Dog bites are easily avoided
It’s past time to end the nonsense of breed bans — and long past time to enforce the laws we’ve had on the books for decades.
Why? Ban the pit bulls and these fools just hide behind some other breed because that’s what people like that do. Bans don’t work but — when enforced — laws do. Because if every dog is leashed (except in a formal dog park) and no dogs run at large, how can anyone get bitten?
Two bylaws exist that need enforcement as actual laws, not just bylaws. Enforcing the leash law (on a six- or eight-foot leash held by a responsible person) and never permitting at-large dogs (off the owner’s property and out of the owner’s care and control will work).
You can’t hide behind a lunging, aggressive dog. Heaven forbid the leash should break or the hero hiding behind the dog can’t hang onto it. If the dog bites someone, either it was not under the owner’s control or the owner commanded the bite. When dogs — large or small — bite someone, either a person or someone else’s dog gets hurt.
After a bite, it’s too late; the damage is done. Dog attacks are criminal offences, just like shootings and stabbings and need to be treated as such. They come from much the same mindset as other violent assaults. Removing the dog, fines and jail time are essential.
Even leashed, your dog still has to be trained not to tug you around or to threaten anyone you meet. If you’re too lazy, or too stupid, to train and leash your dog, you have no business to have it.
Training isn’t difficult; the dog thinks it’s fun and it creates the closest bond possible between dog and human. It makes confident, happy dogs who trust their owners to be in charge.
There are training classes everywhere that cost less than your kids’ hockey programs and do something infinitely more important. Find one and religiously do the exercises they teach you. I promise you your dog — and you — will actually like it.
Trained, socialized dogs don’t mind walking on leash. They aren’t comfortable with democracy; they’re happiest when there’s a clear hierarchy and a consistent, confident leader (owner) they can trust to know best.
Training is love, the very best you can do for your dog. Obedience is a job to a dog — a life’s work — and the most important thing to it is a job to do and someone it loves to do it for. What better gift could you possibly give your dog than that?
And that, folks, is how you prevent dog bites. Enforce the laws with real penalties and place the responsibility where it belongs: on the owners. Because if every dog walks on leash and no dog runs at large, how can anyone get bitten?
My own experience
My Shelties have been beloved citizens of every community we lived in and two of them have been highscoring obedience trial dogs. I have written for and given presentations to a wide variety of people and watched dogs at the brink of euthanasia becoming loved and welcomed members of their communities.
My own Shelties have been mugged by countless loose dogs — only one of them a pit bull — in city and small town alike; my stellar obedience star was dead before he was five years old, so I am as sick of this carnage as anyone else. It doesn’t have to be this way.
I can’t imagine a life that did not include dogs — nor would I want one. It’s up to those of us who love dogs and understand the priceless contributions they make to so many lives to speak for them — before ignorant politicians and bureaucrats destroy this timeless and treasured alliance.