Pit bulls only as dangerous as their owners, ASPCA tells city
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Emporia,KS -- A Web-based seminar on dangerous dogs had a simple message for Emporia city commissioners: Blame the owners, not the breeds.
"There is no data to support the idea that a particular breed of dog is vicious," said Debora Bresch, legislative liaison for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which held the seminar Monday afternoon. "It's the owner's behavior that needs to be addressed."
The city commission is set to look at its "vicious dog" ordinance on Nov. 22 at the request of Emporia resident Tricia Segobia. Recently, a Siberian husky-pit bull mix killed a dog Segobia had given to a friend, then killed a neighbor's dog after the mix was released from the animal shelter. The mixed-breed was not considered "vicious" under Emporia law because it had not harmed or killed a human.
Segobia has asked for Emporia to better enforce its animal-control laws and to tighten the laws it has. Among other things, she wants a dog to be considered "vicious" if it has attacked or killed a pet and she has asked that the city require owners of "notorious breeds" to register their dogs and insure them.
At the seminar, however, Bresch and ASPCA attorney Ledy VanKavage said that breed-specific legislation tends to be ineffective. One of the most sweeping examples, a nationwide ban of pit bulls that Britain adopted in 1991, had no impact on the number of dog bites in the country, a study found. And this year, a circuit court found a breed ban to be unconstitutional in Toledo vs. Tellings, which said a ban violated equal protection and due process rights since there was no reason to declare the American pit bull terrier to be inherently dangerous.
Requiring owners to insure dogs such as a doberman or a rottweiler tends to be tantamount to a ban, the two ASPCA representatives said, since few companies will insure them -- even though, they said, dog bites cost an insurance company far less than floods or fires and occur less frequently. Between 12 and 24 people die each year from dog bites, VanKavage said.
"More people are killed by lightning each year," she said. But the media quickly picks up on pit bull attacks, she noted, even when other, more severe dog attacks occur. On June 9, she said, 41 publications covered a girl who was seriously, but not critically, injured by two pit bulls. On the same day, a boy who needed 300 stitches after being mauled by a Labrador retriever-mix drew coverage from only two papers.
"In the '70s, it was the doberman," VanKavage said. "In the '80s, it was the German shepherd. In the '90s it was the rottweiler and now it's the pit bull. But getting rid of the breed doesn't get rid of the problem."
So if it's not any one breed, what makes a dog likely to attack? The two women listed three main factors.
• 90 percent of fatal dog attacks came from animals that were not spayed or neutered.
• 81 percent of fatal dog attacks came from animals that were not maintained as a pet, but were instead isolated from the family and regular human contact.
• 61 percent of those attacks came from animals that were not humanely controlled, or had in some way been abused or neglected.
Given those conditions, they said, communities have taken a number of different approaches. Some have partially subsidized the cost of neutering a pet for those unable to afford it. In Delaware, for example, the cost has been brought down to $10 to $20, paid for in part by a $3 surcharge on rabies shots. In addition, veteranarians are offered a $50 tax credit for each combined vaccination and sterilization they do.
It doesn't take long to recoup those costs, Bresch said.
"In New Hampshire, they saved $3.15 in impoundment costs for every dollar spent on low-income pet owners needing assistance," she said.
Other avenues to pursue, they said, include an anti-tethering or chaining law, since animals tied up for long periods of time tend to become antisocial; mandatory microchipping of pets, so that loose dogs can quickly be recovered; offering responsible pet owner and bite prevention training; and adopting a "tiered" system of punishment for owners of dangerous dogs.
As an example of the last, Bresch and VanKavage described an Oregon community which started with relatively minor penalties for an animal at large that displayed menacing behavior up to possible euthanasia for an animal that bites a person or kills a pet or farm animal. After a one to two-year period, the animal can be deemed no longer dangerous, though confinement is still required in the more severe cases.
Commissioner Bobbie Agler said he found the presentation interesting, though he also wanted to hear from anyone who might have evidence to support a different viewpoint on breed bans.
"If there's opposing studies out there, it's critical that we don't get blindsided," he said.
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