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Pique n' Your Interest

For the love of Dog

Last week, after a jogger was attacked on the False Creek Seawall, a Vancouver councillor suggested a new bylaw to ban the ownership of pit bulls.

"There’s been enough injuries," said councillor Tim Stevenson. "And these dogs are vicious and trained to attack. And there’s no need to have them in an urban environment."

Good luck with that Tim.

After a string of well-publicized pit bull attacks around the province, Ontario’s attorney-general proposed a similar ban on the breed just last month, referring to the dogs as "dangerous weapons". Toronto newspaper columnists took up the cry, saying it was about time people acknowledged the dangers of certain breeds – which naturally prompted pit bull owners and dog lovers around the country to do a little crying of their own.

Here’s a short list of the pit bull owners’ excuses:

• It wasn’t all breeds of pit bulls that were responsible, the dog’s defenders suggested, but rather inbred dogs from backyard puppy farms;

• Rottweilers are more dangerous than pit bulls, according to statistics, but nobody is suggesting a ban on that breed;

• Poodles and beagles are more likely to bite, statistically, than pit bulls;

• The pit bulls in most high profile cases were likely provoked or abused;

• Those particular pit bull owners were negligent and you can’t penalize a whole breed and all the responsible owners out there for the actions of a few bad owners and dogs.

Honestly, if you read a Toronto newspaper a few weeks ago you’d have no idea that people were still dying in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan. Columnists and letter writers displayed a kind of outrage over the proposed ban of pit bulls that even a war can’t provoke.

I guess dogs have that affect on people, which is why the whole debate on the wisdom of allowing people to own potentially dangerous animals as pets has been taboo in the media.

Naturally, the debate over vicious dogs always comes back to the people who own them – there are no bad dogs they say, only bad dog owners.

It’s the canine equivalent of the "guns don’t kill people" argument against gun control laws, and it probably makes as little sense to the people out there who have been shot as it does to the people who have been bitten.

I have to agree that there are an awful lot of idiots out there that probably shouldn’t own a dog, gun, or even a driver’s licence for that matter, but that’s not the issue here – there will always be morons out there who seem determined ruin the world for the rest of us.

The issue is that sometimes guns really are the problem because accidents and tempers happen, just as there have always been problem dogs. In Whistler, which reportedly has one of the highest per capita dog populations in the province, those problems do rear their ugly heads from time to time.

In the past few months, two Whistler dogs were put down after biting people. One poor girl had to have plastic surgery on her face to repair the damage and a visitor to the resort had serious cuts on her leg. Neither of the owners has been charged with negligence, and were genuinely shocked by their dogs’ behaviour.

The thing is that bites are not all that rare, even if they are rarely reported. I know several people that have been bitten by dogs over the years. I have been bitten by a German shepherd-mix, a Rottweiler and a sheep dog in the last decade – not hard enough to go to the hospital, but with enough jaw muscle to draw blood.

That’s doesn’t stop me from one day wanting to own my own dog, but I seriously doubt whether I would consider any of those breeds – once bitten, twice shy, or so they say.

Other people won’t have the same those reservations, and the number of dog breeds in town that have bad reputations will continue to grow.

Once again, sometimes it’s not the dog’s fault because A) there are breeds out there that can be dangerous in the hands of bad dog owners, and B) the people who make bad dog owners seem more inclined to bring home dangerous breeds of dogs. I’d bet a mathematical review of dog attacks would probably show that the worse a dog owner is, the bigger and more dangerous their dogs generally are.

But sometimes dogs go bad with little or no warning, and even good dogs have been known to do bad things. When that happens I think I’d rather be bitten by a poodle or a beagle than a pit bull.

I’ve never understood the need to tempt fate. Maybe some people really believe they can control dangerous dogs, the same way some people think they can drive as fast as they want on Highway 99. Maybe some people want these dangerous dogs because they believe they best fit their personality, their own distorted "bad boy" images of themselves. Maybe the dogs were cute as puppies. Maybe some people really are ignorant, and don’t equate the most recent dog attack on the evening news with the hundred pound animal they have tied up out back.

Because you can’t possibly weed all the bad dog owners out, maybe it isn’t a bad idea to consider bylaws banning certain breeds of dogs in urban areas – not just for the protection of the public but also to protect the idiots out there from one day being charged with negligence or manslaughter. It’s not fair to the responsible owners out there, I admit it, but there aren’t many options that are fair to the public and future victims of dog attacks.

Maybe people could purchase dog licences before they can bring a pet home, providing they pass a test on responsible dog ownership. It doesn’t work for drivers’ licences, but it might discourage a few bad owners – if you’re too lazy to do a little paperwork, you’re definitely too lazy to own a dog.

Maybe dog ownership shouldn’t be a right, but rather a privilege that can be taken away.

I’m not just talking about the biters, either. Dogs who are allowed to bark into the wee hours of the night are a problem. Dog owners who don’t clean up after their pets are creating a dog problem. Dogs that are allowed to run free in neighbourhoods are everyone’s problem – they get in the way of cars, beg at barbecues, chase away native species like bears, and make some people nervous. In no circumstance should anyone ever be subjected to the barks, bites and bowel movements of someone else’s pet.

I like dogs. They make little sense from an economic or environmental perspective, but I still like the idea of having a dog around for companionship. The one reason I haven’t become a dog owner yet is that even now, at age 31, I don’t know if I’m responsible enough. I tried to work my way up to dogs by taking care of a couple of hamsters, an experiment that ended up with one hamster dead and one still missing.

I work a lot so the dog would be on its own for most of the day. Then you have to buy food, accessories, annual rabies shots, and, if you’re smart, pet insurance for all those unforeseen injuries.

You have to get up early, rain or shine, to take the dog for a walk, and go for at least one more walk before you go to sleep.

It’s a big commitment, one that only gets bigger as your choice of dogs gets bigger. Right now I know I’m not up to it. Are you?