Caveat

DEFENDER RADIO INTERVIEW WITH DR KAREN OVERALL AND MONTREAL SPCA

My friend Michael at Furbearers.com interviewed Dr Karen Overall and Montréal SPCA in June, when that city's descent into inhumanity began

You can listen at this link.

Enjoy!

AMSTAFF CLUB OF CANADA RELEASES REGISTRATION NUMBERS FOR QUEBEC!

Our friends at the American Staffordshire Terrier Club of Canada have prepared a note for media and other interested parties around the situation in Montreal showing CKC registration numbers for their breed as well as Staffordshire Bull terriers in the province of Quebec. 

It has been prepared in English and French.

Enjoy!

 

GREAT SNAKES, MAKE IT STOP

 

 

Humans have one friend.

 

They have one friend on this lonely planet.

 

One friend has stood by us through good and bad, through fat times and lean, through the heat and the cold, the wet and the dry. One friend has consoled us, worked with us, fed us, clothed us, watched over our flocks, played with our children, guarded our homes, gone to war with us, died for us. One friend has been with us since we came up from the savannahs of so long ago, since we lived in the caves of prehistoric Europe and Asia.

 

We are a friend to nobody.

 

Why don't we stand by our friend as he has stood by us instead of using him as a scapegoat, treating him like a pariah, tossing him to the howling mob?

 

Why are we allowing the forces of ignorance to prevail?

 

Make them leave the dogs and the people who are wise enough to love them alone. Stop letting inadequate bureaucrats get away with their class warfare, their politics of division, their desperate bids for attention, their sneaky end-runs around the constitution.

 

Us and them. Codswallop. It's only us.  It's always been only us.

 

Stop turning away and hoping that if you keep your head down, they won't notice you. They will. They have. It's happening. They are killing dogs because they like to kill and dogs are easy game. They are snatching beloved family pets because they like to hurt and bully and this is a no-brainer.  They are taking away the liberty you are so complacent about right before your eyes as they feed you a line about 'public safety'.

 

It's a con.  It is you. It is now. There is no 'bad owner', no 'dangerous breed', no 'illegal dog', no 'pit bull'.

 

It's only you. Us. That's all it's ever been, and all it ever will be.

 

Is this how you want to live, in a supposedly tolerant, inclusive country like Canada?  Because if it is, then there's not much hope for anywhere else.

 

Just make it stop; make them leave the dogs and the people who are wise enough to love them alone.

Do something.

Do it today.

Make a phone call, send an email, show up at a protest, stand up  Your only friend would do it for you if he could.

***

Email addresses for the Mayor and Executive Committe in Montreal:

[email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected] ; [email protected]

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

STOP WHINING AND LET FLUFFY BITE YOU, ALREADY...SHEESH

 

I felt a bit mean in putting up that post about my encounter with Stanley Coren at the All About Pets show on Easter weekend but I got over it.

He put up a rebuttal at the Psychology Today page in which he made a few assumptions, the most hilarious being "As a psychologist I suspect that I know what is going on in her mind."

I guess what I said directly to him about his flawed sources was just a neurotic attempt to hide my real agenda.  Apparently, in arguing against the stereotyping of dog owners I'm similar to a mother whose offspring is arrested for holding up milk stores but pleads with the court for mercy, since she's a good kid.  Denial is a bitch.

But so am I.  Here's his article (comments available at the end where it says 'join the discussion'):

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201304/dogs-bite-and-people-dont-listen

"On the second day of the event, a woman accosted me and began to harangue me about statements that I had published about pitbull terriers. The statements which so offended her were reports of research published in respected scientific journals that found that pitbulls, and pitbull crosses accounted for a disproportionate number of dog bite related injuries and deaths.."

Here's the study he mentions in his post.  Obviously I have a problem with the breed ID which I don't see as relevant and I dispute Stanley's new assertion that "pit bulls" make up only one percent of the dog population in Philadelphia, but overall it looks like decent enough research.


 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19644273

Plast Reconstr Surg. 2009 Aug;124(2):551-8. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0b013e3181addad9.

Pediatric dog bite injuries: a 5-year review of the experience at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Kaye AE, Belz JM, Kirschner RE.

Source

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pa 19104, USA.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

The objective of this study was to characterize the nature of dog bite injuries treated over a 5-year period at a large tertiary pediatric hospital and to identify relevant parameters for public education and injury prevention.

METHODS:

Investigators performed a retrospective review of emergency room records of a single tertiary pediatric hospital. Records of all patients who were evaluated for dog bite injuries between April of 2001 and December of 2005 were reviewed. All demographic, patient, and injury details were recorded.

***

The rest of the abstract is available at the link.

Here's the thing.  Nobody is disputing that dogs bite.  Nobody is disputing that children tend to be bitten around the head and neck often, due to their stature and way of interacting with dogs.

Nobody is saying that "pit bulls", however you define them, do not bite people.  Quite the opposite (by nobody, I mean those of us who don't believe myths spread by 19th century crooks).

What people who study the issues say is that all dogs are capable of inflicting injury if poorly socialized or poorly trained, or exposed to poorly trained people in unsupervised situations who hurt or frighten them, usually unintentionally.

As someone pointed out in the comments at Stanley's post, "pit bull" is the only dog type where a bunch of breeds are lumped together and then any mutt that may resemble them is included so they all become one breed.  Any statistics based on this flawed method (which are hearsay) are skewed right off the bat.  Nobody is verifying the breeds of dogs involved in bites, attacks or fatal maulings, mainly because nobody, anywhere,  can determine the ancestry of a mutt to any degree of accuracy.  It's all just smoke.  

I wish we could unring that CDC bell from hell, but we can't.  What we can do is move forward, start talking about dogs instead of perceived breeds and look for better ways to prevent nasty incidents.

As I said over at Stanley's place, I doubt we will ever reduce serious maulings or fatal attacks much below what we have now because they are already incredibly rare.  Unfortunately, there will always be people who either don't care or don't know enough to behave responsibly around dogs (or much else).  I think that with some education for parents, kids and public workers, we can definitely reduce nuisance bites and make things better, not only for people and dogs they include in their lives but also for people who don't own or don't like dogs.  That is what has been shown to work in Calgary, the home of the best nuisance owner control system in North America.

Karen Delise did a great critique on a hospital study from Texas where they postulated a conclusion and then 'proved' it.  It's well worth reading; you can find it here:

http://legal.pblnn.com/9-uncategorised/121-why-the-texas-study-on-mortality-mauling-a-maiming-by-vicious-dogs-is-scientifically-unreliable

 

POP GOES THE SCIENTIST

"Sweetheart, I'm a scientist!"

"That's hot but I think I'll pass."

This weekend, as we've done every Easter for a few years, we worked a booth at the All About Pets show at the International Centre out by the airport.  An estimated 40,000 people visit the show although this year it wasn't as busy as in previous years.  People always rush over to our booth to sign petitions and talk about the ban. We got a couple of thousand signatures this year and only 8 people refused to sign. That's about right, ratio-wise, in terms of support.

Presenting at the show again this year was Stanley Coren, the author of  The Intelligence of Dogs and other pop-science books about our canine friends.

I was very anxious to speak with him, since I'd come across a news report the previous week in which he was quoted:

Stanley Coren, the Vancouver author of over a dozen books on dogs and their behaviour, is sharing some statistics compiled by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is quite astonishing. Although pit bulls make up only a half per cent of the total number of dogs in the US, they are responsible for 43 per cent of fatal dog bites,” he points out.

“That says something about the wiring of the dog.”

I wanted to find out what his sources were for the population and the percentage of dog bite-related fatalities (DBRFs) he attributes to "pit bulls".  Luckily for me, he stopped right near our booth to talk to somebody about their dog so I was able to sneak up on him and pounce.

He said he got his DBRF number from 'available data' because in the US there is a requirement for bite reporting only in cases of fatalities.  It's all in some database, apparently but he couldn't remember how to access it.

He said his "pit bull" population estimate, .5% (yes, one-half of one percent), was obtained via UKC and AKC registrations for  American Pit Bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers and Staffordshire Bull terriers.  I asked why he didn't include ADBA.  He didn't know about them.

I told him his DBRF data came from news reports, as stated by CDC, which is his source.  He disputed this and said I had no understanding of data. I told him it's right in the journal articles themselves, that there is no 'database' of DBRFs, that they scanned news reports, that there were missing death certificates and other weaknesses.  He became rather argumentative  at that point.

I said that in a population of 78 million dogs, 30 fatalities a year, while a horrific for the people involved,  are not statistically significant enough to predict any kind of trend.  He insisted there are 12 fatalities a year, not 30 on average.  I then realized he was talking about 5 fatalities attributable to "pit bulls" on average, per year.

I told him I think there are probably at least 5 million dogs that could be construed as "pit bulls" in the US.  He was sputtering by now and said that would mean 1:10 dogs are "pit bulls".  I said yes, that would probably be about right but actually it would be roughly 1:16.  I asked him if he includes mutts in his "statistics" he said no, just those three breeds.  I asked him who would be able to determine the purebred status of a dog in the US involved in an attack, since there is no requirement for identification. He didn't have an answer for that.  He didn't respond to my point about how most "breed" attributions are guesses or hearsay.

I didn't bother getting into how he determined how many were alive or  how he must be the only person who doesn't count mutts because they are in every piece of legislation, etc because by then he was kind of yelling that he was a scientist, repeatedly.

I had reminded him about our email conversation from 2006, when I had found his claim about 2000 psi pressure in a bound book after reading it in several news reports. After trying to throw me off-track and failing, he finally had to admit he couldn't find a reference and thought he might have overheard it. I have spared him the publication of our email exchange because I actually feel kind of sorry for him, but here is where he finally admits I've got him by the nuts over the 2000 psi:

 

I really can't be more specific. I apparently simply noted the
 essence of the findings to use as an aside in a talk I was
 giving. I always felt that  I could recover the original
 reference if I needed it, although you have proven  that 
this is not necessarily so. This has happened several times
 in the past,  where a bit of interesting data was briefly 
noted by me and then my contact with  it disappeared in the
 dimming memory of an aging psychologist. One would think
 that I would have learned to be more obsessive by now but
 being only 9 months from  retirement probably means that 
I have lost the window of opportunity to change my habits.

 

He told me on Saturday that he isn't responsible for what media write about him.  I said he's responsible for what he tells them - was he now accusing them of making it up?  "They can't print what you don't tell them and when you have an audience you should be careful about what you say."

He started yammering about his friends who have done studies recently but couldn't remember their names, which university they are from or what the titles of their papers are.  He thought they had a couple of papers in the Journal of Public Health. I said I'd look for them.  He mentioned a lurid paper from Detroit - one we have all seen that was written by an ER doctor. I said that "pit bulls" are very popular in Detroit, so it makes sense there will be more bites by that type.  He said they aren't popular there at all.

I asked him why he doesn't talk about Canada.  He said there aren't enough data.  I asked him how many people have been killed by "pit bull" types, ever, in this country.  He didn't know.  I asked him how many had been killed by "sled dog" types.  He didn't know.  He kept saying there are not enough data in Canada.

He then beetled off down the hall at top speed.

So that's pretty much what Stanley Coren is about. He's not interested in accuracy, he's not interested in science, he accused me of being closed-minded about "pit bulls" and incapable of understanding data.

Somebody's neurons are misfiring, but I don't think it's "pit bulls".

Postscript:

Later that day somebody visited our booth and said "Stanley Coren said that "pit bulls" used to be called the nanny dogs".  I said "That's not true.  Dr Coren says a lot of things that aren't supported."  She said "But it's good, right?".  "If it's not true, how can it possibly be good?"

 

Rupert considers marking Stanley's leg but is too polite

Note belt and suspenders!

 

ONTARIO: LAST REFUGE FOR FLOGGERS & HANGERS

"Hey Buddy, is this the way to Ontario?  We hear our kind is welcome there."

 

In his book, The Woodcutter, Reginald Hill describes a Victorian prison that has retained its forbidding exterior while totally modernizing its operations and interior. Keeping the grimy facade satisfies the 'floggers and hangers'.

Ontario's self-styled Liberal (please) government hangs on to the most ill-conceived, un-Canadian, pandering piece of legislation since WWII the way a Scottie grips a bad guy's ass. 

Meet the new Preem, same as the old Preem.  This is not surprising, since she has been in government since 2003.  Optimists among us had hoped that someone new with no investment in Ontario's dog ownership ban would be able to let it go gracefully.  

Alas, Ms Wynne (a member of a once marginalized minority herself - she's a lesbian) not only refuses to acknowledge her government's grave mistake, but is supporting the legislation for reasons that are right out of the Peta playbook. (It was probably the only source she could find that is a real, live looney-bin and not just a website out in the boondocks of cyberspace.)

On the one hand, "pit bulls" are supposedly the most abused dogs out there (they aren't, but you knew that).  The thinking is that we must exterminate them in order to protect them.   I shudder to think what their cure for child abuse would be.

On the other, a couple of people had been savagely abused by "pit bulls" so action was required.  Now, in case you thought they had a similar solution to that problem, rest easy-ish.  Again, it's "pit bulls" who must go. 

Sticky wicket for "pit bull" owners, eh, because enforcement of longstanding legislation doesn't seem to be an option.  To stamp out crime, remove the victims. I must admit there is a certain elegance to it.  Trouble is, the ones who are abusing "pit bulls" (other than the ones who spread lies through media) are the people who enact and cling to this type of legislation.

But cheer up, Charlie, there is hope on the horizon!  In the US, new Bills are being brought forward almost daily to make breed/shape-specific legislation illegal at the State level.  And they are passing.  Towns and cities are rejecting BSL out of hand or repealing it.  More and more places are becoming enlightened.  Check out Stop BSL for updates and lots of other useful information.

Sure, there are pockets of corruption (h/t Bronwen) out there, but it's pretty much over, thanks to a lot of dedicated people all over this continent (and others).   We are winning. We are the good guys, after all, so we are supposed to win (#happily_ever_after).

Ontario may soon be the last jurisdiction of any note to cling to its legislated bigotry.  BSL gives permission to hate for superficial reasons.  It is enacted to supposedly target 'dealers' and 'gang-bangers', terms which are just dog whistles for young men who are poor or new to the country.  BSL is only supported by those who either know nothing about it or directly benefit from it. The true evil of it is that it panders to those who just have to hate something or someone and don't care much whom or what it is.

It's an embarrassment to real Canadians to have had such a law even considered, never mind enacted, especially in the face of overwhelming opposition by every expert out there and tens of thousands of citizens.  

It must go and so must those who passed it and continue to support it.

Remember when an election is finally announced to

VOTE AS IF YOUR FRIEND'S LIFE DEPENDS ON IT

It's the least you can do.

 I see that Brent at KC Dog Blog is also in a positive frame of mind this week.

 

 

SEE HOW THEY RUN!

MPP Bob Delaney, Liberal Member for Mississauga-Streetsville, was at a family fun skate today.  The event was free for all and from what I've heard, missed turning  into a free-for-all by a dog's whisker.

When a constituent wanted to discuss Ontario's noxious dog ownership ban, whereby dogs are restricted and prohibited based strictly on their physical appearance, not their behaviour, Member Bob  distracted her by bongo-tapping on the table,  stood up, faked left and deked right into the Men's room to get away.

What a hunk of man!

Delaney was Chair of the Committee in 2005 when all Liberal members obeyed McDad and ignored expert advice and experience, preferring to marginalize dog owners.  Fib Committee members voted down every amendment written to improve the legislation.  Delaney gaily stood up to be counted on March 1, 2005, helping to pass Ontario's "pit bull" ban into law.  He voted against us again in February 2012 when Bill 16 came up for Second Reading.

Bob acts as if we are all fools who think the law is about dangerous "pit bulls" and protecting people from dog bites.  Even Big Daddy Dalton's lawyer said that wasn't true in open court in 2007.

Maybe Mrs Delaney's little boy is out of the loop, or hopes that if he just keeps slinging it, eventually some of it will stick,  somewhere. 

Delaney said to the woman at the rink today that he's glad the "vicious killing machines" are gone and that he will support the ban, forever.

The vicious killing machines in Ontario are Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government, of which MPP Delaney is a proud supporter, and  the OSPCA.   They certainly aren't domestic dogs, unless you're a rodent or a weasel.

Forever has a way of not being that long, Delaney, when you aren't holding up your end. 

Wake up, Ontario voters!  Give this charlatan and his ilk the bums' rush at the next election.

Don't let them get away with this nonsense.

Brindlestick covered this as well.

LITTLE FISH BITES IF YOU GOT GOOD BAIT

 

Thanks to  the marvel of the inter-tubes and the emotional investment of most of our supporters, we now have a situation where a certain columnist is fully engaged in baiting dog owners with greater and greater frequency.

The columnist in question, whose nickname is "Special", is the mother of the editor of the Comment page at the National Post, a newspaper that is struggling to survive financially and has been for some time.

This woman enjoys presenting absolute poppycock as factual, then sitting back to wait for the reaction.  She has said as much on Twitter.  She is thereby ensuring her future job security as a columnist while feeding her delusions at the same time.   She may not even believe the nonsense she writes.  It is entirely possible that she is more canny than we know and that this is a scheme to help the paper retain some relevance in the dog-eat-dog world that is modern news reporting.  Attention equals ad revenue equals solvency.

The people who gather at her site think "breed" ha ha bans are about their cute little "pit bulls" when in fact,  they are not.

Dogs are not affected by BSL.  They can't be.  They don't understand it, they don't read, they don't view the world the way we do.  They are dogs and happy to be dogs.  They don't know they are disliked because of their size, their colour, their perceived "breed" or any of the rest of it.

It is dog owners who are marginalized when BSL comes to town.  The latest column, which I honestly haven't read (nor have I read any of the others beyond a quick skim and a head-shaking astonishment at how much codswallop one can actually cram into 600 or so words) apparently talks about "caninism" a nonsesne term which I suppose means racism  in Doggyland in the mind of the writer and her ever burgeoning audience.

The thing is, racism is a fine word all by itself.  In Europe they refer to dog breeds as races, although technically they are ethnic groups in most cases.  There are three to five races depending on who you read, but that's not what this person is talking about.  She doesn't know enough about the subject to speak with any credibility at all so certainly won't get into the fine details.

Which brings me to my point. 

In reacting to this person, people are rewarding the behaviour.  Attention is what she craves.  Attention is what she is getting.   Dog owners are rising to the bait like fish and the more fish she catches, the more bait she will cut. 

As tough as it may be for those who are emotionally invested in this issue, the best way to shut this down is to ignore it.  Let her play with the handful, and I mean handful, of low-information people who support the same silly viewpoint she claims to espouse.

Quite frankly, anybody who is still talking about "pit bulls" as if they are a breed and as if they possess any of the preternatural powers attributed to them by charlatans, wags and lowbrows is so out of the loop it's actually kind of sad.

The fact that a paper that at one point had a certain panache, the National Post, has to lower its editorial standards to get the kind of traffic it needs in order to stay in business is even more depressing.

 Here's a thought that may cheer you up.  We are doing very well lately in the anti-BSL arena.  These policies are being removed and rejected outright in more and more places.  We have all the evidence, all the science, all the experts on our side.  We still have public opinion behind us as we have had all along.  That rankles the haters as they become more and more irrelevant in most people's minds.  In Edmonton, they did a survey and over 80% of people favoured lifting the ban.  

That is the story, that is the news.

We are winning.  Because we are winning, the handful of frothing ignorami who want to hate something, who thought they had it made when they could hide behind our only friend, the dog, will go down kicking and screaming and babbling in tongues.

We are the good guys.  There is no doubt about that.  It's time to act  like it by rising above the nonsense.  Let the trogs duke it out in the mud.  We have other things to do that are more important and much more honourable.

In the interests of public service , here is today's column for discussion purposes.

If you have time on your hands, fact-check her column, write an Op-Ed and submit it to the paper, ask them to run it as a rebuttal. Or even just write a letter to the editor.  I recommend getting somebody who knows their stuff to look it over before you send it in.  

We are the ones with the facts.  Never forget that.

COURTUS INTERRUPTUS

Bowser at 8 weeks

We showed up on Monday for court to support Danny and Bowser.  We had a fantastic lawyer and were well armed and ready to fight the "pit bull" designation that had been applied to Bowser by Mississauga Animal Control back in December, 2008.

Unfortunately for those of us who were looking forward to a good rumble, but fortunately for Danny, the Crown wanted to cut a deal.

They dropped the charge under Ontario's Dog Owners' Liability Act (DOLA) of owning a prohibited "pit bull" (in this case a dog that was too young to be in Ontario) and asked Danny to plead to the lesser charge of owning a dog that "...has behaved in a manner that poses a menace to the safety of persons or domestic animals" (Section 4. 1(b) of DOLA).  With this came a fine, which on hindsight we probably could have bartered down, but that's not a big deal since I don't have to pay it.

This was a win for Danny and Bowser, for dog owners in Ontario and for organizations such as the DLCC that have been quietly helping dog owners get through the nightmarish process of fighting to save their dogs all over the province.

The court has decided that Bowser is NOT a "pit bull" within the meaning of the law but is substantially similar to a Boxer-Rottweiler mixed breed dog.  This precedent can help other dog owners whose pets may resemble Bowser.

In dropping the whole "pit bull" part of the charge, the Crown basically said it didn't have enough to defend the designation.  They had no experts on deck. An Animal Control officer was present but he is not considered an expert.  This was nicely summarized in the Miami decision posted by Brent last Friday and according to our lawyer, there are Canadian precedents that concur with that decision.

We had expert testimony in the form of an excellent letter from a veterinarian with decades of experience, as well as a letter from a CKC (Canadian Kennel Club) licensed all-breed judge also with decades of experience both in Canada and abroad.  In a nutshell, the vet said that in his opinion, Bowser was substantially similar to a Boxer-Rottweiler mix.  The judge pointed out the many areas where Bowser did not fit the standards of any of the three breeds banned in Ontario.

*

A few points I'd like to mention:

1. There has been a hue and cry, especially on Facebook, with people wanting the name of the vet clinic that originally ratted Danny out to Animal Control for owning a prohibited "pit bull".  They didn't get it from me two years ago and they won't get it from me now.

I suspect that because people are angry and frustrated over the "pit bull" legislation, they are looking for someone to blame, someone to punish.  I say look no further than Dalton McGuinty - he is the one who should have leashed and muzzled his then-Attorney General.  He is the one who should have listened to the overwhelming opposition to his scheme in the Legislature, in public opinion polls and correspondence and especially at Committee where many expert organizations and individuals spent time and money appearing to explain why the "breed" (lol) ban was the wrong route to dog bite prevention.  Dalton McGuinty and his minions MUST be voted out in October.  If you are angry, show up and vote.

I personally won't be held responsible for vandalism or other mischief that may befall that clinic.  Since they obviously didn't want to testify in favour of the designation - remember, the Crown had no expert witnesses  - for all we know it was just a staff member who called it in.  That person may not even be working there anymore.

Anyway, ultimately they did dog owners in Mississauga a favour because Bowser is NOT a "pit bull" in that city.

2.  We were chatting with the Animal Control officer after the hearing.  I asked him what people could do to protect themselves, since most people have no idea that they own a "pit bull". All you have to do is look at how different all the dogs are that have been identified as "pit bulls" by authorities.  You can see just a few of them in my slideshow, left sidebar right under the search box near the top.

He said they should get a note from their vet stating that their dog is, for example, a Labrador retriever-Boxer mix, and carry it with them.  That's good enough for Animal Control in Mississauga if they stop someone.

Yes, it does sound rather Naziesque - "Veer ah yo papuz?" but so what?  This is Nazi-type legislation, discrimination based not on behaviour but appearance, so like it or not, if you see your vet and get such a note you will be protected.  This applies in Mississauga but in my view, it couldn't hurt no matter where you live in Ontario if you own a short-haired, medium-sized mutt.  Remember, under the law vets can identify dogs as "pit bulls" which means they can also identify dogs as not "pit bulls".

*

Anyway, congratulations to Danny for standing up and getting through the past two-plus years with your dignity intact.  I'm glad we could help in a small way and I hope you and Bowser have a great time together from here on in.  It was a pleasure to work with you on this case.

I'm a Rabbit too.  So this is our year!

If you want to congratulate Danny, visit this page on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=61941358224

Almost forgot!  Brindlestick has a post about this as well, you can read it here.

Bowser in June, 2010