s not about you (bad training, no care, no control on a leash) it’s not about you, yeah?
I have every right to take it personally. I am an excellent dog owner, everyone is fixed, a fenced back yard, good training, yada,yada, but if some brat teases/hurts my dogs and he reacts, what do you think the outcome is going to be? Me getting sued, and my dog(s) put down. And Ms. Lawyer up thread saying owners should have their feet held to the fire. And yes, I’m not overly fond of young kids. I don’t get all dewy eyed and feel my clock ticking when I hear or see a human baby. Baby animals yes.
Also I find it rich that a insurance lawyer insists that insurance should be required for owning a dog. I don’t agree with that or mandatory car insurance either. Many people need a car, esp. in rural areas and can’t afford one with the burden of insurance.

I second #15 Ms. Kate.

I don’t think you need to look much further than the pictures in the post to see why dog owners are taking this seriously. When breed bans like Denver’s are put in place, they take away and kill everyone’s dog that’s “substantially similar to a pit bull type”, not just the vicious dogs or the badly trained dogs or the dogs with assholes for owners. They take away the beloved family pets and the friendly, well trained dogs, and they kill them. They would take away my dog, who’s in training to be a search and rescue dog, and who happens to be an American Pit Bull Terrier, as best we can tell, and kill her. Or at least make me move out of town (which isn’t feasible at the moment) to keep her. This isn’t theoretical or paranoid - it’s happened in many places, Denver is just one of them.

Well said, monkeypedia. Pam’s post actually, literally contains photographs of piles of dead dogs, and these dudes still insist on making us out like we’re hysterically imagining threats to our animals when people toss around ideas for mandatory whatever.

Chet, you’re full of shit and I’m pretty sure you know it. I don’t run any kind of pet shelter out of my home and I never said anything that a reasonable human being could interpret as meaning I do.

Just how many dogs do you think D-O-G, singular, means? Stop inventing shit.

By the way, my cat would probably be highly amused to hear that I’m mistreating him by lack of veterinary care, since I just peeled some flesh out of ye olde savings account to take him to the vet today and have an abscess treated. (I’m pretty sure he thinks it’s actually the vet care that qualifies as mistreatment, since he made cat-style death threats all the way there and back in the car.)

Anyway, I just handled a cat who would like to see me dead, at least at the moment; shelled out an astonishing amount of money; and enjoyed the delightful smell of abscess and the wonderful experience of pinning a cat down to nonconsensually give it antibiotics, and all of this has put me in the mood not one little tiny bit to have a lunatic like Chet blatantly make up garbage about me.

Fuck you very much, Chet. If your grasp on reality is usually this tenuous, maybe you should move into a halfway home or something so you don’t accidentally drink Drano instead of your morning coffee. Make sure they take out an insurance rider on you so you’re not such a menace to society.