Best Friends holds a summit on the growing number of "dog slaughter laws"

By Francis Battista, Best Friends Magazine Jan/Feb 2007

It’s a nationwide controversy: what to do about the number of dog attacks. And Best Friends jumped into it feet first with our Dangerous Dogs Summit held in the Denver area at the end of October 2006. Appropriately enough, there was little about the gathering that wasn’t in itself controversial – from its name to the city where it was held to the emerging strategy for dealing with the problem.

A little history
More and more cities (about 120 at last count) have passed breed-specific legislation, which encompasses any law that targets a type of animal or a specific breed, like pit bulls or Rottweilers. The idea is not new, nor is it unique to the U.S. Welsh corgis are banned in certain parts of Italy; for most of the 20th century, German shepherd dogs couldn’t be brought into Australia. In Beijing, China, dogs over 14 inches high have just been banned; any dogs taller than that are being rounded up and clubbed or shot.

Here in the U.S., these laws got their start in 1980 with a ban on pit bulls in Hollywood, Florida, and similar legislation has proliferated ever since. The bans almost always come as a reaction to some terrible dog attack on a child, which creates big news and big scary headlines.

Most people who have heard of these laws assume they only apply to pit-bull types and Rottweilers, and it is true that these breeds have been under the gun the most. But in some states, the net has been thrown wide enough to include German shepherds and other working or guard dog breeds. In fact, 26 different breeds, including golden retrievers, chow chows, shar-peis, and German shepherds (along with dogs who simply look like any of these), are now banned or subject to special restrictions somewhere in the U.S. And these laws require anything from simple spay/neuter to outright confiscation and execution.

The Best Friends summit was held in the Denver area because Denver has a pit-bull ban that has led to the seizure and death of over 2,000 household pets. In many cases, the seized dogs simply looked like pit bulls. (Dozens of other breeds and mixes look similar to pits, and the average city official can’t begin to tell the difference.) The brutality and mindlessness of the Denver ban led Best Friends to denounce the bland term “breed-specific legislation.” Let’s call a spade a spade: These are dog slaughter laws -- nothing more, nothing less.

It’s a minefield
People who try to address the subject of these dog slaughter laws instantly find themselves in the crossfire.
On the one hand, you find yourself being shot at by lazy, heartless, incompetent bureaucrats who are happy to kill anything in order to appear to be doing something about the problem of dog attacks.

And on the other hand are the folks who refuse to acknowledge that there is such a thing as a dangerous dog. They form a motley contingent of strange bedfellows, ranging from irresponsible dog breeders trying to protect their business to idealistic animal rescuers trying to protect the dogs.

So it’s no surprise that many animal welfare organizations have gone no further than writing out a policy statement and leaving it at that.

The Best Friends summit brought together an array of experts from the fields of animal rights, law enforcement, gang intervention, breed rescue, animal control, dog care and training, and politics, as well as our own team of rescuers, animal care specialists, legal eagles, and dog behavior experts.

The proceedings got straight to the point: Any dog can bite, some can do more damage than others, and some dog attacks can be fatal. Some pretty grisly slide presentations illustrated the damage that a dog can do. But, all participants agreed that more killing is not the answer, and dog slaughter laws mainly punish good dogs and good people while allowing criminals, scofflaws and exploitive breeders to slide.

To be sure (with apologies to Barbara Woodhouse, author of No Bad Dogs), there are bad dogs – those born with a medical condition that sets their behavior beyond the reach of the best intentions and technology, or those who have been abused or encouraged in aggression for so long that they are beyond intervention.

There are, however, no bad breeds.

The culture – and business – of violence
Some breeds are potentially more dangerous by virtue of their size and strength, and some bites are more likely to be reported because of the breed’s reputation. (Not many people cop to being bitten and intimidated by a Chihuahua, but it happens all the time.)
While it’s easy to focus on the perp – that is, the dog – dog attacks are a societal problem, not a breed problem. It’s no coincidence that the kinds of dogs who are coming under scrutiny are also widely associated with gang activity and rural blood-sport gambling.
Fighting dogs and giant guard dogs are big business, and the backyard and exploitive breeding of these dogs is out of control. There is a market for strength and aggression, and all the other wonderful qualities of these big, loyal dogs are being subordinated to their capacity to do damage in service of the customer base: gang bangers, redneck dog fighters, drug dealers and other criminals. On top of that, the cast-off dogs of these breeders and owners end up in already overburdened shelters.

At the summit, Tio Hardiman, a gang intervention expert from Chicago, described how most kids on his watch have been to a basement dog fight by the time they are five or six years old, and they apprentice in dog fighting and backyard breeding before age 10. It’s all part of the prevailing inner-city culture of violence that glorifies gangstas, thugs and rappers, whose videos more often than not feature aggressive-looking dogs.

What to do
Rounding up family dogs, summit participants agreed, doesn’t begin to get to the root of the problem. And banning one breed, even if it could be successfully done, simply results in some other breed being selected by the violent individuals and exploitive breeders.
Case in point: From the 1950s to the late 1970s, Doberman pinschers were the scary, dangerous breed of record. They were favored by the criminal class and suffered their own abuse, neglect and exploitation as a result. There were mythic stories about the shape of their teeth, the power of their jaws and the ripping action of their bite. They Only Kill Their Masters, a bad 1972 film playing off that stereotype, has this plot description: “A small-town California sheriff attempts to uncover facts behind the killing of a pregnant woman by her Doberman pinscher.” (Plot spoiler: It turns out the dog didn’t do it after all.) Now that pit bulls and Rotties have replaced Dobermans as the preferred dogs of the loser set, the Dobie has resumed his preferred status as a couch potato.

The challenge for those of us who love dogs and realize the inherent fallacy and unfairness of dog slaughter laws is to educate lawmakers, offer coherent animal-friendly legislative packages, and work to roll back the dog slaughter laws that already exist. To accomplish this, we need an army of animal lovers committed to the cause. So, get involved and make your voice heard. Visit network.bestfriends.org/stop-dsl to find out how to get started.

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For all the latest on the Vicktory Dogs go here.

Meet some of the Best Friends pit bulls, including the Vicktory Dogs, here.

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