Helping Hands

He just stood there with his tail wagging.
He wanted another piece of my dog.

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Revised: Dec 15 2012, 15:22 GMT

The citizens of Topeka have a long and distinguished history of protecting their animal companions. Shortly after the first SPCA's were formed in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, the Helping Hands Humane Society was founded in Topeka in 1890. An interesting (and irrelevant) rumor persists that Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were both local dogcatchers in the years before Helping Hands was founded, and a distant relative of Earp's currently sits on the board of directors.

Topeka continued their progressive tradition of humane animal care with the passage of carefully crafted Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) in the early 1980s. The legislation protected the citizens of Topeka and their more vulnerable animal companions for nearly 25 years.

The situation began to change in January of 2010 when Ledy VanKavage of Best Friends Animal Society spoke before the Kansas Student Animal Legal Defense Fund. In the audience was an assistant city attorney for Topeka, Kyle Smith. Soon after VanKavage's presentation the city formed a committee to advise city council on the repeal of their BSL ordinance, and packed it with pit bull advocates.

The committee included, in addition to Smith, Best Friends law clerk (and VanKavage protege) Katie Bray Barnett. Also on the committee was Stacy Hensiek, the owner of a pit bull, who briefly served as director of Helping Hands during the period of repeal. The committee presented a pit bull friendly ordinance to the city council which was accepted on September 28th, 2010. The new ordinance, in addition to removing the BSL provisions, allows Helping Hands to make pit bulls available for public adoption. Flushed with success in Topeka, Bray-Barnett is working on similar repeals in at least twelve cities.

One of the arguments used by Smith and others on the committee was that BSL was draining the city coffers. Financial intimidation has been a favorite device of pit bull advocates when arguing with cash-strapped municipalities. The Best Friends fiscal impact "Cost Calculator" has been discredited but nonetheless remains an effective intimidation tool.

The primary flaw of the Best Friends Cost Calculator often goes unrecognized. The disregard of the human toll is a moral failure. There are not only the medical costs of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human and animal victims each year, but the financial liability that municipalities and humane shelters bear are ignored. Recent jury awards in California and Washington have cost municipalities millions of dollars, and the human toll is incalculable.

On September 21, 2011, nearly a year after city council voted to overturn their BSL, a pit bull "came out of nowhere" and attacked Bailey, a Golden Retriever, and latched onto her stomach. Lisa Clark, Bailey's guardian, and several others received cuts and bites to their hands and arms as they struggled to protect Bailey. Animal control officers and police arrived at the scene and captured the pit bull. Bailey was taken to a veterinarian with severe wounds, and the pit bull was transported to Helping Hands Humane Society.

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NEWS:

Source: The Topeka Capital - Journal

Ax3 Redux

The APDT is fully aware that any dog can bite,
 any dog can maim, and any dog can kill.

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Readers of  SRUV will recall Michael Linke's memorable phrase Any dog is capable of any act, at any point in time. We thought Mr Linke's phrase so excessively . . . grandiose, that we've given it a kicky shortcut, Ax3.

Now SRUV has learned that the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) has coined a phrase that also employs the triple repetition of the Any meme. The APDT claim that  Any dog can bite, any dog can maim, and any dog can kill is, if anything, even more deluded than Linke's statement.

What is it with pit bull advocates and the adjective Any?

And what is it with the ritualized, prayer-like phrases that are meant to convey that there are no differences between breeds?

While Linke's phrase is simply silly, the APDT version is dark, ominous. It speaks to us only of mayhem. Should we fear all of our animal companions? Linke's phrase, a hyperbolic elaboration of the long-time favorite All Dogs Bite, implies that pit bulls are no more dangerous than chihuahuas, which experience tells us is false. The APDT construction, on the other hand, inverts logic by implying that chihuahuas are every bit as dangerous as pit bulls, that they can maim and kill just as readily as a pit bull. The phrase strikes fear into our hearts, regardless of the intention.

With this statement the APDT has, perhaps without fully realizing it, acknowledged how dangerous pit bulls are.

Here is the full passage:

The APDT is fully aware that any dog can bite, any dog can maim, and any dog can kill. A dangerous or vicious dog is a product of a combination of individual genetics, upbringing, socialization, and lack of proper training. The solution to preventing dog bites is education of owners, breeder, and the general public about aggression prevention, not legislation directed at certain breeds.

The APDT has strained to construct an argument against BSL and in so doing has defied reason and ignored their own words. They understand that dogs are a product of, in part, their genetics, but in the next sentence the APDT assigns all responsibility for aggression to the owners, breeders, and the general public.

By this logic, the victim of a pit bull attack (presumably a member of the general public) is responsible for his own injury.


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Statistics:
Statistics quoted on SRUV are from the nation's authoritative source for current dog attack statistics, the 32+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada.
View or download the current PDF

Record 33 fatal pit bull attacks & 459 disfigurements in 2015

Pit bulls killed 24,000 other dogs & 13,000 cats in 2015

2015 Dog Bite Related Fatalities (Daxton's Friends)

Fatal Pit Bull Attacks

Today's pit bull attacks

Definitions:
SRUV uses the definition of "pit bull" as found in the Omaha Municipal Code Section 6-163. As pit bulls are increasingly crossed with exotic mastiffs, Catahoula Leopard Dogs and other breeds, the vernacular definition of "pit bull" must be made even more inclusive.

Sources cited by news media sometimes refer to "Animal Advocates" or sometimes "Experts." In many cases these words are used to refer to single-purpose pit bull advocates who have never advocated for any other breeds or species of animals. Media would be more accurate to refer to these pit bull advocates as advocates of fighting breeds.

Similarly, in many cases pit bull advocates refer to themselves as "dog lovers" or "canine advocates" and media often accepts this usage. The majority of these pit bull advocates are single-purpose advocates of fighting breeds.


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BSL Scholarship

Our collective attitude toward our animal companions began to change with the publication of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation in 1975. The Animal Legal Defense Fund was founded in 1979 and animal law courses are currently taught in over a hundred law schools in the US.

SRUV recently reviewed the scholarship related to Breed Specific Legislation (BSL); we've included a brief bibliography below and more titles can be viewed here and in the relevant scholarly and legal databases.

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Attacking the Dog-Bite Epidemic: Why Breed-Specific Legislation Won't Solve the Dangerous-Dog Dilemma; Hussain, Safia Gray. 74 Fordham Law Review 2847

Canine Profiling: Does Breed-Specific Legislation Take a Bite out of Canine Crime; Pratt, Heather K. 108 Penn State Law Review 855

Dangerous Dog Laws: Failing to Give Man's Best Friend a Fair Shake at Justice; McNeely, Cynthis A.; Linquist, Sarah A. 3 J. Animal L. 99

Panic Policy Making: Canine Breed Bans in Canada and the United States; Hunter, Susan; Brisbin, Richard A. Prepared for delivery at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association.

Dog Bite Injury: an investigation into the effectiveness of regulation, Watson, Linda (Thesis)

Pit Bull Bans and the Human Factors Affecting Canine Behavior; Medlin, Jamey; 56 Depaul Law Review, 1285

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SRUV will not characterize all animal law scholarship, but a look at one paper is illuminating. The following paragraph serves as the opening of Irrationality Unleashed: The Pitfalls of Breed-Specific Legislation (Swann, Kristen E.  78 UMKC L. Rev. 839). The Introduction is titled A Tale of Two "Pitties" and begins:

A young woman struggles with an overfull trash bag in a chilly, hissing rain. Hefting the bag into the trash bin behind her apartment building, she hears weak but insistent mewling. Seven impossibly tiny puppies huddle in the wet detritus behind the container. The woman whistles several times to summon the pups' mother. No dog appears. The listless dogs cannot survive in the damp cold. She retrieves a basket lined with towels from her apartment and . . . . 

This three-hankie tear-jerker qualified for the Law Review?

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What is immediately apparent is the mind-numbing tedium of so much of the research on this subject.  It is almost as if the scholars are repeating the same ideas to one another, over and over. This selection of titles, and the excerpt above, do not inspire confidence in current animal law scholarship.

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Related Material:
Related post: Dangerous Dog Laws, DDL
See also: Bioethics (Wikipedia)

Overview of "breed specific" laws, Kenneth Phillips, Dog Bite Law

Statistics:
Statistics on SRUV are from the 30+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada, published by Animal People. To view or download the current PDF click here. This page may also include information from Dogsbite and Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.

Information on euthanasia rates is from Pit bulls and Political Recklessness, by Merritt Clifton. Shelter  intake and euthanasia rates are published annually in the July/August edition of Animal People.

Google News: Today's pit bull attacks






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Escape Artists: VI

Sept 8th, 2011


About 7 a.m. on Saturday, 41-year old Craig Higgins took his Alaskan Malamute, Belle, to Aptos Junior High School for their usual romp.


Three off-leash pit bulls attacked Higgins and Bella. The pit bulls' owner, who wore a flannel shirt and had a "horseshoe" mustache, was several hundred yards away. Craig received  numerous bites as he tried to separate the dogs.


The pit bulls' owner, who was described as a white man in his late 40s or early 50s, eventually took his three dogs to a silver sport-utility vehicle in the parking lot, and drove off.

"He ran and left my husband there bleeding," said Priscilla Higgins. Craig had more than 20 wounds on his legs and hands that could not be closed with stitches. Craig has been unable to work and the Higgins have had to cover the medical bills.

The pit bulls were described as standard size of 35 to 50 pounds. Anyone with information about the attack please call animal control officials at 454-7303 ext 1.

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Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel

DDL

SRUV recently initiated a series of posts on Dangerous Dog Laws (DDL) with this post. The comments to the post are worthy of note, and are posted below for those who may have missed them.

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Dorothea Malm said...

This is a great series to undertake! DDL have become more prevalent recently, and it seems to be working for all types of dogs excepting gripping/fighting breeds.

The fact that DDLs don't address egregious kinds of attacks like the one described here - launching out of a car to disembowel - clearly shows they can address normal dogs, but not gripping/fighting dogs.

August 31, 2011 8:13 PM 

Janelle Jerman said...

Thank you for undertaking this series. I am so saddened and disgusted by the city of Arvada's response to the attack on my Uno. The deputy chief of police told me that animal control could have removed the pit bull who killed Uno after the attack on Kim Greene's dog, but left it up to the discretion of the animal control officer in charge of her case. This is in spite of a THREE YEAR history of complaints and citations (including TWO dangerous and vicious dog citations and a court appearance) over this animal! If the laws that are already in place aren't even enforced with consistency or common sense then how can we keep our companion animals safe? How can a community remain safe from preventable attacks such as this? DDL NEED to have specificity to prevent tragedies like ours from happening again.

September 4, 2011 12:13 PM 

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Related post: Repeat Offender

Claw Hammer

[This post is archived and is no longer supported.]

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Revised: July 17, 2013; 15:01 GMT

. . . most likely caused by a claw hammer found in the vicinity.  

Linda Watson, from a comment on The Conversation

SRUV recently came upon an account of a dog attack while reading the comments under an article. The comment is excerpted here:

I recall one [human] fatality, due to dog attack, where the dog was subsequently found to have suffered a fractured skull, most likely caused by a claw hammer found in the vicinity.  . . . .   In this case, the media focused heavily on describing the dog as a Rottweiler. I needed a laugh and I certainly got it! It was a small black and tan dog of unknown parentage with little, if any, resemblance to a Rottweiler. It will be a great example for use in a media analysis. Now there are polls asking whether Rottweilers should be banned.

This comment is unusual in several respects, not least of which is the incongruous injection of frivolity by a scholar into a description of awful mayhem involving a human death and a dog with a fractured skull.

There are other disturbing elements in this account. We are especially intrigued by the presumed claw hammer attack on the dog, and are seeking proof of when the hammer attack on the dog occurred. Did it occur prior to the dog's attack on the human (and perhaps serve as a contributing factor to the dog's attack on the human), as Ms Watson seems to suggest?

It seems too obvious that the claw hammer attack occurred as a defensive effort to fend the dog off during the fatal attack; surely the investigators would have considered that possibility. A third possibility is that the claw hammer was used by a third party to destroy the dog, following the fatal attack.

We are also curious as to how a "small dog" could be implicated in a canine homicide. When we think of a small dog we think of a lap dog. But some one year old pit bulls are relatively small, and yet are capable of canine homicide.

Furthermore, we're curious about the "polls" which ask if Rottweilers should be banned. Were these polls scientifically conducted, or were they simply digital customer surveys now commonly found beside news stories on the web?

We agree with Ms Watson that this case deserves further study, and SRUV would like to verify the particulars of this fatal dog attack. Please send links to original sources (as opposed to apocryphal accounts) to SRUV.

In an effort to discover the truth of this purported attack, SRUV will publish the results of any verifiable information we receive, regardless of what it shows. In the meantime, SRUV suggests it is unwise for anyone, especially a scholar, to indulge in passing rumors in comment sections. Furthermore, we find that the macabre attempt at humor in this otherwise horrific account is particularly offensive.

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Statistics:

Statistics quoted on SRUV are from the nation's authoritative source for current dog attack statistics, the 32+ year, continuously updated Dog attack deaths and maimings, U.S. & Canada.

View or download the current PDF

Dog Bite Studies Index
   Dogsbite.org

Today's pit bull attacks
   Google News

This page may also include information from Dogsbite & Fatal Pit Bull Attacks.

Definitions:
SRUV uses the definition of "pit bull" as found in the Omaha Municipal Code Section 6-163. As pit bulls are increasingly crossed with exotic mastiffs, Catahoula Leopard Dogs and other breeds, the vernacular definition of "pit bull" must be made even more inclusive.

Sources cited by news media sometimes refer to "Animal Advocates" or sometimes "Experts." In many cases these words are used to refer to single-purpose pit bull advocates who have never advocated for any other breeds or species of animals. Media would be more accurate to refer to these pit bull advocates as advocates of fighting breeds.

Similarly, in many cases pit bull advocates refer to themselves as "dog lovers" or "canine advocates" and media often accepts this usage. The majority of these pit bull advocates are single-purpose advocates of fighting breeds.


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Good For Dogs

I don't know why I'm still surprised at how illogical 

and contradictory professional pit bull haters can be.

 -- Mike Bailey, comment on The Conversation

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Hello Mike,

Thank you for your work on behalf of our animal companions with Goodfordogs.org.

I agree that the comment to which you refer was not our finest moment. It left us longing for a retroactive delete function. We could plead too much coffee but excuses are cowardly.

While acknowledging this, we at the same time take exception to your use of the phrase "professional pit bull haters." SRUV is assuredly not professional, as anyone can see from a cursory glance. SRUV could benefit from your skills not only as a web administrator, but also as an animal welfare professional.

My larger concern is your use of the ad hominem fallacy: pit bull hater. You may be aware that SRUV has considered at length the rhetoric of the pit bull advocacy movement, where hater is a common epithet. To dehumanize individuals in this manner is, as we know from our long histories, a device used . . . . . well, do I need to go on? In the pit bull wars the term haters is used to disparage those who advocate for our more vulnerable animal companions while also advocating for public safety.

You also claim that SRUV, as presumed pit bull haters, are illogical. In reply I could argue  that it is not illogical to argue for the public safety, in view of the fact that pit bulls have killed at least twelve people already (by September 1) in the US this year, and have also attacked hundreds of companion animals and humans. I invite you to read a few SRUV posts to see if we are indeed illogical, or if we can be accused of using  inflammatory rhetoric.

Thanks again for your good work. Regards,
SRUV

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Related post:  RSPCA Act
See also:  Good for Dogs, Mike Bailey

Gameness: VI

They stabbed it 30 times with a knife and bludgeoned it 

to death  . . . .  to stop it ripping Anthony to pieces.

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He had gone to stroke it when it went berserk, locking its jaws on him, tossing him around and ripping open his flesh.

He was screaming for his life but the dog had hold of his neck. I ran home to get two knives. It sat on him, as if to say, 'This is my meat.' It was like a lion. It jumped on him, trying to bite his face, got him to the floor and dragged him in its jaws.


The dog savaged every part of him. You could see through his leg.

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Scott Singleton and his mum Eileen were hurt as they stabbed the dog 30 times with a knife and bludgeoned it to death. Scott's dad Mark said: "If it wasn't for my son and my wife, the lad would have been dead."

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As reported by The Sun