>>Don't they care about the numbers of fatal canine attacks every year? Maybe certain breeds of dogs should not be allowed. "4.7 million people are bitten by dogs yearly, 800,000 require medical attention, 33 people died in 2007,and 18 in 2008".
>>

I do have to take exception to this Matt. They absolutely legislate against dogs. Not currently on a federal level but on a local level with such FORCE that it isn't even funny. The City of Cudahy WI created legislation against the "Pit Bull" breed as of yet I can not locate the exact wording. This is a city at the time had only 2 "pit bulls" registered (and it is a decent sized city). Their reasoning? The local area gang was moving into the area so they banned this dog breed to prevent issues. Huh? Ban a breed of dog to prevent gang issue?

Now the other issue is that many breeds are reported as being a "pit bull" when they are merely a black dog or a brindle dog. Its brindle it must be a deadly pit. The CDC stopped keeping statistics on what dog breed caused a bite many years ago because of human error in reporting. The breed was left to interpretation. I have personally seen black labs labeled as "pit bulls". Having worked in the humane industry for MANY years, I have seen some INSANE labels placed on dogs. I actually had a kennel manager who would label anything she wanted to euthanize a "pit bull". I am sharing a photo below of two dogs labeled "pit Bull" by that boss. Had these dogs biten anyone and it noted in a file, they would go down as a pit bull.

The reason I am sharing this is I am not only a reptile owner (who keeps in my personal collection pythons exclusively) and a reptile rescue person. I own the many or have owned many of the 9. We are not fighting a totally rational fight. We are fighting against HSUS who feels reptiles should be left in the wild. We are fighting PETA who is currently actively campaigning for the eradication of a breed of dog "For their own good" We are fighting people who are VERY good at twisting the stats.

Creating one ounce of legislation (IE banning a breed somewhere) opens another door. What happens when they decide down the road that something else is next. Banning breed/species A will work to reduce issues, because that isnt around. But what happens when breed/species B creeps up. Ok lets ban that. Ok what happens when breed/species C creeps up as a problem. Ok now thats gone.

With all animal legislation, you open doors to allow more. Municipalities will tack on things like banning of reptiles to a dog ban to make it scarier. Ok Pit bulls and burmese are evil lets ban that. Right? Ok now the labs are biting more and people decided they want retics. Well ALL retics get huge right? Lets just ADD them to the list of animals in our exisiting ban. Its a fun game.

Alot of this created by human error. While I will agree more dogs cause human harm than reptiles, looking at it on a breed/species perspective is not as easy as it sounds.

Remember these two dogs were slated to be euthanized because one person labeled them something they were not. Both of these issues are very near to me. Just wanted to give you something to chew on for those stats.



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Cindy Steinle
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