Down Under

Any dog is capable of any act, at any point in time.
  -- Michael Linke, CEO of the RSPCA, Victoria

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Jackline Ancaito and Mawien Chol left Sudan in 2001. After spending three years in Egypt waiting for resettlement they arrived in Australia in 2004. On the evening of August 17 they were in the home of Ms Ancaito's cousin when a pit bull burst into the home and first attacked five-year old Nyadeng. Four-year old Ayen Chol was clinging to her mother's legs when the pit bull focused its attack on her, and ultimately killed her.

Victorian Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh said pit bull terriers had ''lost their licence to exist."

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Australian pit bull advocates have proven as adroit as their northern counterparts in the wake of the attack. Dog behaviour specialist Brad Griggs said that governments should abolish breed-specific regulations because pit bulls were not more dangerous than other breeds.

Michael Linke, the Chief Executive Officer of the RSPCA, has warned against any irrational demonisation of the breed. Mr Linke owns a two-year-old pit bull terrier named Dahlia.

Mr Linke went on to characterize Mr Walsh's claim as an  emotional overstatement.  ''Any dog is capable of any act, at any point in time,'' he said.

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A few years ago, when people might mourn the death of a child before defending or excusing the murderer, saner voices prevailed. Former RSPCA president Hugh Wirth said that American pit bull terriers were a menace and not suitable as pets. He described them as "time bombs waiting for the right circumstances".


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Related posts: Premack's Second Principle, All Dogs Bite

Sources: The Canberra Times, The Dimboola Courier, and The Newcastle Herald, among others.

Paradise Hills

Revised: April 27, 2013; 18:50 GMT

It just makes it frustrating that, you know,
we see everyone else get theirs.

Neighbor Jesse Catahay, on the disruption of mail delivery to Paradise Hills in San Diego. San Diego has experienced at least four major pit bull attacks in the last ten days.

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Paradise Hills entered the national conscience recently when two pit bulls broke through the fence and attacked 75 year old Emako Mendoza in her back yard on June 18th. But this was not an isolated incident; mail carrier Marcia Amat was attacked nearby last November by two pit bulls while delivering mail on Analiese Way. The first dog lunged for her neck while the second dog attacked her from behind. Neighbors came to her assistance and she escaped from the attack with bites to her hands, shoulders and back.

After the attack, the U.S. Postal Service notified residents of Analiese Way that they would not be getting their mail delivered. Amat has been unable to work for the last seven months and is bringing suit against the owners of the dogs.

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Amat's chances of winning a settlement were slim to begin with but her recent bewildering behavior has sabotaged whatever chance she might have had. The written transcript of a recent TV news story shows Amat torpedoing her chances by calling pit bulls "super sweet dogs."  Where was her attorney during this interview? Our guess is that he has dropped the case for more important chores, like sorting his socks.

Then the interview becomes breathtakingly surreal. The narrative veers off into wonderland when a neighbor offers a discourse on the disruption of mail service (see quotation above).  In the following scene the victim of the pit bull attack sits at her kitchen table and talks into the camera, telling us that the pit bulls are not to blame for attacking her, rambling on that "it's not their fault. It's the owners,  [and] how they're raised."

This, of course, is immediately recognizable pit bull advocacy jargon: Amat is responding with the ritualized  phrases that SRUV has previously described as the Compulsive Reflex. Are there any pit bull owners or advocates who are unaware of these phrases? We think not.

The interview moves to its conclusion on Amat's driveway. The explanation for this disorienting interview is there for us, in a fleeting glimpse of a frame or two at the end of the accompanying video. In a stunning dénouement Mary Amat stands in the driveway of her home, with her own pit bull.

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Pit bulls for sale in Paradise Hills (Zip 92139)
Related posts: Compulsive Reflex; Discredited Sources

Complied from various sources including 10NEWS.COM

A Prayer

As we have noted elsewhere in these pages, there are a limited number of arguments for advocates to rely on, which we hear over and over.

• Judge the deed, not the breed
• Punish the deed, not the breed
• It's not the dog, it's the owner
• There are no bad dogs; only bad owners
• It's all how they're raised
• and above all, All dogs bite

These phrases are so common that even those who have no interest in dogs are aware of them; they resonate through the collective conscience like advertising jingles, which is what they are. The speakers believe these phrases carry content, but they are bled of all meaning and they are sometimes uttered in the most inappropriate circumstances. They fill a verbal vacuum much the way auto-complete fills in the blanks in your email program.

The use of these phrases has interested SRUV because the speakers believe they still have the power to alter opinion. We have arrived at a point in the pit bull controversy when this kind of speech, consisting almost entirely of phrases plucked from a reservoir of belief, takes the place of original thought. The phrases are repeated until they assume an incantatory, ritualized meaning, and work in the same way a prayer or magic spell is believed to work.

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Just after 9pm on Friday, May 27th,  "Honey" Jubeark ran from her house screaming “Help! He ate my baby! He ate my baby!”

Within minutes after news of Jayelin Graham's death was posted,  pit bull advocates were flooding the internet with comments. Many of the posters seemed disinterested in the child's death and used the occasion to defend their breed of obsession.

I have copied below a comment, and below that, a response to the first comment. (Note: the comment on the Golden Retriever has taken on aspects of an urban myth and is recounted using a variety of breeds including dachshunds.)

• Anthony Barry

no such thing as a bad dog just bad owners.. Pitbulls are beautiful

dogs and a great breed. It takes assholes like this guy to make the

breed look bad. I say we just put him in a cage with a bear and

let the bear rip his head off. Poor child never had a chance with

a monster parent like that.

• Corey Hackett • Burlington, Vermont
it's all about how they're raised/trained. Some of the smartest/
gentlest dogs I know (known) have been Pits and Rotty's...
I work with a woman who was just attacked by a vicious
golden retriver... it's all on their environment...

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These comments were posted in response to a news story about the death of a human child. Nearly every thought in these two comments is a variation of the five statements at the top of this post. Literally thousands of additional posts echo these two.