It has been a week since four year old Ayen Chol was killed by a unregistered crossbreed dog, that had been roaming in her family’s street.
Since the attack, animal experts have come forward to advise the government on the problems with their proposed knee-jerk legislation targeting ‘pit bulls’, with the RSPCA leading the charge;
RSPCA Victoria animal shelters manager Allie Jalbert said owners were responsible for a dog’s actions no matter what the breed.
“Any dog regardless of its size or breed or mixture of breeds may bite and may be dangerous,” Ms Jalbert told AAP.
More RSPCA comment from the RSPCA ACT’s Michael Linke:
”There’s no place in our society for vicious dogs or dangerous dogs, irrespective of their breed.
…. But Mr Linke, who owns a two-year-old pit bull terrier named Dahlia, has warned against any irrational demonisation of the breed.
”Any dog is capable of any act, at any point in time,” he said. ”The information that I’m reading is that it was a cross pit bull with a mastiff. ”Why aren’t people talking about mastiffs? Straight away they’re talking about pit bulls, and again I think it’s the easy breed [to target].”
Mr Linke said there was no direct link between unpredictable aggressiveness and pit bulls.’
There has also been feedback from the dog training community:
Brad Griggs, from the National Dog Trainers Federation, warns against a ban. ”Because I am six foot two and a half, and have freckles, it’s like banning every six foot two-plus, freckled person because 10 of them did something wrong over a period of five years,” he says. ”It is the equivalent of racism.”
Griggs is concerned that a ban would push owners of pit bulls away.
”If these people are likely to have these dogs seized or be discriminated against, it’s hardly going to bring them into the dog training community fold, and encourage them to train their dogs and raise them properly,” he says.
Griggs says that, internationally, educated dog trainers don’t have a bias against the breed. Genetics are only part of the picture. ”Genetics are the potential a dog has to live into,” he says, arguing that nurture, as opposed to nature, is extremely important.
…. ”All dogs should be heavily socialised and habituated and that is the key point. The majority of dogs that have these issues to attack like this have had a poor critical socialisation period, up to about 16 or 20 weeks of age.”
Tasmanian veterinary behaviourist Dr Katrina Ward said the issue was not about a particular breed but the wider problem of responsible ownership of dogs.
“A breed doesn’t do these things, an individual dog does,” she said.
“Hysteria of banning breeds isn’t the answer.
“It’s hard to generalise about a breed of dog — the type of owner, the behaviour of the victim are also pertinent to the incident.”
….”Ultimately it is the responsibility of the owner to keep the dog safe from scary situations and keep people safe from a dog that might be reactive.”
And the veterinary community:
Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) spokeswoman Kersti Seksel says… “It’s understandable that people are now calling for the banning of some breeds, however all the good evidence available shows that this doesn’t work.”
“Unfortunately, we believe the banning and over-regulation of dogs in our communities could be part of the problem as this leads to poor socialisation and increased risk of attacks.”
The AVA is instead calling for the government to increase funding for education and socialisation programs for dogs, their owners and young children.
Its statistics show that the most likely victims of dog attacks are children aged under 10, usually by their own dogs at their homes.
“We’re never going to be able to prevent every incident, but a really good way to help prevent bites and attack is through socialisation of puppies with people and other dogs at a young age, and teaching our children how to be safe around animals.”
Linda Watson, who is doing a PhD degree on ”dog-bite injury and the effect of regulation”, said the term ”pit bull” had become a generic one, to include dogs such as Staffordshire terriers, English bull terriers, bulldogs, even boxers.
The term pit bull had come to mean ”any small- to middle-sized, short-haired, muscular dog”, she said, which was most misleading and most unfair. ”I don’t believe any breed is dangerous,” she said. ”It is how the dog is treated and the circumstances in which it finds itself in when it may happen to bite.”
….”Knee-jerk reactions by governments do not tend to create good public policy. We do not need any more laws or restrictions that are doomed to failure from the onset. We need a strategy based on the best research evidence that we have to hand.
Breed bans simply do not address other recurrent patterns associated with dog attacks such as irresponsible or uneducated dog ownership.
Measures taken need to address human ownership practices, as dogs of many breeds and crosses feature in dog attacks. No single, or even group of breeds, have been shown to account for the majority of dog attacks in Australia.”(ref)
Even if you’re not a fan of ‘pit bulls’ or bull breed dogs, the fact is the experts agree that breed specific laws do little to protect the community from dog attacks and we should be looking at programs that DO work to curb irresponsible pet ownership.
(for more information on programs which have shown to reduce dog bite injuries, check out solutions from Calgary, Canada)
But one organisation is still spreading the hate, in the face of the professional community – The Lost Dogs Home;
The Melbourne Lost Dogs Home has accused the RSPCA of selling pitbull terriers back into the community under the guise of staffordshire crossbreeds.
RSPCA Victoria rejects the allegation, maintaining that dogs should be judged on their deeds, not their breeds, and that it is operating within the law.
…The RSPCA agrees that identifying crossbreeds is contentious.
“It’s very difficult to assess an animal by its breed type, by its appearance,” shelter manager Allie Jalbert said.
“There’s specifications that the Victorian Government has put forward and they’re the specifications that we use.”
Overwhelming evidence and the scientific determination that the rate of misidentification of dogs by professional animal welfare workers estimated to be around 70% isn’t enough to sway Graeme Smith, who uttered the now infamous phrase;
“My view is that if it looks like a pitbull, it’s a pitbull.”
At the Lost Dogs Home appearance is enough to determine breed and a third of the dogs it catches fit the dangerous description and are destroyed.
But this attack on the RSPCA has revealed the untruths behind those who push the breed-specific approach. If it looks like a pitbull, it most definitely might NOT be a pitbull, and not only does this matter a lot to the owners of misidentified pets, but it is the exact reason these laws cause so many headaches in execution;
WA Rangers Association president Samantha Tarling said identification had emerged as a fundamental problem, with WA’s chief veterinarian refusing to ‘testify to the DNA’ of a dog.
“I once challenged some owners that their dog was a pit bull,” she said. “They showed me the parents with the paperwork. It was a cross between a boxer and a labrador. I could have sworn it was a pit bull.” ~ The West Australian
Furthermore, not only is Graeme Smith purporting that some dogs who have been deemed to be NOT pit bulls by the RSPCA assessors and vets, actually ARE pit bulls – highlighting an immediate problem with identification by animal welfare organisations who do this for a living (and just as importantly his breed identification qualifications) – he is also advocating that these dogs, who have passed the health, behaviour and temperament test of the RSPCA and have shown themselves to be friendly, pet-quality animals… be killed.
Healthy, friendly dogs who look kinda like pit bulls should be killed in Dr Smith’s world.
What does this really mean for the average pet owner and the dogs of Victoria? Given that staffies are some of the most common dogs in the state, and that along with ridgebacks and mastiffs are the most likely to be misidentified as a a pitbull, it means that many, many pets are at risk. Not the animals of dog fighters or thugs, but family pets who’ve done nothing wrong and who will simply be a victim of outdated hate and ignorance.
