Dog owners, not pit bulls, need their chain yanked

Cari Elmore wants to ban pit bulls in the city of Coeur d’Alene. She says the breed is entirely too dangerous, and that it’s just a matter of time before a pit bull attacks a child or perhaps an elderly person.

“Someone is going to end up dead,” she told me on Monday. “It scares the heck out of me. I love my neighbors; I want them around.”

In early March, Elmore lost her cat Thomas to two pit bulls that allegedly jumped into her fenced backyard, then dragged off and killed the cat. Her plan is to have 5,000 anti-pit bull signatures by fall.

Two dog attacks made this newspaper on Tuesday.

One involved two boxers chasing a Valley man and his grandkids before they attacked and bit another person. The Valley man shot and killed one of the dogs.

The other involved a pit bull, which attacked three girls on a playground in Colville.

Earlier this year, pit bulls killed a horse in Spokane Valley.

Then two other pit bulls killed a cat and charged a man who was out walking his dog, also in Spokane Valley. Those pit bulls were shot and killed by police.

One thing seems certain: Some pit bulls are dangerous, and it’s getting very tempting to just ban them all together.

But I fear a breed-specific ban would be a quick fix to a complex problem.

Over the years other breeds have had the vicious label attached to them: Doberman pinchers come to mind, as do Rottweilers and German shepherds. If we ban pit bulls, I’m sure someone will suggest a ban of one of these breeds, too.

Breed-specific legislation is the wrong approach. What we need is a “one bite and you’re out” law, and if we want to ban anything it should be unfit dog owners who can’t contain their animals, or who beat and mistreat dogs to make them vicious.

I’m sure pit bulls need a firm hand in training and socialization, but so did my German wirehaired pointer. He was bred for hunting and if it weren’t for my vigilant attention, I can guarantee you he’d catch a cat.

My point is this: It is always the owner who makes the dog.

Any dog kept chained or locked up, without appropriate training and socializing, can turn vicious. Any dog running around without supervision can exhibit aggressive behavior you’d never suspect little fluffy-wuffy would be capable of.

There’s a pit bull ban in Denver, where it’s been on and off the books since 1989. Shelter workers in nearby Colorado Springs tell me they’ve received a wave of pit bulls since the ban came back on the books in 2005. By some estimates, at least 2,000 pit bulls or pit bull crosses have been killed since then – regardless of whether they are dangerous or not. That hardly seems ethical.

Gail Mackie, executive director of SpokAnimal CARE, said that personally she’s never been a proponent of breed specific legislation.

“It’s an enforcement nightmare,” she said. “People won’t be honest about their dog’s breed.”

It seems like a more humane and effective way to limit the number of dog attacks would be to crack down on the high number of roaming dogs we have in our neighborhoods.

“Safety comes from responsible pet ownership,” said Mackie. “If we didn’t have dogs running around without accounting for, we wouldn’t have bites and attacks.”

Do we have an animal control problem? In Spokane, yes we do. SpokAnimal is a nonprofit, and it’s been hanging on, month by month, to fulfill its mission while people at City Hall fight over how or if it should retain its funding.

Would getting rid of all the pit bulls in the area solve our animal control problem? No, but it would sure as heck cost us a lot of money – money that could be much better and more effectively spent enforcing a tough vicious dog law equally on every breed.