WHY SOME WORRY ABOUT IMPORTED U.S. PIT BULLS
Every few months at the Alberta-Montana border or Calgary airport, international teams of animal-welfare volunteers meet for the handover of an unusual cargo.
The shipments from California include as many as 30 pit bulls — dogs banned in one province, facing similar outlaw status in Montreal and blamed by some researchers for a lopsided number of maulings.
The transfers are among “hundreds” of pit bulls and pit mixes imported annually into Canada from the United States in recent years, a trend that has even some animal-rescue groups dismayed. They come as reports of disfiguring attacks by the breed seem to be on the rise here.
Advocates of a crackdown argue this country is freely admitting potentially vicious dogs. Rescue organizations say Canada has a surplus of native-born pit bulls needing homes, their lot made only more desperate by importing others.
“It certainly is a problem that is manifesting in many different ways,” said Kathy Powelson of the Paws for Hope Animal Foundation. “These dogs are from L.A. (and are) brought over unassessed, they’re put into families that don’t know what they’re getting themselves into and they’re not provided with any support.”
Rescue groups say Canada is providing homes to dogs that are unfairly maligned and would otherwise be killed in the U.S.
“It’s life and death for them,” said Cindy Smith of the group Wings of Rescue, based in Woodland Hills, Calif. Her organization flies about 40 dogs from shelters in the Los Angeles area to Alberta every 90 days or so, 75 per cent of them pit bulls. They are picked up by Wings’ Alberta partner, BARC’s Rescue.
BARC’s and another Alberta rescue society taking pit bulls from the U.S. could not be reached for comment. But Smith said BARC’s visits the California shelters and chooses only dogs with “stellar” personalities.
Other groups, meanwhile, are bringing the dogs into British Columbia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Ottawa’s Kim Faulkes, a former rescue-society administrator who monitors importers on Facebook, said at least 600 pit bulls were shipped to Canada last year.
The breed is also drawing a new spate of bad PR.
In June, a 55-year-old Montreal woman died when a neighbour’s pit bull attacked her, prompting the city to propose a ban on the dogs. Months earlier, an elderly Kamloops, B.C., woman was killed by her grandson’s pit bull.
The number of reported attacks has jumped sharply in Canada in the last six months, paralleling a continent-wide increase in recent years, says Merritt Clifton of the Animals-24/7 website.
Press reports indicate pit bulls have inflicted “disfiguring injuries” on 13 Canadians this year, compared to 54 in 2004-15, he says. It’s difficult to tell how many, if any, of those involved imports. But an animal-control officer in Victoria said in September the area had seen a spike in dog attacks, many of them by animals rescued from California and many pit bulls.
Still, the true nature of pit bulls remains a source of feverish debate. Defenders insist they are no more aggressive than any other dog, are led into trouble by irresponsible or incompetent owners and generate disproportionate media coverage when they do strike.
“It’s unfortunate that they have that sort of stigma,” said Smith. “You’re more likely to get bitten by a chihuahua than a pit bull.”
Critics point to a few studies in peer-reviewed medical journals over the last decade that looked at dog-attack injuries serious enough to land people in hospital.
That would come as no surprise to Mia Johnson, a Vancouver woman who heads the National Pit Bull Victim Awareness group, and hears from many people whose tales of dog violence are never publicized.
“Every freaking day there’s another story: ‘My child’s leg was bitten off, it might have to be amputated,’ ‘My cat was pulled in half,’ ” she said. “These stories are so horrific and so soul-destroying.”
Whether the imports contribute to the problem remains a matter of debate. But some rescue groups say the immigrant canines have another troubling impact — they are making it even harder to find homes for Canadian-born pit bulls facing euthanasia.
“You save a dog from the U.S.,” says Faulkes, who helps run the Canadian Rescue Standards Group. “And kill a dog in Canada.”