End BSL in Miami

From the Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation. In Florida, it's not legal for municipalities to pass breed-specific legislation, but in Miami it's been grandfathered in. And it's not like it's kept pit bulls out of the Miami-Dade area. To the contrary, people find pit bulls in/around Miami all the time ... so what is this specific law doing, exactly? 

Two bills have been filed in the Florida legislature this session – SB1322 and HB997 – that would repeal the grandfather clause that allows Miami to keep its BSL in place. If you're opposed to BSL, contact your Florida legislators and tell them to support SB1322 and HB997!

Ball by Planet Dog

Doc should be a spokesdog for Orbee. Seriously. He lives for these balls.

New Orleans' Gambit on pit bulls

Today someone emailed me a link to this recent story on the pit bull population in New Orleans published in the city's alt-weekly, Gambit. Aside from the bait dog thing, which comes up a few times in the story, it's a pretty good piece that points out the ugly realities of what it means to be a pit bull in an urban area in the U.S. As the story mentions, Villalobos Rescue Center is setting up shop in New Orleans ... more on that in another post, but you can get some details here.

Some notable quotes from the Gambit story appear below, which hopefully will spur you on to go read the piece. And don't forget to read author Alex Woodward's person note on his personal connection to pit bulls, "On pit bulls and writing about your best friends." At the LASPCA, more than 1,100 pit bulls are taken in, but only 81 were adopted out.

According to the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (LASPCA), the shelter accepted 7,201 animals in 2011, and 1,667 of those were pit bulls. Of those animals, it found adoptive homes for 1,889 animals — including 123 pit bulls. It also euthanized 1,257 pit bulls. All figures for the shelters' 2011 pit bull intake (including adoption, but excluding owner surrender) were greater than those of 2010, when the shelter euthanized 1,166 pit bulls and adopted out only 81. On the adoption floor, many of the dogs are pit bulls. Most are new arrivals, including two puppies: two-month-old Amara and Bourbon, who were found in an abandoned house on Josephine Street.

Grimm, a dog who was won as a PRIZE in a poker game ... nice.

Grimm, a young, slim white and brown pit bull, was a prize in a poker game. The winner gave her to the shelter, where staff discovered she was pregnant. She birthed a litter, and over the next few days, the shelter received more puppies, some with their umbilical cords still attached, who still needed to be nursed. Grimm accepted them into her litter, and the puppies huddled next to her to nurse.

A bit on Ken Foster (author of The Dogs Who Found Me) and his work with the Sula Foundation.

In 2008, Foster started the nonprofit Sula Foundation, named after his pit bull Sula, who died in 2010. The organization has rescued, fostered and adopted out dozens of pit bulls and has hosted events to offer dog owners low-cost veterinary care like vaccinations, spaying and neutering, and other services, including dog training. (The next clinic is noon to 3 p.m. February 4 at Bonart Playground in the Lower 9th Ward.) The foundation survives on donations and merchandise sales, including its popular "Pit Bulls of New Orleans" wall calendar.

A guy encounters a dangerous dog who tried to bite him, reports it to the authorities and weeks later, finds that nobody took any action to protect the public from the dog. So very many dog-bite incidents I read about include some mention of the fact that passersby or neighbors complained about dangerous problems that nobody ever had time, money or resources to address. This is why our communities are not safe from dangerous dogs ... it's not dog breeds but bad owners and unresponsive (due to lack of resources or lack of interest, or both) authorities.

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011, David Munroe walked to the corner of St. Philip Street and North Claiborne Avenue at 6:40 a.m. Two unleashed pit bulls lay in a grassy lot 30 feet away. One of them lunged at him, grabbing his ankle and shredding his sock but not breaking his skin. Munroe yelled, and the dog backed off.   "I was fortunate, but someone may not have been," he says, noting that Joseph A. Craig Elementary School is within walking distance of the area. "Kids would be out walking, and these dogs are out there. They might do real harm to a kid."   Munroe reported the attack to both the New Orleans Police Department and the LASPCA, but the dogs, he says, were still there six weeks later. He thinks the pit bull population needs stricter enforcement. "Until there's not a problem with this, society needs to take steps to protect itself," he says.

Anyway, good story, go read.

Tucker, Adventuredog

Tucker likes when I take him to visit new places. This past weekend we went to Blanchard Park in East Orlando, which has a nice walking/biking path along the river. There were lots of dogs out, but all on leash and not too crazy crowded. We could get used to this whole winter in Florida thing.

Dog obedience, January 2012

Rob and I took Doc and Tucker to Blue Jacket Park today to practice some obedience with Doc. I haven't been keeping up much on his training, but I'm making a renewed effort to do more with him this year. Doc's obedience is still looking good, though he's a lot slower in his old age. And poor Tucker, who has been practicing with me more on his obedience lately, really wanted to join in the fun too. I felt kind of bad watching this video because he was so eager to play along. But I like that Doc didn't even notice him and just kept up with his heeling. Doc has been getting a bit more reactive to strange dogs in his old age, so I was pleased that he didn't even blink when a couple of dogs were walking around the park perimeter while we were practicing. Good dogs.

There's a pit bull on tonight's Parks and Recreation

I love NBC's Parks and Recreation. I love it a little more tonight because it features Champion, the three-legged dog, who happens to be a pit bull. I can't find any photos of the dog or info about him, but I'm sure they'll turn up eventually.

Update: Here's the episode on Hulu. Best part of this is that they don't make a huge deal out of the fact that Champion is a pit bull. He's just a three-legged dog.




And an episode recap from NYMag!

Practicing their down/stays

Tonight, Tucker, Button and I did a bit of mat work. The conference I attended this weekend - mind-blowingly good, by the way, but more on that later - reminded me that I've been neglecting a lot of those little, easy, everyday obedience things that can make life so much easier and more enjoyable for me and the dogs. The dogs get some mental exercise and stimulation in a passive setting, I get some mental relaxation when they are zonked out later. Everybody wins.

Well, except Tucker. As you can see in the photo below, he would rather be practicing on the couch. Floors are hard.

The coal-miner's pit bull

Training seminar tomorrow!

I'm super-excited to be attending this "Tuning Into Your Dog" seminar with Patricia McConnell and Kathy Sdao this weekend. I remember that when I got my first dog of my own (holy crap, that was 20 years ago this coming February--yikes) I went to a few libraries looking for educational/training resources and came up with a couple of books from the Monks of New Skete, Barbara Woodhouse's No Bad Dogs and an old copy of one of the Koehler training books. I read them all, but I remember being a bit surprised by some of the advice they contained. I'll never forget reading Woodhouse's advice to make sure your dog is a bit aloof with strangers by allowing it to have several unpleasant, but not horrifying, orchestrated experiences so he'd learn not to be too eager to greet new people. I also remember taking my poor dog to a class and being taught that I would have to yank her around and not let her have an inch during training or she'd never learn a thing. I dutifully followed the heavy-handed advice I was given and I remember not really enjoying training my dog. It was just something I figured I had to do to ensure that I could control her.



I can't remember how or why, but I finally came across some books by a trainer named Carol Lea Benjamin, whose attitude toward handling dogs was far from the stern and rigid stuff I'd previously been exposed to. I remember feeling this huge sense of relief when I read in one of her books that she sometimes let her dogs pull on the leash, a cardinal sin according to the trainers I'd read and visited. I dug up copies of as many of her books as I could and they completely changed the way I looked at training my dogs -- they weren't clicker training or super-advanced, by any means, but they were lighthearted, she encouraged people to understand their dogs and their motivations and most importantly, she let her readers know it was OK to have fun when training dogs. She's probably the one to blame for the fact that I developed such a serious interest in working with and training my dogs. Lucky for me and even more lucky for my dogs.

Eventually, taking an interest in writing by Benjamin led me to seek out other people who wrote about dogs in an engaging, dog-friendly, insightful way, and that let me to eventually discover (among other people) Patricia McConnell, whose books are ones I always recommend to anyone who asks me for something to read that'll help them understand their dogs. I also recommend her books as alternatives to the doctrines of Cesar Milan. I've admired McConnell's writings and I read her blog and I enjoy her thoughts on human interactions with dogs, so I'm thrilled that I'll finally have a chance to see her in person and learn from someone in the dog world that I have long admired. So I probably won't be online all that much this weekend. Two full days of seminar! Can't believe I'm this excited to sit in a conference room and listen to someone talk!

Great article on "drive" and working dogs

I saw this article on drive and working dogs posted by a friend on Facebook today, and once I finally got a chance to read it, I really liked it. One of the things I always enjoyed about working with Doc when we trained in schutzhund was how clear he always seemed, even when he was in drive. He never flailed around looking for something to grab and bite, he always seemed to be in full control of his faculties even though he could become very aroused during bitework and teaching him to out was a breeze, partly because he had a very good foundation with out before we started training in bitework and partly because he was always aware of me when he was working. I sometimes did see dogs that would seemingly go blind and deaf when they were working, and it was sort of hellish watching people who tried to handle them. It was also frustrating to meet people who talked about the high-drive their dog had, when what the dog seemed to actually have was a lot of pent-up energy and frustration ... I was always grateful that my dog had the engine, the brakes and the steering Suzanne mentions in her story. It made getting involved in the sport more fun for both me and the dog!

Things you can do with your pit bull

Put him on a box.


This is Doc's second session learning "on the box." He seems to like it. Yes, I realize now that his rear end was not on the box in the last exercise. My mistake. I didn't notice that until I viewed the video!

Titusville, Fla., pit bull attacks little girl

I had actually been hoping that I wouldn't really have much reason to blog about this sad story. A little girl in Titusville, Fla., about an hour from Orlando, had been riding her bike home from a friend's house when a pit bull tied out in a yard broke whatever was restraining it and attacked her. She suffered broken bones and will be scarred for life. It's a complete tragedy and a travesty, and there's no excuse for it. Should never have happened. Period.

Some people are now inclined to want to take aim not at the people who own dogs that bite people but at a breed of dog. In Florida, municipalities are not permitted to pass breed-specific ordinances because state law prohibits it. There have been debates on Facebook about this recently, and today the Orlando Sentinel has posted an editorial talking about how this case is renewing "the need for regulations." How about renewing, instead, the need to ENFORCE regulations that are on the books that would help communities keep tabs on dangerous dogs, in general, pit bull or not?

The Sentinel quotes stats from dogsbite.org, an organization that was founded with the sole purpose of skewing public perception against pit bulls. Among other things, dogsbite.org insists that breed-specific legislation is the best way to keep people safe from dangerous dogs, partially because enforcing laws already on the books, or making them stronger, isn't effective. They say those laws already on the books are punitive and retroactive, not proactive – in other words, they claim, they only punish people after the fact, rather than before a bite occurs.

Not so, if those laws are designed to target and punish irresponsible ownership practices and are enforced effectively. If laws are effective, they aren't just reactive – they should also serve as deterrents. If people were concerned that they could get into trouble for not being responsible about the dogs they own, perhaps they'd think before being careless, irresponsible or otherwise clueless in the first place.

In reading the story out of Titusville, you might initially think this is a freak accident that could have happened to anyone at all who owns a pit bull dog – that this is a pit bull thing and not an owner-made-bad-decisions thing. But just reading a bit between the lines, I can see red flags in this case, and I can see at least one way that the law could have intervened before this dog ever got the opportunity to hurt this little girl. If we had more detail, would there be more? Quite possibly, but this is what we do know right now:

• This dog was not current in its rabies vaccinations, even though the law states that owners must keep dogs current on rabies. So there's a violation right there, a red flag for irresponsible ownership and an opportunity for a law enforcement to intervene in this dog's care before this dog's irresponsible owners allow something like this to happen. Why don't people receive penalties and fines for failing to keep this vaccine current? Why do we wait until after a dog has bitten someone to take action to sanctio the owner? Since rabies poses a serious public health threat, why are people who refuse to keep their animals current on vaccinations not handled more seriously? Should they even be permitted to keep dogs, considering the fact that rabies vaccines are generally cheap, easy to obtain at vaccine clinics (sometimes for free) and probably the bare minimum in medical care you should be providing for your dog? 

• This dog was tied out on some kind of tether, apparently unattended, in a front yard. Why on earth would you ever tie a dog out on a front-yard tether in a residential neighborhood by itself? Horrible, horrible idea. If you're going to confine your dog outdoors, do it in a way that's safe for both the public AND the dog. A place where kids and other animals can't wander in to bother the dog and the dog isn't going to get frustrated and pent up trying to get at things it sees moving around, just beyond its reach. 

• Dog is not a resident of the house where the attack occurred. Apparently, it belonged to the homeowner's boyfriend. So not only is a dog chained out front of a residential home with no protection from the world, no person to monitor its interactions with the environment and no barrier to make sure it can't access people or other animals moving around it, it's also not in a familiar, home environment. It's tied up outside somebody else's house, while its owner is ... where, exactly? I can only guess inside, since the news reports say that the girl's friend had to come running out of the house to pull the dog off the child who was attacked. 

So we have a person who owns a dog who is not obeying the law (rabies vaccinations) and is also not using common sense/precaution in handling his dog (tied up outside, unattended, strange environment). Could this accident have been prevented? I say yes and not by banning a breed of dog. 

I think if the emphasis were on better enforcement of current laws, as well as some enhancement of laws regarding taking responsibility for the actions of one's animals, the law could also have deterred the person who owned this dog from making such a tragically foolish and ultimately irresponsible decision. And a little girl in Titusville would not have had to endure this nightmare. 

Make laws that make sense, make laws that discourage irresponsible behavior that results in these kinds of incidents. And enforce those damn laws or they're pretty much worthless.  

If you ban the pit bulls in Titusville or anywhere else in Florida, you're not protecting the public from dangerous dogs – when it's an unvaccinated, aggressive mastiff or malamute or mongrel tied to a tree outside by itself that attacks someone, those laws won't help. And I don't think it makes the victims of attacks by any of those breeds of dog feel any better to know that the pit bulls are banned but the irresponsible owners of other breeds can carry on and do as they please. 

When did "pit bull" become a bad word?

My name is Doc. Pretty sure I'm a pit bull.

I posted something about this on Facebook recently, and I ranted a bit, but I'd love to hear some feedback from anyone out there who might be reading this blog.

Once again, I was browsing Facebook and came across a post insisting that "pit bull" is a meaningless term and not a breed and that not every pit bull is an American pit bull terrier. (Of course not – American pit bull terrier owners, in particular, are usually adamant about insisting that just because you have a pit bull does not mean you have an APBT.)

But all of this backing away from our dogs being pit bulls, or even related to pit bulls, is making me wonder: Why is being a pit bull such bad thing? Why would anyone who loves pit bulls feel compelled to back away from a dogs' likely heritage? (And by heritage, I'm talking general breeding heritage here, not dog-fighting history – just the dogs' heritage as related to the breeds that have always fallen under the label "pit bull.")

No, every dog being called a pit bull is not an American pit bull terrier. Some are American staffordshire terriers, some are Staffordshire bull terriers, some are mixes that do indeed appear to be primarily one of those breeds, and indeed some are being erroneously called pit bulls when they probably have little or no pit bull in them. Just like some black-and-white-spotted dogs with little or no Dalmation in them might get passed off as Dalmations and some dogs with black-and-tan pointing that clearly mutts might be called Rottweilers. But the purebred-looking Rottweilers that come into the shelters aren't called "Rottweilers" in quotes, or Rottweiler-type dogs or dogs with Rottweiler-type markings. Adopters aren't discouraged from thinking it might be a good idea to learn something about the Rottweiler as a breed before they take the dog home. Likewise with the Dalmations, the Golden retrievers, the German shepherds – not every dog with pointy ears and a black-and-tan coloring is a German shepherd, but people who know the breed well can make an educated guess and feel fairly confident calling a dog a shepherd without feeling like they have to hedge their bets or steer people away from thinking it might be one.

Everyone who knows dogs knows that within a breed there is always a wide range of individuals. Even within a line or family of dogs that are closely related there are individuals. Even within a tightly bred litter there are individuals. And on top of that, there are factors like environment and socialization and handling that will play into what a dog will be like when it matures. So of course we should judge dogs as individuals, if we're going to be put in a position to judge them, which is why pit bull lovers have long opposed the kill-all-pit-bulls policies that used to be so hyper-popular everywhere. Far more than they are now. You can't say all pit bulls are alike, just like you can't say all retrievers are alike.

What I'd like to know is why can't we have both good dogs that are individuals AND pit bulls? Why can't our pit bulls just be good dogs that deserve the same fair shake as all other dogs? Why do we have to try to back away from the possibility that they might even be pit bulls? If we want people to take us seriously as responsible pit bull owners, shouldn't we acknowledge that our dogs – whether they are of the gamedog, purebred show dog, working dog or shelter dog variety – are good dogs not DESPITE the fact that they might be pit bulls, but because pit bulls aren't inherently evil? They are, just like other breeds of dog, just dogs. But they are also pit bulls. And that's OK. At least to me it is.

Banana thief!

Who ate the bananas that were in the counter?