Each pit bull episode splashed across the evening news brings forth an emotional outpouring of letters to the local papers and well practiced pleas in other venues, such as local hearings and meetings. The mantra is always the same, always scripted. Much if not most comes from outside the community, often from out of state. There are incessant claims that the pit bulls are misunderstood, that they were only confused, that they were made mean by evil people , that there is no “proof” that these particular dogs were pit bulls and so forth and so on.
The slogans are always the same:
“Punish the deed, not the breed.”
“Your breed may be next.”
“Punish the deed, not the breed.” --- The problem is that in the real world something is done only after an adult has been run down and killed or a child disfigured for life. Many of these incidents involve dogs without prior police or animal control incidents, dogs with no paper trail. It is difficult, expensive and time consuming to construct an official record for preventive action. In response to a complaint it may not be possible to identify a dog; on a later incident it may not be possible to know which dog is which. Major cities such as Chicago lack the resources to pursue complaints, often difficult to substantiate, unless there is grievous injury.
In order to be part of the solution, the responsible canine community needs to identify prophylactic mechanisms that will do something about dangerous dogs without incident records on file or in the hands of people without an active criminal record. Until then the chant “Punish the deed, not the breed” is heard by the community as “We only care about our right to have any damn dog we want, we could care less about your children.”
In this scenario, unless we can propose valid preventative measures, the politicians are sooner or later going to “do something, anything.” This usually means severe eradication measures that can cause great harm to dogs who are no danger to society and yet at the same time still be ineffective as a solution to the fundamental problem of out of control dogs on the streets.
When you think about it, “Punish the deed, not the breed.” is the system we have now. Nothing happens until a kid is mauled or a jogger run down and killed, and then all hell breaks lose, the dogs end up put down, the owner, if he is not able to deny ownership, may wind up in jail.
But somebody is still dead or mauled, the bodies have yet again been spread across the media, some kid will live the rest of his life with the scars, physical and emotional.
This approach does not work and nothing useful can be accomplished until we face the reality that dogs and breeds are different, the real problem is not Labrador Retrievers, Beagles and little Poodles, though they occasionally do bite, but big, aggressive dogs.
And simple size restrictions are no solution either. The world is full of fat old Retrievers in the 90 pound to whatever range; dogs too fat and lazy to roll into an upright position and bite somebody. And we should make these owners put up a fence, buy a muzzle, sign up on the big dog pervert list ? Gimme a break, these people are not going to stand for that; they are not the problem, they know they are not the problem, and they can damn well convince the politicians they are not the problem.
“Your breed may be next.” ---- This is simply disingenuous, for by such reasoning the Mafia could demand the unthinking support of the Italian American community and neighborhood gangs of hooligans could hide behind identification as the people of the neighborhood. Society generally bans the private ownership of wolves, large wild cats, venomous snakes and many other varieties of animal because of their inherent danger. In a similar way, societal action to remove the threat of pit fighting dogs, and various cross bred animals, is a viable and perhaps necessary option to the over all solution.
Prior to the eruption of pit bull incidents in the nineties the breeds with the macho man image were the German Shepherd and later the Doberman. There were local variations, in Detroit in the sixties the Bouvier was a popular dog in the city, primarily because of a well known and well promoted breeder across the river in Canada.
But there were virtually no atrocity reports in the newspapers and indeed dog related deaths were simply not a public issue, though a few were no doubt always taking place. If the pit bull in all it's variants were to simply disappear over night, the problem would diminish by an order of magnitude. Your breed would not be next unless incidents in similar numbers and brutality brought the attention of the public and the politicians down upon it.
Each time a Pit Bull incident pops up, the internet begins to hum, the propaganda troops rally. All of the standard propaganda ploys are played out. There are well rehearsed appeals to emotion, logic and pseudo logic. There is a whole series of stock tales about nice little pit bullies being attacked by miniature poodles and endless stories about other dogs who bite.
But this onslaught of scripted propaganda -- mixing truth, half truth and outright lies -- may ultimately do more harm than good. As Mr. Lincoln said “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Their first and most shrill claim is that
“this is so unfair, only when a pit bull is involved does it get
all of this attention, dogs bite all of the time.” But every damn fool in
But when dogs get loose and maul multiple people and kill much of the time they are relatively powerful dogs which appear to be and often are claimed by their owners as Pit Bulls.
One would almost believe that there is a ubiquitous press conspiracy, a cover up, whenever three miniature poodles or a golden retriever go on a rampage killing and maiming innocent children on the streets. That, somehow, the reporter shows up, sees the blood and bodies and when informed that no pit bull is implicated just shrugs his shoulders and heads back to the press room without filing a report.
The next shrill claim is “Many dogs are capable of such things, but yet our poor Pit Bulls always get the blame.” This is a half truth. It may very well be true that relatively few of these dogs are pure and direct descendants of the actual pit fighting stock. The street perverts tend to want a larger dog and will breed into some of the larger, more massive Mastiff style breeds in order to produce the larger and more impressive dogs. And it is no doubt true that dogs lacking clear ties into the actual fighting lines are often identified as a “Pit Bull” when an incident occurs.
There is a tendency toward the Bill Clinton defense, to play word games with what is and what is not a pit bull. While the professional pit fighter will see a very small, tight population of compact, relatively small dogs truly proficient in the pit, the population at large tends to think of the pits and the pit crosses, most of which are with larger, more aggressive and more powerful dogs.
You do not, after all, breed your pit bull with a Beagle in order to gain presence and respect on the street, you look for something much more bad ass and intimidating. These are the dogs that provoke fear, bring forth the demands for legal steps to eradicate the pit bull menace on the streets.
On one level, eradication, the elimination of the game bred heritage in the over all gene pool, is a rational approach. The problem is the progeny of the pit fighting dogs loose in the hands of the street breeders; there is some sense in legal remedies to remove this from our streets. But the practical difficulty is the mechanics, devising reasonable means of identifying the dogs to be eliminated while insuring that the hundreds and thousands of dogs in safe hands, owners who maintain reliable control and do not contribute to proliferation through breeding are left in the peace they merit and deserve.
If it were possible to devise a new virus that, loose in the population, would over a period of three weeks spread to all dogs in the world and then mature and sterilize any dog with three parts in a hundred genetic relationship with the actual pit lines it would be a boon to mankind. In a generation the fighting influence would disappear from our streets and the population as a whole would be truly safer and more secure.
If the new virus would kill rather than sterilize it would be a more difficult decision, for one would need to weigh the evil inherent in the death of dogs in safe hands, loved and valued by owners who would any case insure that the had not potential to threaten anyone.
And of course while there would be a substantial beneficial effect, mankind would still have to deal with unwarranted aggression of dogs in the wrong hands and wrong circumstances, innocent people and children would still on occasion be mauled or killed by a dog.
In summary, the nice ladies of the pit
bull propaganda machine are well organized, dedicated and most effective.
They are comfortable in their blinders, really do
believe the fairy tales they bring to the table every time there is another
incident. The internet has provided them a powerful communication network,
always ready to trumpet the clarion call, to bring forth one more crusade
to explain away yet another mauling on the streets of
But ultimately this, like all calculated propaganda efforts, based on the incessant repetition of the scripted lies and half truths, will in the end do more harm than good.
Ultimately the voices of the dead and the maimed, and of their mothers and fathers, will speak louder than the incessantly repeated slogans.
The pit bulls and the closely related dogs, especially those purposefully bred with other breeds known to be large and aggressive, are different, are more dangerous, than the run of the mill pet dogs in American homes, the Beagles, Retrievers, Basset hounds and Poodles. Everybody knows this in his gut, and ultimately that will be what counts.
The man on the street, and the parents of the young victims know this, and in the long run they can not and will not be fooled. And, ultimately, their voices will speak louder to the politicians than the well meaning band of Pit Bull apologists.
Legal measures to eradicate Pit Bulls, as exist in places such as Denver and Ontario, are not wise, are not good laws, damage and bring grief to the innocent, those representing no danger to society.
But, if it comes down to all or nothing, ultimately this is the choice society will make.
In order to avoid this, the first, necessary step is to recognize and admit what everybody knows, that these pit dogs and mixes are different, represent a significant and more immediate danger. Everybody knows this, and the shrill propaganda from the well meaning little old ladies after every incident, denying the fundamental public danger from the game bred lines on the streets, in the end serves mostly to enrage the people who are the potential victims, that is, the voters who put the politicians in office.
Only once the fundamental danger of pit bred canine lines on the street is admitted can society as a whole seek out reasonable and meaningful measures to resolve the problem.
Jim Engel