First dear readers, here is what is happening in Waterville Maine. If you have a large breed dog, you may soon find your rights of dog ownership to be impeded upon depending on the size or breed of your dog. If Waterville Maine starts limiting what breeds can be owned (without regard to any other measures), it will be sure to crop up in other cities and towns in Maine.
http://www.onlinesentinel.com/news/police-chieffired-up-overdog-attacks_2011-12-02.html
http://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/12/news/waterville/waterville-police-chief-wants-bad-dogs-away-from-kids/
http://www.ohmidog.com/2011/09/13/police-chief-in-maine-suggests-breed-ban/
http://blessthebullys.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/action-alert-for-waterville-me-residents/
http://www.keepmecurrent.com/american_journal/opinion/editorials/editorial-dog-laws-should-target-owners-first/article_93e7badc-e9e4-11e0-a20d-001cc4c002e0.html
I personally find it appalling when a human adult or child is attacked by a dog. I find it appalling when a child is put in any number of dangerous situations, quite frankly. When I have a training situation that involves the safety of a child, I pull no punches. I may not take on the client because they sound like they are endangering their child or family members. I can't be involved with that sort of liability, and I make it clear to the client what I think about it.
My definition of endangering others is already having multiple incidents happen to people without any action on the part of the human to keep others safe. Usually they are contacting me in order to have someone else say their dog is safe or wave a magic wand at the situation. Chillingly enough, sometimes these people are calling from a daycare situation, and want their dog to be handled by their dog with a previous bite history at will despite their dog clearly not being okay with that.
People have unrealistic expectations of dogs as some sort of stuffed animal that they take out only when they are interested in them. Obviously, large breeds of dogs have bigger teeth and more strength than a toy breed. It is therefore more likely that if a dog is put in an inappropriate situation or if warning signs of a bad temperament are simply ignored, the more serious injury will be given by a larger dog. Also if a dog has not had socialization or training done, that dog can misinterpret a situation on go on the defense due to lack of experience and usually supervision.
Not all dogs have great temperaments, but treated with respect and supervised not a danger generally to the public. Some dogs are dangerous and this always comes with having a flawed temperament (at least for living as a domesticated pet) or in very rare cases a serious medical issue has not been found. However, it is extremely rare that a dangerous dog would be able to exit the shelter system alive or be purchased from a reputable breeder. These dangerous temperaments are uncommon to a large degree. They are perhaps more common in a segment of the population that values a guard dog (not talking about a trained well temperamented guard dog here) type of mentality in their dog. There are some people that feel it "machos" them up to have a dog that may decide to protect or guard them with their teeth. Unfortunately, these dogs can not tell the difference from kids, domestic animals, ET that are not threats. Often they are owned by people that have little to no interest in training these dogs to be safe and supervised, and they have in fact through neglect and lack of socialization trained them to be viscious. People like this are prone to valuing a badly temperamented dog whether it came that way or was created to be that way. It would be better that these people had no dogs at all, never mind what kind of breed of dog it is or what temperament it began with. If you penalize the breed by size or actual breed class, these people will find something else with which, and it may even be a smaller dog now that is more feral in nature, that they can neglect and use as a weapon against people. Will this now become that breeds fault? If so, hamsters will someday be an illegal pet (okay I am exaggerating there but you get the picture).
So if people that have properly cared for their dogs are penalized and in the same boat as those that have irresponsibly cared for (and this includes ignoring dangerous situations and acting upon them to include realizing they may need to destroy a dangerous dog), what does this change? Well it will put a large population of people that love their dogs and care for their dogs in an impossible and tragic predicament. The irresponsible population will either hide the fact that they own these animals, put them to sleep and pick something else to neglect, or if they are interested in protection find another way to "protect" themselves in an irresponsible way.
It is real easy to pick on a breed (or minority) in an effort to feel control (humans do it to themselves all the time). Death and serious injury are life altering events. Humans want to be able to control death itself. Of course we do, it effects us and the people we love. We have a mind numbing lack of control when it comes to this. We can not control all irresponsible human behavior or mechanical failure on inanimate objects. When we find something we think we can control, often we wish to do this fast, now, and in very illogical and non helpful ways. The fall out of this is controlling, often, the people who are acting responsibly, and not effecting so much the irresponsible parties as intended.
(This is Part 1-To Be Continued)
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