[thipfan73]

All I'll say is I've never met a pit bull that was mean. A childhood friend of mine had one and her sisters used to color on his head with markers. He was so stupid and such a sweetheart.

However, like many people have said, some people raise their dogs to be mean. ANY Dog can be raised to be mean. It just happens to be that Pit Bulls are known to be "attack" or "guard" dogs.

I think if you were to push ANY dog enough they would attack. My childhood yellow lab/irish setter mix dog once nipped at me because I was teasing him and wouldn't leave him alone and he was the most wonderful dog.

I think if people want to have pit bulls they should have them. Leash laws are a VERY good thing!

[jen]

All I'll say is I've never met a pit bull that was mean. A childhood friend of mine had one and her sisters used to color on his head with markers. He was so stupid and such a sweetheart.

However, like many people have said, some people raise their dogs to be mean. ANY Dog can be raised to be mean. It just happens to be that Pit Bulls are known to be "attack" or "guard" dogs.

I think if you were to push ANY dog enough they would attack. My childhood yellow lab/irish setter mix dog once nipped at me because I was teasing him and wouldn't leave him alone and he was the most wonderful dog.

I think if people want to have pit bulls they should have them. Leash laws are a VERY good thing!

:thumb: :thumb:

[mrlayance]

I will give my 2 pennies here.

I do not thinking banning the pit bull is right. The owners are why the dog acts the way it does. You can train any type of dog to attack. If you naglect and mistreat any dog it will act out.

If they ban pit bulls I think they should ban german shepherds aswell. They can be trained to be very vicious attack dogs.

Where do you draw the line. Size? Weight? Breed?

[jay420]

I received this in an email and thought I would share it with you guys.

This was created by Paul Glassner of the San Francisco SPCA. I hope you'll cross-post it. If you do, please keep his name attached to it. :-)

Breed Ban IQ Test

1. If you were the sheriff in your town and you learned that Toyotas were
disproportionally involved in more accidents than
any other model, would you:
(a) ban Toyotas and confiscate the Toyota of anyone caught driving one, or
(b) arrest the drivers responsible for those accidents?

2. Which course of action in Question 1 do you think would
(a) inconvenience the fewest number of people,
(b) be the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars,
and
© be more effective in preventing future accidents involving Toyotas?

3. If your answer to Question 1 was (a) -- ban Toyotas -- and the sheriff's
department learned that, by a statistical quirk, drivers of confiscated Toyotas were perpetrating further accidents by driving, say, Hondas, would you then ban Hondas? If not, why not?

4. If your answer to Question 3 was, "Ban Hondas, too, dammit, something
HAS to be done," then would you propose a ban on ALL car models with names ending in "a," such as Kias and Mazdas, reasoning that all these brands are pretty much bred for the same purpose? If not, why not? If so, how would you deal with car brands that end in the SOUND of "a," such as Chevrolet?

5. Are you beginning to understand
(a) that because most of the tens of millions of pet dogs are NOT registered, "breed" cannot be defined in a meaningful way;
(b) that miscreants employ pit bulls, German shepherds, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Akitas, Great Danes -- that is, whichever dog is handy -- as
personal tools of terrorism;
© that law enforcement authorities could waste inordinate amounts of time (and, therefore, taxpayer dollars) policing a breed ban, adding to their jobs a task perhaps even more meaningless than enforcing jaywalking laws;
(d) that the people most likely affected by a breed ban -- that is, those inconvenienced, harrassed and likely to suffer damage -- are the 99.9% majority of utterly innocent dogs and people; and
(e), most important, that breed bans do ESSENTIALLY NOTHING to address the real problem: Human scumbags who abuse animals?

Key: If your answer to any part of Question 5 is "no," I'm afraid you have flunked. Please go back and reconsider your responses.

Hint: The answer to the question, "What shall we do about the bank robber who got away on a bicycle?" is not: Ban bicycles.

Real answer: If your dog hurts someone, you -- not the dog -- should be responsible. Anti-cruelty and anti-dog-fighting laws already exist. Tell your mayor, and city or county or provincial council to up the current penalties, and insist that judges enforce those penalties against lawbreakers.

Test created by Paul Glassner, SF/SPCA

[prz]

I would like to know if pit bull attacks this year are actually up in number or is the media all over it, like it was a couple summers ago with shark attacks.

In addition to all this, instead of blaming the pit bulls, did the government consider tighting the penalties for the owners of these dogs?

[MikeS]

To me, that's the only answer that makes sense...

Serious jail time if a dog in your care attacks a human is, IMHO, the only way to dissuade the certain percentage of PB owners who use them as intimidation tools...I'd like to think 12-18 months in prison (plus the destruction of the offending animal) would make someone think twice about taking one of these breeds out without a muzzle...

Where it gets tricky is with the dog vs. dog attacks, as the attacker can always claim the attackee was provoked...

I have no problem with a dog (pit bull, rottweiler, shepherd or golden retriever, for that matter) on a leash in a park, but if that owner, who presumably knows their individual animal, does not do everything in his/her power to ensure the safety of everyone else (via muzzle, choke chain, or whatever), then he/she deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law if something were to happen.

M.

[aaronck]

It takes all kinds...I totally disagree with a total ban on Pit Bulls, as I have known some very gentle ones...

How about banning Pit Bulls owned buy fat guys wearing muscle shirts, or wanabee drug dealers or gangsta rappers. At the park they seem to always have the agressive dogs, or, almost as bad, the untrained ones, bought cause they were cool and never bothered to train or excersize them properly, so on their once a week fairweather Sunday walk the dog gets in a fight, and it's always the other dogs fault...