Caveat

THE NETHERLANDS DATA - WHY THEY ABANDONED BSL

Are you wondering why The Netherlands decided to abandon breed-specific legislation, after having the policy in place for 15 years?  The simple answer is that the grownups on the planet collect real data, analyze it and decide whether or not a scheme is providing value.  If it isn't, they modify or abandon it, whichever makes the most sense.

Here in Canada, public officials seem to have forgotten that they are hired to serve the citizenry and are instead serving themselves, especially in Ontario where corruption is so rampant it  barely generates outrage anymore.  Politicians are more concerned about saving face and stonewalling than admitting they have been mistaken and moving forward to benefit the public.

Beware the ideologues, Baby, because they don't need no stinkin' data and they'll sell you out every time.

I must add a caveat around this version.  When the report came out in 2008, I spent almost three weeks translating it using only Google and Babylon, then rewriting it to reflect our sentence structure, which is very different.  It was fun and informative to say the least but was also a big job.  A translation service wanted $10K to do it.  Yeah, no.  I just wanted the nut of it.  I am fortunate in having a couple of good friends in Holland who helped me with the very few slang expressions I came across.  I kept the original graphs/pictures and translated the legends.

Because I loves ya, here is the report from 2008, Hondenbeten in Perspectief (Dog Bites in Perspective, right?)  It is a treasure trove of data.  Use it if you need it.

 You can find and download original report in Dutch at this link:

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2008/06/09/hondenbeten-in-perspectief

 

ON BEING YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY

 

This guest post is by Jody Robson, a long-time supporter of the Dog Legislation Council of Canada, an experienced owner of many breeds and shapes, a successful dog walker and someone who is well informed about BSL and the tragic consequences of its implementation.

****

So while states and cities all over the U.S.A. are repealing their breed specific legislation and/or creating laws that prohibit the discrimination of breed specific laws, Quebec will follow in the footsteps of Ontario and implement laws that will do nothing to improve public safety.

I wish people would get their heads out of their asses and get off the "pit bull" bandwagon.

Most people who say they own a "pit bull" do not in fact own any such thing. Most people with short haired, muscular, block-headed dogs, have mutts. I know, I know, it's a hard reality to accept. Everyone who has a fake "pit bull" thrives on some sort of warped need to say they own a "pit bull". But unless you have a registered, papered, purebred American Pit Bull Terrier, and most people do not, then you do not have a "pit bull".

There are dozens of dogs that if they were bred would create dogs that look what the average Joe "thinks" is a "pit bull", literally dozens.

Under these laws dogs are identified by said average Joes and because of these average Joes, dogs are taken from their homes based solely on their appearance and they are either rehomed or killed. Either way, lives are destroyed and innocent ones are ended because of fear, ignorance and blatant discrimination.

I walk dozens of dogs every week. Of those dogs I would say 90% of them have behaviour issues that could lead to serious harm to either a dog, person or other animal. None of those dogs are so called "pit bulls".

The facts have been laid out for everyone; the government, the public, everyone. Yet, everyone believes all the hype, the propaganda, the fear mongering. It's truly unbelievable. It has been proven over and over again that bites have gone up since Ontario's ban on so called "pit bulls". I guess as long as no one is bitten by a "pit bull", bites are okay? However, since most of the people who think they own "pit bulls" and the average Joes who are identifying dogs as "pit bulls", have absolutely no idea what they are talking about...all of this "pit bull" BS is just BS.

Everyone needs to pull their heads out of their asses. Stop calling your dogs "pit bulls", stop believing every dog with short hair you see is a "pit bull" and for dog's sake stop believing the media and government who are thriving off the term "pit bull"!!!!

We are going backwards while the rest of the world goes forward. While the rest of the world is realizing BSL isn't working, while they work on laws which target responsible ownership of all dogs, regardless of breed, we continue to implement and maintain laws that target a specific "look", not the behaviour of each individual animal, but a look. That seems pretty idiotic and dangerous to me.

On another note, the unicorn I met the other day told me I should really consider asking the fairies out for a drink on Friday. I think I might.

 

ET TU, PQ?

 

Someone in a Facebook group I follow (the "Pit Bull" Co-Op) raised an excellent point. How is it that Quebec plans to ban "pit bulls" as quickly as possible? The province of Quebec recently passed a law stating that animals such as dogs are sentient beings.

They will ban sentient beings because of qualities they can't change, their physical characteristics? Talk about cognitive dissonance. 

We all agree it's not the dogs, it's the owners who are being marginalized.  Dogs don't have civil rights, probably because they can't read or give informed consent. They are just the tool in the toolbox, right?   The way in. 

It's about targeting the perceived 'other': the gangsta, the dealah, the punk, the thug, or, if you prefer your bigotry straight up, the black, the brown, the young, the poor. "Those people" as city official Bob Fitzgerald said in Aurora CO to media, weren't welcome in Aurora if they were trying to escape Denver's ban.*

There are no data to support the rather whimsical view that physical characteristics are a predictor of behaviour.  In fact, researchers who study this kind of thing are finding more evidence all the time that breed is also not a reliable predictor of behaviour.  Neither breed nor shape would be able to predict a behavioural pathology, which is what people who fear "pit bulls" are talking about.

Breed-specific legislation (BSL) could be funny, I suppose, from the right angle.  It is definitely the stuff of theatre and one day, we will hopefully all look back, shake our collective heads and wonder what the hell was going on in our legislative offices in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  Right now, though,  it's obscene, unsupportable and alien to anyone who believes in a democratic society.  The beauty of targeting a tiny minority - and according to kennel club registrations, the three breeds usually named are among the rarest in Canada - is that most people will not care. They certainly don't care about "pit bulls" (whatever they are supposed to be - the definition seems rather, er, fluid, to say the least) because of a long-running propaganda campaign by a complicit media structure desperate for audience share.

They don't care about punks and thugs either because if you aren't doing anything wrong, well, you know how it goes, except that BSL allows the state to target people in the absence of any wrongdoing. It allows the state to walk into your house, stop you on the street, search your car, seize your property, all without a warrant, simply because you own a dog.

Any dog.

Think about that for a second. 

If you doubt what I'm telling you, take a couple of minutes to read the current version of a once-useful but now destructive law, Ontario's Dog Owners' Liability Act.  Think outside the "pit bull" and you'll see what I mean.

_____ 

* Council Woman Molly Markert was even more fun:

"Oh, you bet if I could, I would ban the owners, too," said Markert. "By banning the dogs, we lose the violent behavior that comes with the owners."

Markert said, for her, the bottom line is that breed bans make people feel safer.

"It's not about a fact, it's about a feeling," said Markert.

Well, at least she's honest.

More here, from a good page : Majority Project, put together by Animal Farm.

This old blog of mine from 2008 discusses the folly that is Aurora's "pit bull" ban:  Aurora Colorado Must be High