Pit Bulls...

A number of readers wondered what happened to the little boy attacked by a Pit Bull whose story I told in "Troublemakers."  The answer is that he had a bite on his cheek. Dog bites are graded one through six—with six as the most serious—and his bite was a one. The adults who intervened on his behalf had to get a bit more medical attention. But the damage, in their case, was also slight. The little boy's father had two stiches in his hand. In some ways, I don't think the severity of the bites matters much, which is why I didn't dwell on it in the story. Clearly, the attack could have been much more serious. If everyone hadn't run to the defense of the boy so quickly, and if the boy's mother hadn't done exactly the right thing (lying down, with her body covering the boy) the boy could easily have been badly injured. The attack was horrifying, even if no one was seriously hurt, and dogs should not be permitted to run free and bite people.

      On the other hand, part of the rhetorical arsenal of those who get hysterical about  Pit Bulls is to pretend that every dog bite is a medical catastrophe. And that just isn't true. If you look, in fact, at emergency room statistics, you'll see that more people are admitted every year for non-dog bites than dog-bites—which is to say that when you see a Pit Bull, you should worry as much about being bitten by the person holding the leash than the dog on the other end. Janis Bradley's book, which i mentioned in a previous post, is awfully convincing on this point.

Comments

[JP]

First off, comparing a Pit Bull to owning a gun is legitimate. Both can kill, both can be helpful in life, much like a car. So in the wrong hands, guns kill, dogs kill (not only Pit Bulls) and cars kill. The woman in France whose face was torn off was done by a Labrador (which I read above). Punish the deed, not the breed. I have a Rottweiler AND a Pit Bull. These two dogs are the most loving pets I have ever been around. It is a shame that Pit Bulls do fall into the wrong hands a lot of the time and get a bad rap. Please remember though that these dogs are PEOPLE FRIENDLY dogs. When they were bred, if they bit a human, they were killed. Sad but true, they were bred to fight. So when dog handlers would be breaking up the fights, they could not have dogs that would bite humans. So if they did bite, they would put them down immediately.

[Charles Kerouac]

Whatever their breeding history is, I have owned several loyal Pitt Bulls in my life time. I cared for them, played with them, and loved them as I would have any other animal. All of them were good with my children and behaived themselves around strangers.

To hear someone suggest that these animals serve no other purpose than to fight each other or to attack humans is absurd. My largest was a 120 pound male by the name of Piason who played frisbee with several neighboorhood children and never harmed a soul. None of these dogs in my care ever attacked another animal or a person. At best, they growled at a mail carrier they weren't familiar with, just as any protective pet would.

Any dog can be over agressive. This comes from the training and the treatment of the dog's owners. To think otherwise is just plain dumb.

[Lynda]

I own 4 pit bulls and am in a working group that wants to ban these dogs. People that don't know these dogs have no clue what loving dogs they are. It is a shame that so many communities want to ban them without knowing much about them, only what bad things the papers print. It is the owners that make these dogs, or for the fact any dog mean. There just needs to be harsh punishmehnt for the people that train their animals to be mean, or are cruel to them. I really don't care what our small town will do cause I will own what ever dog I want, and I am sure it would be a pit bull in a heartbeat. My puppy and myself just completed dog obidence class and won all the top honors out of all the dogs for being the most obident dog and best behaved dog. I think that says alot. I am a firm believer that good training and lots of love is what every animal needs and deserves. Most communities haven't had any problems with these dogs but just want to ban them because everyone else is. How unfair this is to this wonderful breed. I have owned a sheltie and a german shepard in the past and I can tell you that my little sheltie would have bit anyone that she didn't trust. Of course that was because the gas meter man would try to hit her with a metal rod so she became defensive, just like any dog would do put in that situation. So everyone get educated on these wonderful dogs.