False sense of security
PATCHOGUE, New York––Stephen Neira, 40, of Patchogue, Long Island, New York, on September 3, 2015 happened across an online ad for a pit bull named Alex.
Housed by Animal Care & Control of New York City since August 30, 2015, Alex was said to have had just 22 minutes left to live.
“Shelter documents show the city shelter system had transferred ownership of Alex to a Vermont group, Carolyn All Breed Rescue, which had highlighted Alex’ plight on the rescue website Urgent Pets on Death Row,” reported Dean J. Hampton and Ellen Yan of Long Island Newsday.
The entity referenced by the shelter documents referenced by Hampton and Yan appears to have actually been All Breed Rescue, operating in Williston, Vermont since 1996. One longtime board member is named Carolyn.
Neira, his wife, and their three children rushed to the Animal Care & Control of New York City’s Harlem shelter.
“It was Neira’s first time taking in a pit bull, and he felt like a proud father when he decided to foster the dog and welcomed the 42-pound addition home on Sunday,” Hampton and Yan reported on September 7, 2015. “But moments later, Alex sank his teeth into Neira’s teenage daughter Briana’s face and throat. She used her arm to protect her throat, and Alex bit her elbow.”
Briana Neira was hospitalized to undergo facial surgery.
“Alex was tranquilized by Suffolk police and taken by the Brookhaven Town animal shelter,” recounted Hampton and Yan.
Joshua Phillip Strother, 6, killed on July 7, 2015 by a pit bull rehomed by the Asheville Humane Society after passing the ASPCA’s SAFER test.
SAFER than what?
Alex, before being offered for adoption by Animal Care & Control of New York City, had passed the American SPCA-developed SAFER test––like the pit bull who killed Joshua Phillip Strother, age 6, on July 7, 2015, three weeks after the dog was rehomed by the Asheville Humane Society, and like hundreds of rehomed shelter dogs, mostly pit bulls, who have run amok since.
The era of standardized shelter dog behavioral screening appears to have begun with the Assess-A-Pet protocol developed in the mid-1990s by Sue Sternberg. A shelter management professional since 1981, Sternberg bought a failing boarding kennel in upstate New York in 1993 and founded Rondout Valley Animals for Adoption.
Sue Sternberg (www.suesternbergtruth.com)
Within a few years Sternberg’s Assess-A-Pet protocol caught on among other shelter professionals and became the default standard dog behavioral screening method.
Sternberg, then and now, adopts out pit bulls obtained from animal control shelters, and opposes breed-specific legislation. But as the volume of pit bulls entering animal shelters rose from about 5% of the incoming dogs to upward of 30%, pit bulls conspicuously often flunked the Assess-A-Pet test. By April 2002 Sternberg and Assess-A-Pet were hounded online by a coterie of vehement critics, including some former Roundout Valley Animals for Adoption employees.
Used to save Michael Vick pit bulls
Used to save Michael Vick pit bullsBehaviorist Emily Weiss meanwhile introduced the SAFER test, short for Safety Assessment For Evaluating Rehoming, in 1999-2000. The American SPCA hired Weiss as senior director of shelter behavior programs in 2005, and on May 5, 2007 the ASPCA made promoting SAFER an ASPCA program.
Of note is that the ASPCA and Best Friends Animal Society were at the time scrambling to save 66 pit bulls impounded ten days earlier from football player and now convicted dogfighter Michael Vick, after the Humane Society of the U.S. had recommended them for euthanasia as too risky to rehome.
[In fact, while some were eventually rehomed after extensive remedial training, most were not.]
From the first dogs rehomed by U.S. shelters in 1858 until May 2003, only two former shelter dogs––a wolf hybrid in 1988 and another wolf hybrid in 1989––had ever killed anyone.
Tori Whitehurst
Page, Whitehurst, & DeSwart
On May 19, 2003, however, a pit bull named Mr. B killed Bonnie Page, 75, and injured her landlord, Nancy Delaney, about 40 days after Delaney adopted him from the 120-year-old Mount Vernon Animal Shelter in Mount Vernon, New York.
Mr. B, who had been at the shelter since March 2002, had cleared behavioral assessment, but what assessment protocol was used does not appear to have been identified in news coverage of the case.
Next to be killed by a shelter dog who had cleared behavioral screening was Tori Whitehurst, 4, mauled in November 2007 by a pit bull adopted from the Arizona Humane Society. Arizona Republic reporter John Flaherty profiled the Arizona Humane Society screening procedures, but not in enough detail to clarify whether Assess-A-Pet, SAFER, or some other test was used.
Doberman (not Luger) at Associated Humane Societies. (AHS photo)
Two months before Whitehurst was killed, a Doberman named Luger killed Valerie DeSwart, 67, only 10 days after the DeSwart adopted him from the Associated Humane Societies of New Jersey. Luger had not cleared formal behavioral screening, and had actually been surrendered to the Associated Humane Societies for euthanasia after previous attacks on other people. The Associated Humane Societies said Luger was rehomed, after 87 days in custody, as result of a mix-up.
Repetitively predictable pattern
The Page, Whitehurst, and DeSwart deaths all might have been considered just tragic accidents, resulting from fluke combinations of circumstance––except that there has been no subsequent fatality closely paralleling the circumstances of the DeSwart case, while the Page and Whitehurst cases, involving dogs who passed screening, have become a repetitively predictable pattern.
(Greg Robbins photo)
Forty-one shelter dogs have participated in killing thirty-seven people since 2010, including 30 pit bulls, seven bull mastiffs, two Rottweilers, a Lab who may have been part pit bull, and a husky.
All 41 of the shelter dogs who have killed people since 2010 had reportedly cleared some form of systematic behavioral screening.
And fatalities are the least of the dog attack mayhem that has become epidemic among shelter dogs since standardized behavioral screening came into vogue, along with the notions that dog attacks are mostly the result of human behavior and that people of dog handling expertise should never be injured by a dog, or allow others to be injured.
Gus
Headline cases
Cases involving failures of behavioral diagnostics by people deemed by shelter or rescue management to have expertise appropriate to the circumstances made headlines throughout summer 2015.
First came a $1.3 million judicial award issued on May 18, 2015 to boarding kennel operator Amber Rickles, of Spring, Texas.
Rickles was mauled on February 7, 2013 by a pit bull named Gus, whom she was keeping for Janet Romano of Maggie’s House Rescue. An online campaign waged to save Gus led to his being transferred to the Dog Psychology Center, operated by celebrity dog trainer Cesar Millan.
Cesar Millan (National Geographic TV photo)
Rehomed in September 2014, after extensive remedial training, Gus mauled Florida critical care nurse Alison Bitney just six days later. Her case against Millan and the Dog Psychology Center is apparently still before the courts.
- On June 16, 2015, WSVN television investigative reporter Carmel Cafiero exposed how 100+ Abandoned Dogs of Everglades Florida volunteer rescuer Sarah Martin, 19, was mauled by five pit bulls when she and another volunteer were sent to pick up a pit bull named Taco in Riverview, a Tampa suburb.
- On June 11, 2015, Griswold, Connecticut assistant animal control officer Shea Cavacini was mauled by a pit bull she was fostering in her own home. Cavacini was reportedly trying to protect her young son.
Not that Perry Mason! - On June 23, 2015, in Southaven, Mississippi, a Southaven Animal Shelter employee and an animal control officer were injured by a pit bull. Both victims had certification in vicious dog handling, shelter director Perry Mason told Caitlin Alexander of WREG.
- Smith County, Texas animal control officer Nanette Moss was bitten twice by a pit bull named Rex on June 30, 2015 at the county shelter in Winona. A sheriff’s deputy shot Rex after he lunged at fire marshal Jay Brooks and other county staff who were coming to the rescue.
Not that Waldo, either! - An employee at the DeKalb County Animal Shelter was injured on July 16, 2015 by a pit bull named Waldo. “The employee was walking by, and she fell and the dog got out of the collar, jumped the gate and attacked her arm,” Karen Hirsh of the Lifeline Animal Project told Channel 2 reporter Craig Lucie.
- Bruce Rushton of the Illinois Times on July 23, 2015 described a lawsuit filed by Sangamon County Animal Protective League volunteer John Sanders after he was injured while walking a pit bull named Stewart. While Sanders recommended that Stewart should be euthanized for attacking without provocation, the Animal Protective League continued to advertise Stewart for adoption.
- 30th District Court Judge Bob Brotherton of Wichita Falls, Texas on July 31, 2015 finalized a $495,000 settlement for 4-year-old Isabella Quintana and family. Quintana was on June 29, 2013 mauled by a Rottweiler at an “Adopt a Dog” promotion inside a local PetSmart store, featuring shelter animals.
“A few weeks after the attack,” Quintana’s lawyers said, “the Rottweiler was killed by another dog during a fight.”
PetSmart, Petco, & Portland
The Quintana attack was one of at least sixteen involving human injuries or animal deaths to occur in PetSmart and Petco stories since 2005. The other 15 dogs inflicting the injuries or deaths were pit bulls.
An indicative pattern of attacks similarly emerged from an OregonLive.com map of dog bites in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon.
Oregon Humane Society kennels. (Beth Clifton photo)
The three locations most frequently involved in reported bites were the Clackamas County Animal Adoption Center, with 23; the Bonnie L. Hayes Animal Shelter, with 29; and the Oregon Humane Society, which has repeatedly received perfect scores in ANIMALS 24-7 evaluations, with 37. (See The Oregon Humane Society: what a world-class shelter looks like.)
One reason for escalating attacks by shelter dogs is simply that shelters are receiving more dangerous dogs, especially pit bulls.
A second reason is that behavioral screening appears to be giving staff, volunteers, and adopters a false sense of security about being around pit bulls and other dogs of breeds frequently involved in fatal or disfiguring dog attacks.
Inured to pit bull behavior
A third reason is that some shelter management are becoming inured to pit bull behavior, in particular, to the extent of accepting it as normal.
For instance, reported Deuce Niven of the Fayetteville (North Carolina) Observer on August 11, 2015, “A pit bull, accidentally let loose inside the Columbus County Animal Shelter on Sunday, killed a cat and 13 kittens before the shelter staff arrived Monday morning, animal control director Rossie Hayes said.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“This was just as friendly a dog as you would ever see,” Hayes told Niven. “I think the animal groups thought I would euthanize her, but I didn’t.”
But who could imagine that a dog, no matter how friendly, who recreationally kills a cat and 13 kittens might make a safe pet, or could be allowed around smaller animals and children under any circumstance?
A similar incident on the same day at the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association in West Virginia ended with an employee and another dog injured, and the escaped pit bull shot.
“Shelter executive director Chelsea Staley said the shelter has equipment to use during this kind of event, but that equipment was not adequate,” reported Jarod Clay of WSAZ. “The equipment was not effective and became useless after the dog bent the equipment during the attack.”
Translation: Staley and the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association significantly underestimated what would be necessary to protect staff, the public, and other animals from a pit bull attack.
Human psychology
Human psychologyUniversity of Liverpool Institute of Infection and Global Health researchers Carri Westgarth and Francine Watkins shed light on the human psychology involved in underestimating canine danger in “A qualitative investigation of the perceptions of female dog bite victims and implications for the prevention of dog bites,” published in August 2015 in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior.
“Expert opinion is that most bites are preventable. Intervention materials have been designed to educate people on how to assess the body language of dogs, evaluate risk and take appropriate action,” opened Westgarth and Watkins.
“The effectiveness of this approach is rarely evaluated and the incidence of dog bites is thought to be increasing. Is the traditional approach to dog bite prevention working as well as it should?”
Westgarth and Watkins “recruited eight female participants who had been bitten by a dog in the past five years,” and then interviewed them each in depth about their experience.
Beth Clifton transporting rescued pit bull (2011).
“Education may not prevent bites”
“The findings indicate that dog bites may not be as easily preventable as previously presumed,” Westgarth and Watkins wrote, “and that education about dog body language may not prevent some types of dog bites. The reasons participants were bitten were multi-faceted and complex. In some cases there was no interaction with the dog before the bite so there was no opportunity to assess the situation and modify behavior around the dog accordingly.”
Nonetheless, Westgarth and Watkins found, “Those bitten blamed themselves and/or the dog owner, but not the dog. Most participants already felt they had a theoretical knowledge that would allow them to recognize dog aggression prior to the dog bite, yet participants, especially those who worked regularly with dogs, routinely believed, ‘it would not happen to me.’”
(Beth Clifton photo)
Reducing the damage
Observed Westgarth in media statements about the study, “Similar reactions are also typical in other injury situations, such as car accidents; it was the fault of another driver or ‘just one of those things.’ In these cases preventive methods also focus on reducing the injury caused by an accident, such as raising awareness of the importance of wearing a seat belt. Our research suggests that we may need to incorporate a similar approach to dog bite injury.
“Nobody wants to believe that their beloved dog would cause harm, but all dogs have the potential to bite whether it be in aggression or in play,” Westgarth continued.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Westgarth herself thus repeated one of the shibboleths most often associated with underestimating and understating the damage from a dog attack, conflating the bites of most dog breeds with the all-out multi-bite mauling and shaking characteristic of pit bulls and other “bully” breeds.
But, Westgarth concluded, “Preventing the situation from arising at all may not always be feasible. Reducing the damage caused when a dog does bite, through careful pet dog selection and training, is something we should aim for.”
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Shelters and rescues are asking people to play Russian Roulette with their families except for one thing, families do not know they are playing. This family should have been educated about a ‘break-stick’ to have on hand in case of an incident just like this one.
Excellent article. This stands out for me, regarding the study on bite victims’ mindset: “Those bitten blamed themselves and/or the dog owner, but not the dog. Most participants already felt they had a theoretical knowledge that would allow them to recognize dog aggression prior to the dog bite, yet participants, especially those who worked regularly with dogs, routinely believed, ‘it would not happen to me.’”
This belief that somehow this won’t ever happen to THEM is what strikes me — despite scores of incidents in which adopted dogs — most notably, pit bulls — maul and kill adopters, their families and their neighbors, we continue to see shelters carrying out reckless policies as if nothing unusual is happening. You didn’t even mention the shelters that have been found to knowingly adopt out dangerous dogs — that’s a whole other layer. I compiled a list earlier this year and here are some shining examples of shelter mishandling of aggressive dogs:
March, 2015: An investigation was opened into the Albuquerque, NM Animal Welfare Department due to a high rate of known aggressive dogs being adopted out into the community or returned to their owners. Of the 215 shelter dogs that failed the national standard behavior test known as “SAFER” last year, 100 were adopted into new households, while another 32 were turned over to rescue groups. The rest were reclaimed by their original owners.
November, 2014, Ohio: Greg Montjoy, an experienced dog foster care provider, was severely attacked by a foster pit bull named “Jada.” The “rescue” group that gave him the dog told him it had no history of aggression, which later was found to be false. Mr. Montjoy said the dog “went from playful and cuddly to kill in the blink of an eye.” The dog repeatedly mauled his ankle, arm, and stomach and sent him to the hospital for three days. He said: “I know there is assumed risk taking a pit bull into my house…But at the same time, I have the head of the rescue assuring me that this is a great dog that has been fully evaluated and is perfectly safe in my house.”
June, 2014, Connecticut: Laurie Hollywood was fired from her job as manager of Stamford’s animal control center, and later arrested for several counts of reckless endangerment after repeatedly adopting out dogs with bite histories without informing adopters of the dogs’ past, and failing to “respond appropriately” to complaints from adopters whose new pets attacked them.
May, 2014, NY: A Queens-based animal “rescue” center, Second Chance, failed to warn adopter Quin Martin about a pit bull named Melo’s aggressive behavior in the Brooklyn shelter where the dog was kenneled prior to its transfer to Second Chance. The dog attacked Martin’s young son and daughter the day after they brought it home.
May, 2014, New York: Cassandra Cosgriff plans a lawsuit against the town of Riverhead for not telling her that her adopted pit bull had previously been a fighting dog. “Zen” had shown no previous signs of aggression prior to the Feb, 2014 attack. The attack left her arm “chewed like a bone” and another bite to her throat.
In Hartford, CT, a municipal animal control officer and mega “rescue angel” uses children to “kid test” stray pit bulls, and shows the pictures of these interactions on the shelter’s Facebook page and in the local paper, where she has been named a “Hometown Hero.” Who in their right mind would put small children in such danger, and why does the city of Hartford allow this? .Have we really reached the point where people are so deluded by the animal rescue “saints” gospel that they will risk their own families’ safety in order to help a down-and-out pit bull?
Any dog that harms any cat or kitten, or human being, or dog, or anyone else should be put down. Period.
“But as the volume of pit bulls entering animal shelters rose from about 5% of the incoming dogs to upward of 30%, pit bulls conspicuously often flunked the Assess-A-Pet test. By April 2002 Sternberg and Assess-A-Pet were hounded online by a coterie of vehement critics, including some former Roundout Valley Animals for Adoption employees.” Therein lays the root of the problem. Another great article, Merritt!
In addition to the rehoming of pit bulls who pass temperament testing, there is great danger in failure to euthanize pits after first attacks. In my case, the two pits that killed my dog had attacked him before and the owners promised to never let them roam. Five months later, they were let out to roam and they killed my beloved pet in my yard.
When I sued them, I asked the judge to require euthanization to prevent future attacks, but he allowed them to live. A neighbor said they had killed another dog, but I can’t verify it, however, they still live.
I cannot believe after three years, they haven’t attacked again. If they haven’t, the potential still exists..
Is there a study showing statistics on second attacks resulting in deaths or worse attacks?
I found in a 2001 review of files on approximately 1,500 dog attacks in cases in which a person was killed or maimed, or police shot the dog, that pit bulls and Rottweilers had together committed about two-thirds of the reported serial attacks on humans (65%), and more than three-fourths of the rampage attacks (79%).
Serial attacks were defined as instances of a dog injuring someone after having injured a person or an animal on a previous occasion. About 5% of the dogs involved in life-threatening or fatal attacks on humans, or shot by police while attacking, had attacked a person or killed a pet on an earlier occasion.
Among the 59 dogs who flunked a second chance after biting a person or killing a pet were 28 pit bulls (48%), 10 Rottweilers (17%), and 21 dogs of 10 other breeds.
The lopsided risk associated with giving pit bulls a second or third chance would be even greater if pit bull advocates are correct in asserting that pit bulls are more likely than other breeds to be killed after their first violent incident which would mean that relatively few pit bulls get further chances, and that those who do are among the dogs considered least likely to be genuinely dangerous.
Rampage attacks were defined as instances of a dog attacking multiple people or animals during a single incident. About 10% of the dog attack cases among the 1,500 involved rampages in which a person is killed or maimed, and/or the dog is shot by police. Of the 153 dogs who rampaged, 89 (58%) were pit bulls; 32 (21%) were Rottweilers; and 32 (21%) were representatives of 14 other large breeds.
No dog smaller than a boxer was involved in a rampage attack, possibly because small dogs are more easily restrained after attacking their first victim.
You criticize SAFER by first labeling it as a pass/fail test, which it is not. It’s no more than a simple statistical screening test designed for use by inexperienced people. It’s known to have a very high “error” rate, but there’s nothing available to replace it, without more capable people running the test, and budgets preclude that. As a screening test, it is supposed to be followed up by targeted testing, but often is not.
As for dog attacks mostly the result of human behavior, that is likely true, but it’s often the prior human behavior, and any dog expert who doesn’t take care is no expert, for there’s no way he can guarantee new behavior until it has been well conditioned. As for people that many shelters and rescues deem to have expertise, they really don’t know enough to know that, nor can they afford it.
As for a few cases of trained dog handlers being bitten, you present them as though such training should “guarantee” they were safe, and that’s nonsense. For some balance, with how many dogs do these issues not happen? You quote a shelter director as saying “this was just as friendly a dog as you would ever see”, but did she have any real idea of that? What does “friendly” mean? A 3-year old ran over and jumped on my pit bull, since his mother, standing right there, always let him do that with his Dane at home. Stupid mother, and luckily my pittie was kid trained and knew how to handle the situation.
So how dangerous are these pit bull things and how much equipment is needed to protect yourself? That simply depends on both the dog’s conditioning and especially your own training and skills.
The American SPCA markets the SAFER Aggression Assessment test as “a predictive, consistent method for evaluating the probability of canine aggression in individual dogs.” If it did that reliably, whether used as either a pass/fail test or for remedial diagnostic purposes, shelter dogs — about 75% of them pit bulls –– would not have killed more than 20 times as many Americans since it came into use in 1999-2000 than in the preceding 141 years. The acceptable error rate in evaluating dog safety before adoption is zero, a standard achieved from 1858 through 1987 and again from 1989 to 2000. The latter was a time frame within which more than 40 million shelter dogs were rehomed, very nearly the same number as have been rehomed from 2000 to date.
I am not sure what your point is, Gerry. The statistics speak for themselves, and Merritt didn’t invent these cases or the numbers. The question isn’t “how can we increase shelter workers’ and the general public’s expertise in attempting to predict future aggression from these deadly dogs?” Oh, and also which equipment they should use in order to arm themselves? Seriously? Do you really think the average person (including the average shelter worker) wants to invest the energy and effort you apparently have with your own “pittie” to manage and train potentially deadly breeds of dog? Why would we want to do that, when instead we could choose to own and work with vastly safer breeds?
I worked in animal shelters and later as a professional shelter trainer for nearly 30 years and was never injured, though toward the end I was forced to work with pit bulls. Maybe my skills and instincts were better than the people who were attacked, maybe not. But I chose to leave the shelter and training world rather than feel forced to deal with other people’s poor choices of dog breeds, and the myths popularized on TV, which I would have to painstakingly try to dispel while eyeing the aggressive monsters being adopted out as pets to unsuspecting people. The whole “lion tamer” ego-trip many trainers are on these days disgusts me. What happened to nice companion dogs and happy, normal, non-masochistic owners?
Mandatory spaying and neutering of pit bull breeds is a solution only being utilized in a few places. When we consider the fact that these dogs were developed for one thing only — aggression with no warning, for instant fights and attacks on other animals — is there any question about their suitability as pets for the average person? Why do so many pit bulls “pop out” with explosive aggression after showing no previous signs of it? Sure, Gerry, most pit types will never maul or kill anyone, but they are guilty in the majority of disfiguring and fatal attacks (and the numbers keep rising). As J. Thomas Beasley says in his book “Misunderstood Nanny Dogs?” — why not allow them to “gradually, and humanely, go extinct.”
I would be thrilled and amazed if you can tell me how to convince macho males and dog fighting owners and the irresponsible backyard breeders to spay and neuter their dogs. Sadly, if they can make $10 a puppy, they are all for it. People are much more the problem than the poor mishandled dogs who have a life time of suffering, abuse and usually death in the back room of a shelter or in the fighting ring.
The answer is very simple: adopt legislation like that in effect in San Francisco and San Bernardino County, California, which requires that all pit bulls be sterilized, period. According to San Bernardino County spokesperson Doug Wert, pit bull admissions to the San Bernardino County animal shelter have dropped from 2,066 with a 77% euthanasia rate in fiscal year 2009-2010, just before the ordinance was passed, to 1,037 with a 31% euthanasia rate in fiscal year 2014-2015. Earlier, San Francisco achieved a 25% decline in pit bull intake and a 33% drop in pit bull euthanasia within three years of mandating sterilization of pit bulls, and the San Francisco numbers have now continued a downward trend for nine years.
So sad for all concerned. The most crucial time with a dog is the first three weeks of being in it’s new home, Everything and everyone is strange to them and they are tense and hyper from being in a shelter situation that is filled with frantic dogs and often the smell of death added to the removal from their home and regardless of how negligent, their owner. Their history is not known. It is a proven fact that often dogs do not sleep in a shelter and are exhausted.
What these people did was so kind and like the saying goes, “no good deed goes unpunished. Since evaluations aren’t effective, one should be given clear instructions from the shelter regarding safety. We used to give a great booklet called “Second Hand Dog” that is probably our of print but was extremely helpful in making it clear how to adjust and have a good adoption experience.”.
This will be long but I would like to add my energy/thoughts to the topic in hopes it will somehow help.
I cannot imagine losing a child. Losing a child to a violent act is beyond that, even. I do not know how I would react. I do not know what the family must be going through. My selfish desires hope that this family will find the strength to file an enormous lawsuit, as it seems that things only get done when the money scales tip one way or the other.
First let me say that I strongly support breed-specific legislation for many reasons. That being said, we also lost our dearly beloved American bulldog mix last summer. A great dog, a lovable clown. And yes, I am aware of differences in bulldog breeds and this is not an attempt to “disguise” possible pitbull heritage.
Why did I choose such a dog? Well, that goes back to my experiences working in veterinary clinics, one of which was a very, very busy 24-hour emergency clinic in the Pacific Northwest. Dozens of dogs came through daily, in various states of ill health/trauma. Of all the breeds I observed (pretty much everything including exotics), I was impressed by the bull breeds’ reactions to trauma, stress and handling. Especially in comparison to other breeds (amongst them several that are popular pet breeds) that would routinely require muzzling just for non invasive exams (and also were not in overtly traumatic states). The bull breeds were always calm, friendly and basically “non-reactive.”
All this being said, it does not really prepare a person for day to day life with a bull breed, nor does it offer any insight on how bull breeds behave with other animals. We got lucky with our girl, but even so, I had to engage in extremely physical interaction with her (I am/was VERY athletic including competitively) in order for her to be a balanced pack member. Bull breeds are physical and they push boundaries 24/7. I would guess that at least 95% of folks are not willing, let alone able, to interact with bull breeds to the extent that the dog is a stable pack member. Hell, just take a look at how folks raise their HUMAN children, let alone animals.
I do not think that bull breeds should be adopted out to families with children at all, period. I do not think they should be adopted out to folks in urban/suburban areas where they may come into contact with children and other pets. I think they should be adopted only to homes that have been screened thoroughly and who agree under financial penalty to make sure the dog is engaged in rigorous socialization and controlled living environment. It should be mandated by law. America SHOULD ban pit bulls and bull breeds. This is the only way these dogs will eventually be “bred out” and their good qualities preserved and translated into another form – what I mean is “natural selection” instead of “breeder/tough guy/fighter selection.”
America should have very strict animal breeding laws. Exotics and wilds should be prohibited, period. Why is the “right” to make money ALWAYS more important than the right to humane living? Harm to all, profits for a few. Makes ya proud, don’t it?
As always, it is money. The “welfare” organizations are populated by breeders and breeder sympathetic persons. They are motivated by money. Persons motivated by money will scream louder and get more exposure than persons motivated by logic/morals, generally.
The thing that is so frustrating for me is, if the various branches of governments REALLY wanted to eliminate cruelty, crime, etc. they could do it in a very short time. However, MONEY interferes and corrupts, so we end up in the same place as always.
That being said I am happy to read about the progress being made, especially shutting down the primate research facilities. This means other smaller facilities will eventually close. Trickle down, baby!!! (No I do not believe in trickle down as a real economic solution, just saying that because that is what “THEY” always say…).
Thanks for all the hard work so I can just sit here and type… Much love and strength to all those who care and are trying to make a difference…