BSL -- Not the Answer

Great article, Laura. You left out another bully breed, the French Bulldog. My daughter's Frenchie was banned from playtime at dog day care when she was still a puppy because she had "bull" in her breed name. Fortunately the manager of the day care, who happened to own a Rottweiler, and the playtime coordinator, who happened to own a pitbull, both breeds that were also forbidden to have fun with other dogs, even though theirs had been well socialized and able to enjoy playing with dogs of all types, took pity on my daughter's puppy and let her hang out in the office during her jail time. (As an aside and in support of the idea that people don't know what they're talking about when it comes to dog breeds, my daughter was leaving her house to go to her car when she was approached by a couple of teeangers. One of them actually treed himself screaming, "Don't let that pit bull get me!" The Frenchie was about five months old at the time and has never viewed people or other dogs as anything other than potential friends.)

And an interesting note on fighting dogs. Several decades ago an acquaintance of mine set out to learn more about dogs. In the course of her travels she interviewed a man who had fighting dogs of the bully breeds. In support of his claim that it was a sport that his dogs enjoyed when given permission to engage in it, he showed her how he kept his dogs together all in one yard. And he sent his very young daughter (I think she was only three or four years old) to fetch one of them out of the yard. According to him his dogs were "sport fighters" who enjoyed a good match as much as dogs today enjoy agility or Schutzhund or freestyle or...? While they might have had scars (and remember that hunting and other working dogs also had scars, so that the AKC standards specifically stated that honorable scars were "not to count against" in the conformation ring), it wasn't about maiming or fighting to the death. I'm not pointing this out to justify or condone dog fighting, but to illustrate that the viciousness of present-day dog fighting is manufactured by people, not dogs, through bad breeding and abhorrent training practices.

And then the idea that we can thwart death, injury or even fear of bodily harm through legislation has always struck me as a bit bizarre. People seem to latch on to dogs as a way of gaining legislative control over these fears. But I think it was Ian Dunbar who pointed out that many more children die at the hands of parents or other adults in their homes than are killed by dogs each year. And I suspect the same holds true for adults. The data for injuries is probably less easily quantifiable, since parent-induced injuries only get reported if the child makes it to a health-care provider who recognizes it and reports it.

I fight this stuff in the legislature as I am able. But even more importantly, IMO, I get my Doberman out in the community where she does weekly nursing home visits and demoes of various sorts, including freestyle and tricks. And when people draw back or ask questions, Fiesta is living proof that their stereotypes are just that.